Zero Hour

by Megan Erickson

  He covered his head from the glass shards as Wren screamed. The shrill terror in her voice sent a ball of pure fury right up his spine to explode behind his eyes.

  Two men leaped through the window, cutting off Roarke’s access to Wren. One man grabbed her around the waist, and while she fought him, the second man was coming for Roarke, gun at his side.

  A gun. He had to get Wren’s gun.

  He ignored the broken glass digging into his bare feet as his entire world narrowed to the ten feet he had to travel to get her gun on the table by her front door. He took off at a dead sprint, pumping his arms. He heard Wren still screaming, along with the sounds of flesh hitting flesh. The sounds were breaking him apart inside, but he was no use to her, bringing fists to a gun fight. His feet pounded the wooden floor, his grip tenuous as he slipped on his blood, as booted footsteps followed him.

  “Get her out,” the man behind him yelled. “I’ll take care of the boyfriend.”

  “No!” Her panic-filled voice reached his ears. “Run, Roarke! Get out of here!”

  Like hell. He slid into the table, scrambling for the gun. The man in pursuit slammed into him, and they crashed to the floor in a pile of limbs and gun metal. Roarke tore out of his grasp and closed his hand around the grip of the gun. He brought the weapon around to take out the man, but he was too late.

  He was staring down the barrel of a revolver. He threw himself to the side just as a gunshot echoed through the apartment. Pain exploded in his head, and Wren shouted his name on a broken sob one last time before everything went dark.

  * * *

  Wren screamed through the gag they’d stuffed into her mouth. The sounds she was making were ineffective as hell, and she knew in the back of her mind that she should be saving her strength, but they’d fucking shot Roarke.

  She closed her eyes, remembering his blood spraying her wall and his body going limp. That image would haunt her forever. She refused to believe he was dead. He’d spun away at the last minute, so maybe, just maybe, he’d be okay.

  She wouldn’t cry in front of these bastards, and she fought them the whole time they took her down the fire escape and smuggled her into the backseat of their car.

  Her hands were tied at her back, and after she spent the first part of the car ride slamming the front seat with her bare feet, they stopped the car and threw her into the trunk.

  Good, she didn’t want to hear their stupid voices anyway.

  She lay in the dark, taking stock of her body. She had good aches, those from the morning with Roarke, and bad aches, which were where the rough hands of those assholes had bruised her body.

  In the darkness of the trunk, she let herself cry, her tears falling to soak her hair, T-shirt, and gag. They couldn’t see or hear her so she took the time to fall apart before she had to face whatever was next. She assumed they were taking her to Saltner, but she couldn’t understand why. Why didn’t they just kill her? She had a feeling she’d wish she were dead in the very near future. The car ride was even for a while, the hum of the engine steady, so they were probably taking the highway out of DC. Toward the end, the ride got a little bumpy, and she braced herself as she rolled around, crashing into the sides of the trunk.

  She lost all track of time, but it seemed forever before the car rolled to a stop. Car doors slammed shut, and a key turned the lock in the trunk. They opened the hatch, and she blinked up at the two men staring down at her.

  “She looks good all tied up, don’t she?” one of the men grunted.

  Wren narrowed her eyes and said, “Fuck you” but with the gag on, it sounded more like fumf oo.

  “Aw sweetheart,” said one of the men, hauling her out of the trunk. “I’m sure you were just trying to say how hot I make you, right?”

  She decided to stay silent this time. She was pissed and hurt, but she wasn’t stupid.

  “That’s what I thought,” the man muttered.

  She winced at the heat of the blacktop on her bare feet and wished she could shield her eyes from the direct sun. With a hand on her elbow, they marched her toward a large metal building that looked like an old warehouse. It was the only building in sight, tucked into a small forest. There were a couple of parked cars with Maryland license plates that looked like they’d been there awhile, but she couldn’t be sure she was in Maryland.

