by Brynn Kelly
“Okay,” Samira wheezed.
“Speak up, Ms. Desta. I can’t hear you.” He flicked a finger, and Fitz aimed his gun at Holly, cradling it in both his hands.
“I...I...” She jabbed her pointer finger toward the laptop on the table. “On there,” she gasped. “Everything.”
Her eyes rolled back. She blinked hard and caught sight of the clock. Two minutes left.
Hyland strolled to the laptop, its screen black. Hurry up. He tapped a key. “The password,” he said, “before I give instructions to shoot the trump card.”
Holly’s wide eyes locked on Samira. Samira went to speak but her lungs were sucked hollow. Hyland walked up to her, looking down from his towering height. Then he crouched, eye to eye, and slapped her hard, across her injured cheek.
She gasped, but no air made it in.
You’re not going to die... You can let go of that fear.
Sure fucking feels like it, Jamie.
The room darkened. Let go of the fear. Let go of the effort. Don’t fight your body, don’t instruct it, don’t force it to do anything. Just relax and sit back and watch.
She closed her eyes, stopped trying to inhale, imagined Jamie’s accent rolling over her, his hand on her chest and her belly. The room dived but slowly her lungs inflated. A whoopee cushion finding its normal state. She exhaled again, and then relaxed. After a few breaths she opened her eyes. Jamie.
Forget denial. This time she was skipping straight to anger.
“You don’t own me,” she said, her voice cracking.
“Right now, I think I very much do.”
“No.” She pointed to the laptop. “It’s the password. You don’t own me. Lowercase, no spaces, no apostrophe.”
He studied her a second. Hurry the fuck up. Then he ambled back to the table, one hand in his pocket, and tilted the screen. Samira stopped breathing—not with a panic attack, this time. The clock was seconds from running out.
He typed the password, one-fingered, searching for the letters like he was unfamiliar with the layout of a keyboard, and pressed Enter.
“Nothing’s happening,” he said, after half a minute. “Just a blank screen with an egg timer.”
“Oh, there’s plenty happening,” she said, her voice sounding like it was coming from someone else. “It’ll take a while to process.”
“How long?”
“That depends how many files you have on your Gold Linings server.”
He stared at her. “What are you talking about?”
“I broke into your server.”
He scoffed, giving his head a quick shake. “There’s nothing you could have found on those servers that would...” He laughed, fleeting and harsh. “Oh man, that’s good. That’s really good. That’s what you think you have on me? Those servers...it’s only as much data as my lowliest staff member has access to. Wow, for a minute there, you actually had me worried.”
Oh God, was there truly nothing there?
No one put insignificant data behind three-level security. She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t think you understand.” She damn well hoped he didn’t. “I’m not talking just about your cloud server but the trésor you hide on there.”
For a microsecond his smile wavered. “That’s impenetrable.”
“Nothing’s impenetrable, Senator. You see, Charlotte gave me the password before your goons captured her. That was your first level of security. You may have noticed your cell phone is missing?”
He blinked. Fitz swore.
“That’s your second.”
“But you—” He looked at the laptop, his forehead wrinkling. “Fuck.”
“The second you entered that password, the computer scanned your face, and your files began copying directly from Gold Linings onto twenty newly formed websites—hylandhacks.com, thedirtonhyland.net, teflontristan.co...”
Face reddening, he picked up the laptop and bent the screen back until it snapped. He twisted it into two pieces and smashed his fist onto the keyboard. She felt detached, floating over the scene. She’d won but this was no victory. Charlotte’s body, crumpled on a concrete floor. Latif’s body, a mess of blood. Rafe. The crinkles at the corners of Jamie’s eyes.
A tear rolled down her cheek. She blinked her eyes clear. “Destroying the computer will make no difference. There was nothing at all on it.” She felt deflated but...calm. In shock, probably. “Until you entered that password I had nothing on you at all. I don’t even know what’s in that folder but your level of security told me it was precious to you. It was just an educated guess but I’m thinking I guessed right.”
The senator turned to Fitz, who seemed to have shrunk, his face pale and hard. “Find those websites and shut them down.”
“It’s too late for that, Senator,” she said. “Do you know how many social-media followers your daughter has?”
“What the fuck are you talking about now?” His neck seemed to have thickened, purple veins ready to burst.
“Not only did you just hack into your own vault by looking at that webcam, but you triggered a series of scheduled posts to go up on your daughter’s social-media accounts directing her followers to my new websites, where they can download every document at their leisure. And she is on pretty much every medium there is. How many million followers? Oh and she’s just sent private messages to every major media outlet in America and the UK.”
