CHAPTER 22
Jameson
Geneva Outskirts, Switzerland
Day One Off Grid
She was going to hate me before we even ate breakfast.
That wasn’t a prediction.
It was math.
She’d walked into the bedroom already irritated and carrying more questions than fear.
She came back dressed like she was ready to fight the house itself.
Jeans. Boots. A dark sweater shoved up at the sleeves.
Hair twisted up in some sort of clip, though the shorter pieces were already falling down.
My hand flexed once, already remembering the texture.
I looked away before the memory became a distraction.
She held her phone in one hand and tucked the laptop under her other arm, the same laptop that had put her directly in the path of a situation I still didn’t entirely understand.
Both devices landed on the island between us, squarely within my line of sight.
“There,” she said. “Happy cleaning.”
I looked from the devices to her.
Her chin lifted. “That’s what you said, right? Then have at it.”
I crossed to the cabinet beside the fireplace.
Her eyes followed me. “What are you doing?”
“Retrieving equipment.”
Her gaze flicked to the cabinet. “From inside the furniture?”
“Yes.”
I pressed two fingers beneath the upper shelf until the latch released. The back panel gave with a quiet click.
I removed the hard case from the false compartment and set it on the island.
Behind it sat an older satellite terminal in a weather-sealed housing, exactly where the maintenance inventory said it should be.
I pulled it forward and checked the casing.
No visible damage. The power cell had been disconnected, but the hardware was several generations behind anything I would have chosen now. Even if it still acquired a signal through the surrounding terrain, the bandwidth would be limited and the connection unstable.
It might be enough to establish brief access and move small amounts of data.
It would not be enough for the work I suspected was coming.
I entered the code on the recessed keypad. The internal locks released one by one, and I opened the lid.
The laptop sat inside the foam casing exactly where I’d left it, alongside a compact signal scanner, several cable types, a card reader, sealed drives, and a diagnostic bridge wrapped in anti-static film.
She stared at the laptop and then looked to me. “When was the last time you were here?”
I paused.
“Two years,” I said. “Maybe slightly less.”
She squinted. “You’ve had a laptop stashed in a wall for two years, and you expect it to just work?”
I looked at the case. “No. There’s a very real possibility it won’t.”
I checked the seal along the interior battery case. “But I bought the best equipment available at the time, stored it correctly, and kept the power cells disconnected.”
She folded her arms. “So we’re operating on faith.”
“Strategically.”
I connected the external power cell and waited.
Nothing happened.
Several seconds passed.
One eyebrow rose.
I waited.
The system slowly woke with a low mechanical hum, followed by a narrow line of blue light across the keyboard.
Only then did I realize how tightly I’d been holding my breath. I let it out slowly.
The terminal would have to wait until I finished checking the equipment. There was no reason to open an external connection before I knew the workstation was clean.
“That was the most nerve-wracking seven seconds.” Her shoulders dropped by a fraction.
“Indeed.” I opened the diagnostic interface before reaching for her phone.
I should’ve started with the laptop.
The laptop mattered more. It held the investigation, the pattern work, the fragments her friend had died trying to pass her, or died because he’d passed them.
But I suspected the phone would be quicker, so I connected it to the diagnostic bridge. The screen came alive, throwing a glow across the island.
She leaned forward before she could stop herself. “What is that?”
“A diagnostic bridge.”
She leaned closer to the screen. “That sounds made up.”
“It isn’t, I assure you.”
Her mouth twisted. “And that sounds like something a villain says before he steals nuclear codes.”
“Do you want the less specific explanation?”
She folded her arms. “I want the one that makes me feel least like I’m about to be charged with treason.”
“It checks for unauthorized access, remote microphone use, location hooks, mirrored permissions, hidden processes, and device-level exploits.”
She went still for a beat. “I lied. The villain name was fine.”
Several minutes passed, filled only by the quiet rhythm of our breathing.
The fire shifted behind her, sending a small crack through the room. The safe house smelled different with flame in it. Less vacant. Smoke and pine resin under the stale, unused air. Beneath it, there was a faint trace of something fruity I couldn’t place at first.
Then she moved, and it moved with her.
Warmth opened in my chest so suddenly I almost looked away.
I hadn’t expected the smell of her to feel like relief.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught her watching my hands.
Her gaze moved from the cable to the bridge, then to the screen, following each step like she could audit my actions.
“Can we talk while you do that?” she asked.
I checked the first scan. “Yes.”
A hint of surprise flickered across her face. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“Fine,” she said. “Start with whether I’m being hunted.”