  She didn’t bother fighting the men as they dragged her through a large metal door into the warehouse. They didn’t stop, continuing to march her over dirty concrete toward voices on the far side of the large room. A few broken windows shed some small patches of light onto an upper loft, but other than that, the only light came from a few caged bulbs hanging from the high ceiling, which made visibility difficult.

  She tried not to think about what she was stepping on—urine, blood, maybe dirty needles. God only knew, but she figured, in a few minutes, the dirty floor would be the least of her worries. The adrenaline was wearing off, and her body was shaking. The only reason her teeth weren’t chattering was because of the gag shoved in her mouth. This whole mission, she’d taken for granted having a team as her backup—because now she was all alone, and she wasn’t sure she was getting out of here alive.

  They rounded a large column and plunked her down into a single chair. As they tied her to it, first her hands behind her back, and her ankles to the legs, the male voice she’d been hearing drew closer. Out of the shadows walked Arden Saltner, a phone pressed to his ear.

  She could make out two men behind him, so five men in all. Those were horrible odds.

  “I have her,” Arden said into the phone as he stopped in front of her. The collar of his white button-down was stained with sweat, and he mopped his brow with a handkerchief he pulled out of the back pocket of his suit pants.

  One of the men behind her spoke up. “She had a man with her. We took him out.”

  Those words were a knife to her gut.

  “Who was the man?” Arden asked his henchman.

  “Some tattooed guy.”

  The voice on the other end of the line was a deep rumble through the receiver. She couldn’t make out what he said, but Arden’s gaze narrowed. Shit, whatever that other guy said hadn’t made Arden happy. Could he get off the phone? She didn’t need him to be angrier.

  Arden dropped the phone to his side and shot a meaty hand out to pull down her gag. He gripped her chin painfully, forcing her head back. “Who were you with at your apartment?”

  “Just some hookup,” she managed to say, despite his grip on her jaw.

  His lip curled. “You fucking liar.” He let go of her chin only to backhand her across the mouth.

  Pain exploded on the right side of her face, and her ears rang. Her mind reeled for a bit, and she forced herself to focus through the agony. It was the taste of blood in her mouth that brought her back to consciousness. If he was willing to hit her over that, she was in deep shit.

  Arden was speaking to the men behind her, furious bursts of sound, something about how they weren’t supposed to kill anyone.

  She heaved in a breath and glared at him while a deep laugh emanated from the phone at Arden’s side. She froze, because she knew that laugh. Every fucking hacker knew that laugh.

  Maximus.

  Only the most infamous, faceless criminal hacker. A constant presence in the online black market and the Dark Web.

  Only a person who could make her disappear forever.

  He used a voice scrambler, but it was always the same—a deep alien-like voice that instantly sent ice cascading down her spine.

  “Arden,” the deep voice said, “I’ve talked to you about this. You can’t break teeth or hands, okay? Don’t damage the collateral before we get to use it.”

  God her jaw ached, but worse was that she couldn’t control her body anymore. She was trembling all over, visibly. She was a scared, beaten woman in a chair surrounded by five men who would surely not care if she died.

  And Roarke…

  She couldn’t think about him now. Stay
alert, stay smart, Wren.

  “So what do we do?” Arden said.

  “I don’t do anything.” Maximus sounded bored. “I paid my money to you, and you failed to deliver the goods. So it’s up to you to get that patch removed, because I’m not spending my resources on it. Figure it out. You have until sunset, which is when I plan to start using the zero-day. Got it?”

  “But how—”

  “You said there’s a crew. Use her to get them to remove it, and we’re solid again, understand? I don’t have to tell you what happens if we’re not solid.”

  So Maximus didn’t seem to know who she was or who was in her crew. Arden swallowed and pulled out his handkerchief again, this time running it over his forehead and the back of his neck. “Yes, I understand.”

  “Good, get to work.”

  Arden glanced at his phone and slipped it into his pocket. He clenched his fists at his sides as he studied her. She hoped he took Maximus’s advice and didn’t damage the goods too badly.

  Arden inhaled deeply. “Since Maximus tried to use the zero-day and he realized it’d been rendered useless, I haven’t been having a good time.”