“You’re lying.”
“You think? Turn on that TV—any international news channel. Let’s see how fast news travels.”
Hyland stared at her, his jaw tight. He turned to his bodyguard and gave a brusque nod. The guy picked up the remote and clicked. The BBC flickered up. A newscaster. A breaking-news ticker: Massive hack of Senator Tristan Hyland. More to come.
“...task has barely begun of sifting through thousands of files but Laura Hyland is claiming on social media that they contain damning evidence that the senator was involved in the deadly Los Angeles atta—”
“Turn it off,” Hyland yelled.
The guard flinched and hit the channel button by mistake—switching to footage of Hyland leaving the hotel in his tuxedo, with a voice-over in an American accent: “...including a document that apparently orders the death of a whistle-blower who was killed in Somalia in what was staged to be—”
Hyland strode up to the guard, snatched the remote and hit a red button. The room fell silent. A shout came from the corridor outside. Hyland pinned his gaze on Samira. With a scream of rage, he threw the remote at the wall over her head. It smashed and bounced off. She balled up.
No, this was not a victory. Not without Jamie. She hadn’t truly expected this moment to come—and she hadn’t expected it to carry such a price. She looked up. Holly’s eyes were dry but still wide. “I’m sorry,” Samira mouthed, unable to make the words come. Holly had lost her partner, her child’s father.
“You can’t win this,” Hyland said, his teeth clenched. “I’ll find a way out. I always do.” He turned to the goons. “Kill her,” he said, in a low voice. “Kill both of them.”
“Allow me,” Laura’s bodyguard said, stepping in front of Holly. He raised his gun.
“No,” Fitz said, striding across the room and shoving him out of the way. “They’re mine. This one first.” He nodded toward Holly. “So the other bitch gets to see what’s coming.”
Outside the door, something banged. Holly yelled into her gag, thrashing, the chair hopping on the carpet. Fitz cocked his gun.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
JAMIE WAS DEAD. Latif was dead. Charlotte, Rafe. But Holly, and her baby...
No time to think. No options to assess. Nothing to weigh up. Enough people had died.
Samira launched up and dived at Holly, hazily aware of action around her—the door flying open and banging against the wall, Laura’s bodyguard lunging at Fitz, Fitz flying si
deways. A hiss and a hollow smack and Samira careered into Holly like something had picked her up and thrown her across the room. She sprawled, her head bouncing on the carpet as the chair thumped them sideways. Her vision filled with the scarlet hue of fresh blood.
Not blood—Holly’s dress, hooked over Samira’s head. Fitz had missed. But there’d been some explosion, some force had lifted her.
Facedown, tangled, she braced for another gunshot. There were shouts, feet thudding—everything muffled in her blown hearing. That shot had not been silent.
A burn, just above her hip. A hot tap at first, then searing pain. She grabbed the spot, twisting, ripping Holly’s dress from her face. Her hand found warm liquid, came away coated with...blood. Underneath her, Holly grunted and bucked like she was trying to throw Samira off. Samira went to roll away but her muscles refused to work. The pain...
The room writhed with people—diving, shouting, brawling. Where had they come from? Hyland barked orders that might as well have been in another language. Holly stood in the doorway, hands on hips. No, not Holly—obviously. It was Laura, dressed identically. With a yell that came out a whimper, Samira flopped over and found a wall. A big man in a suit staggered in front of Holly, his back to her and Samira. Samira kicked out weakly, pain bursting through her gut. He caught her leg and then her gaze. Rafe. It was Rafe. It couldn’t be. He let go, turned back.
Samira lurched her head up, pain and heat filling her belly. If Rafe was here...
Laura’s bodyguard had Hyland’s goon in a headlock. Another guy—Laura’s other security detail—aimed a gun at the Peugeot driver, who slowly put her hands up, still seated, looking baffled.
Jamie. Jamie was wrestling Fitz. Samira scrambled to her feet, clutching her side. He slammed a fist into Fitz’s nose with a squelchy crack. In a flash of blurry movements, he wrenched Fitz’s arms back, securing him from behind. Laura’s bodyguard threw Hyland’s goon to the ground and stepped back, aiming a gun at the guy’s chest.
“Heads up,” Laura’s bodyguard shouted. With his free hand, he tossed something to Rafe—a gun, taken from Hyland’s goon. Rafe caught it and turned it on Fitz.
“I got him, Doc,” Rafe said, scooting to a corner where he could take in everyone.