The first scan populated on the screen.
“Nothing is actively accessing the microphone,” I said.
Her lips pressed together. “That wasn’t my question.”
“It’s part of the answer.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m going to need more coffee for this conversation, aren’t I?”
“It’s possible.”
The second pass cleared.
No camera hijack. No mirrored permissions. No location hook buried in the operating system. No unauthorized call forwarding. No background process waking on connection.
Clean.
Cleaner than I’d expected for an investigative journalist. Her brother may have had something to do with that.
I still didn’t know whether she knew he was the Huntsman.
“Your phone is clean,” I said.
Her shoulders relaxed ever so slightly. “So I can use it?”
“No.”
She stared at the phone for a beat, then looked back at me. “Naturally.”
“The device is clean,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean it will stay that way.”
Her brow pulled in. “Got it.”
I popped the SIM tray and removed the card. “Your SIM registers with cell towers every time it connects. If someone has access to carrier records, account flags, or a compromised relay, they don’t need malware. They just wait for the number to announce itself.”
She looked at the small card between my fingers.
Anger settled over her features by degrees.
I slid the SIM into a small metal sleeve and sealed it. “You don’t use this again.”
“Wonderful.” She stared at the sealed SIM for another second. “If we have to cut off all contact with civilization, how are you supposed to look anything up?”
“There’s an older satellite terminal stored here,” I said. “It isn’t connected unless I activate it.”
Her eyes narrowed. “So we’re not actually cut off.”
“We are unless I deliberately open a connection window.”
“That sounds like a distinction designed to annoy me,” she said.
“It’s a security distinction.” I set the phone aside. “The terminal is outdated, the signal will be unreliable this far into the mountains, and it won’t support sustained access. But it may be enough for short searches and small data transfers.”
Long nails tapped against the counter in sequence. “May be?”
“It’s been sitting in a wall for two years.”
She looked toward the concealed cabinet. “Comforting.”
“It will be replaced.”
Her nails stopped and her fingers curled around the edge of the island. “With what?”
“Something faster, current, and less likely to lose the satellite every time a cloud develops an opinion.”
She released the island and began pacing the short length of the kitchen.
“We’ll also pick up burners.”
She stopped. “We?”
“You need a number no one knows exists.”
Her gaze dropped to the sealed SIM. “And until then?”
“Until then, no contact.”
She nodded hesitantly.
Beckett, probably.
Or whoever else she still believed she could warn without endangering.
I knew the instinct. Contact felt like control. Like proof the world outside the room still existed.
It was also one of the fastest ways to die.
She pulled her hands back from the island and folded her arms. “Okay, so we’re not being tracked by the phone. What about laptops?”
“Not at the moment.” I reached for her laptop.
Her hand shifted two inches toward the laptop before I touched it, protective without being obvious.
I paused.
Her fingers flexed once before she pulled them back. “This is my life. It has all my work on it.”
“I know.”
Her eyes held mine. “And my files.”
“Yes.”
Her chin lifted. “And if you destroy it, I will become a problem you cannot solve with your little murder briefcase.”
“It’s a forensic workstation.”
She stared at me. “Jameson.”
“I won’t damage it.”
Her eyes held mine for a second longer than necessary.
It was a decision to proceed because the alternative was worse.
I connected her laptop to the bridge and began the first image pass.
The interface started unpacking the file structure.
Research folders. Interview notes. Photographs. Timelines. Cross-reference maps. Archived pages. Transcripts.
She’d organized chaos with more care than I expected and less caution than I liked.
She turned away before asking, reaching for the coffee mug she’d abandoned near the edge of the island. “Why did you come for me?”
I kept my eyes on the screen. “Your post about Mirrorstream triggered an alert.”
She stared at me. “My username triggered an alert, and that was enough to make you come find me?”
“It wasn’t just the username.”
Her grip tightened around the mug. “Then what was it?”
I watched the scan crawl across her drive, buying myself half a second I didn’t need and took anyway.
“It was what the alert meant,” I said. “You were getting close to something.”
She didn’t move.
I looked up then.
Not at the screen.
At her.
Because this part mattered, and I needed her to understand how close she’d come to something that should’ve been impossible to find.
“I’ve had alerts set for years,” I said. “Anything that started circling too closely. Specific terms. Names. Patterns that shouldn’t overlap unless someone knew something tangible enough to follow.”
Her voice lowered. “So I was onto something?”
I should’ve looked back at the screen.
I didn’t.
“You were closer than anyone had been in years.”