  Yeah, well, life for her was just jolly now, too. He wasn’t getting sympathy from her.

  “So my team did some digging and found a lot of interesting information. I wish we had more time, but we don’t. Which is why you’re here. Because you’re going to get this fixed, or I’ll cut off each finger one by one and mail it to your parents in Erie. Right, Wren Lee? And maybe Marisol Rosa’s family will get a piece of their daughter as well, too.”

  She wasn’t surprised to hear her and Marisol’s real names, but the sound of them hit her like a smack all the same. How had he figured them out? All she could do now was nod, unsure what to say, and not wanting her big mouth to get her into any more trouble—and pain—than she was in already.

  Arden smiled a sick smile. “Great, glad we agree.” He waved his phone in her face. “You will call your friends, and you will get them to remove the patch.”

  If she called the crew, then Flynn—and maybe Roarke—would have died for nothing. Saltner would win, Maximus would win. And actually, she’d be dead, too. She glanced up at him, knowing timing would be everything—that she had one shot to make this count. “I can remove it.”

  Arden’s eyebrows went up. “You expect me to believe that? You were the valentine, sent to distract my son and enter my home. You met my wife,” he spat at her.

  Survival was the only thing she needed to focus on—that, and keeping the rest of her crew safe. “I can prove it to you if you get me a computer and a Wi-Fi signal,” she said. “I have to call my crew first though.”

  Saltner’s eyes narrowed. “Why can’t you just have them do it?”

  “Because I don’t want this on them.” She had to protect them. If he didn’t know her personal stake in all this, then he didn’t know the other dirt they had on him. “We’re just black hat hackers fucking around. We didn’t know the stakes in this.” If he didn’t know this was personal, maybe he’d let her go and wouldn’t go digging. She’d rather have him think she and her crew just liked to make messes and cause problems.

  He shot her a withering look, and she didn’t know if it was of hate or disbelief. “How long will this take?”

  “What time is it?”

  He answered quickly, before realizing she had no reason to ask the current time. “Noon.”

  She remembered when she’d been in the kitchen, the radio show she liked was ending, so it would have been around 10:30 a.m. So the drive had taken a little over an hour.

  She needed to leave that much time. “It’ll take maybe an hour and a half.”

  He looked like he didn’t believe her, but the fear caused by Maximus’s threat was visible in every line of his body.

  After cutting her hands loose, he handed her the phone and ordered someone to bring her a laptop and a hot spot for Wi-Fi.

  She stared at the phone, weighing who to call, who would keep a level head, and who would understand her coded words. Finally deciding, she typed in the number and pressed SEND.

  And she hoped like hell it would work.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  He couldn’t be gone. He didn’t believe in an afterlife so, if he was able to think, then he must somehow be alive. He tried to open his eyes, but they wouldn’t budge. There was a bright light just beyond his eyelids though, and something was jostling the side of his face, poking and prodding.

  Oh fuck, maybe there was an afterlife.

  The pain didn’t register right away, but when it did, it slammed into him like a Mack truck. His head wasn’t intact, there was no way. Maybe half of it was here, in the afterlife, and the other half was still lying on the floor of Wren’s apartment.

  Wren. He tried to part his lips to say her name, but they were stuck together, so he only made an rrr sound. A voice trickled through the agony. “Jesus, can someone wipe his face? His lips are stuck together with blood.”

  That was…that was Marisol?

  Something soft wiped his lips, and fingers slipped through his hair. “Roarke, I’m going to fucking murder you when you wake up.”

  Erick. So if he planned to murder him then…“’live?” he mumbled.

  The movement on the side of his face stopped. Then Marisol spoke again. “What was that?”

  “Am I ’live?” he managed.

  Something brushed his face, and a hand touched his forehead. “Yes, sweetheart.” Marisol’s voice no longer held that mocking tone. “You’re alive, thank God, or I’d be in jail again.”

  He tried to laugh, but it didn’t work. His chest was tight, and even the slightest movement of his lips caused a piercing pain.

  “Wren,” he said again, clearer this time.

  “We’re trying to find her.” Erick didn’t sound okay, not at all. Roarke fumbled with his hand, searching for his friend, and blinked his eyes open. “You never hung up your phone so Marisol heard everything. We came as fast as we could, but we only found you.”

  “In a pool of blood, and that wasn’t fucking cool!” Marisol hollered.

  Ah God, the yelling. He couldn’t handle the yelling. “Well, I’m alive,” he mumbled.

  Erick was leaning over him, his gaze studying the side of his face. The side where Roarke had been shot. Roarke tried to lift a hand to touch the wound, but someone smacked him. “I’m almost done stitching you up. Just sit still.”

  Marisol? “You’re stitching me up?” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She was hunched over, brow furrowed.

  “Yeah, my brother is a nurse. Taught me all kinds of shit.”

  “Why don’t I feel the stitches?”

  “Local anesthetic.”

  “You put a needle in me?” He tried to sit up, but Erick placed a firm hand on his chest.

  “Shut up, you big baby,” Marisol said, her tone once again mocking, which he preferred. Emotional, concerned Marisol freaked him out. “Just a scratch. You must have done some crazy Matrix bullet-avoiding moves.”

  He’d ducked. That’s it. Roarke met Erick’s eyes. “Where’s Wren?”

  Erick’s expression cracked, just for a second, before he tightened it up. “We don’t know.”

  Marisol taped a gauze pad over the stitches. “Done.”

  Erick helped him up, and while the room spun, Roarke closed his eyes and gritted through the pain.

  With Erick’s help, they shuffled over to a computer, where Dade and Jock were hard at work.

  “Any leads?” Roarke asked. “Goddamn anything?” His pulse beat loudly in his head, and he could have sworn his skull had been ripped off. He didn’t think this was normal or healthy. Was it supposed to feel like his head was splitting?

  “Because of Marisol, we know it’s Arden’s men,” Dade said.

  “How did they link the women to the vulnerability patch?” Roarke asked.

  Jock clicked some keys, pulling up phone records and text messages. “The man Wren
kicked in the balls at the end of the night? He doesn’t like rejection. Put a bug in Darren’s ear about her after the events of the night before didn’t add up. Then they dug into the catering company’s employees. Swore Marisol’s identity was airtight, but they must have found a weakness. At this point, they think she’s just an ex-con causing trouble.”

  “That’s not totally a lie,” Marisol mumbled.

  “Fuck,” Roarke said. “So at this point, they think it’s just Marisol and Wren causing problems?”

  “Far as I know,” Jock said, his fingers once again attacking the keyboard.

  “They have no reason to kill her. Yet,” Dade said. “They took her for a reason, probably to make us rescind the zero-day patch.”

  Roarke sucked in a breath. “So whoever bought it from him is pissed…”

  “And is now holding it over his head.” Dade shrugged. “Just a guess.”

  A million images of Wren raced through Roarke’s mind. What were they doing to her? Was she okay? If they touched her…

  He bent at the waist, gripping his head, wishing he’d made it to that gun faster, that he’d been more careful, that he hadn’t gone to her apartment.

  That he’d never let her get involved in the first place. His one worst nightmare was coming true, and he was powerless to stop it.

  He slowly rose and when he stared at his crew, they were all watching him. He was the leader after all, the one who’d gotten them all involved in this. The pain was receding, or maybe his body didn’t have the capacity to handle his all-consuming anger and rage at the same time as the pain. “I’ll kill him.”

  Dade raised his eyebrows, and Erick stepped in front of him, blocking his vision. “Roarke. Stop. You always said—”

  “I don’t give a fuck what I always said.” Roarke squared his shoulders. “Fuck the police, the law, whatever. Eye for an eye. I will take him apart.”

  Marisol was deathly silent, and Dade whistled long and low, leaning back in his desk chair.

  Jock was watching Roarke, his normally impassive expression slightly pensive. “I got some leads on property Saltner owns, so—”