The room stilled but for multiple pairs of heaving lungs. Adrenaline scented the air, metallic and sharp. Or was that blood? Jamie threw Fitz into the corner Samira had been cowering in minutes ago, stepped back and leveled the gun with the silencer.
The people in the room had split in two. On Samira’s side, by the open door, Rafe, Jamie, Holly, Laura and her two bodyguards. Four guns raised. On the other, Fitz and the driver, Hyland’s guard and Hyland, looking so fiery he could well begin to smolder. All unarmed.
Rafe sidled over to Holly. “Sorry, ma chérie, this may hurt.”
Holly muttered. Rafe pulled the tape from her mouth. She yelped.
Samira’s legs gave way and she slumped against the wall and slid to the ground.
“Doc, take care of Samira,” Rafe said. “We got this.”
Jamie’s gaze snapped to Samira, his eyes creased. He scanned her body, down and up, and zeroed in on her side. He crossed the room in two strides and knelt before her.
“You got shot?”
She touched the wrinkles beside his eyes. “I love those.” Her finger juddered over them. Speed bumps. “They said you were dead.”
He gently pulled her hand from the wound. He twisted to glance at Laura’s bodyguard, the one who’d brought Holly in. “You were supposed to protect her.”
What?
“And Holly,” Rafe said, darkly.
“Stand down, Rafe,” Holly said. “I knew what I was getting into. Trojan horse, remember?”
Laura’s bodyguard pulled a phone from his pocket and handed it to his colleague. “Call an ambulance.” He glanced at Rafe. “And you were supposed to get here earlier.”
“We got a little held up in the hallway, dealing with your colleagues.”
The bodyguard scanned the four stunned faces on the other side of the room. “Not my colleagues anymore.”
Fitz spit, the phlegm landing on the bodyguard’s arm. “You know what happens to traitors in this operation.”
The bodyguard shook his head. “You’re a traitor to far more than this cluster fuck of a company—ever since you decided to put your loyalty to him above everything else.” He jerked his head at Hyland. “You still gonna be his bitch in prison?” He pulled a pocketknife from his suit and handed it to Rafe.
As Rafe freed Holly, Hyland’s voice cut through the rest, dark and disbelieving. “Laura? Are you involved in this?”
Laura crossed her arms. “I have been for a long time. I’m over living this lie, Pops. I’m over standing beside you, playing the good daughter while you kill and terrorize and blackmail and I don’t even know what else. It’s finished. I’m out.”
“But how—?” Samira flinched as Jamie pressed on her wound.
“Laura was the mystery person in the game,” he said, quietly. “She gave us the log-on, the password.”
“You naive, selfish piece of shit,” the senator spit at Laura, his face beetroot. “You want to destroy your own father, your future, your world?”
Laura’s eyes glassed over. “My world? I don’t even know what that is. All I’ve ever done is play a role for the cameras. Now maybe I can write the real memoir of my life, not this fiction you forced on me.”
“I give you everything and you give me this?”
“You only ever wanted to keep me locked up. Your Rapunzel in a tower. But...” She shook her head, resetting. “This isn’t about me. It stopped being about me when Latif discovered your role in the LA attacks.”
Hyland advanced on Laura. “If you’re talking about the conspiracy theory dreamed up by that idiot—” Her bodyguard stepped between them. Hyland looked ready to strike him.
“Oh my God,” Samira whispered to Jamie. “Latif and Charlotte’s source in Denniston. It was Laura.”
For the first time, Laura met Samira’s gaze. “Samira. I’m so sorry for the grief I caused you. I thought I could protect Latif. He was such a good man.”
“You knew his favorite food.”
“We became friends when he was working at Denniston, when my father was still calling the shots there, training me up to one day take over—before it all went to the dogs, before I found out what was really going on. I grew to trust him, and there have been so few people in my life I’ve been able to trust.” She glanced at her bodyguard, who gave a slight, encouraging smile. “Latif had a contact in military intelligence who put him in touch with Tess Newell. We gathered enough evidence to bring down Denniston and most of those involved in the conspiracy but my father slipped from the net. He’d officially sold the company by then, of course. So my involvement had to remain a carefully guarded secret while I kept digging.”
“You little bitch—”
“Shut the fuck up.” Laura’s bodyguard closed in on Hyland, glowering.
“I’m watched 24/7,” Laura continued, lightly touching the bodyguard’s arm. He halted, still glaring at Hyland. “My computer is monitored, my phone calls, everything. I once tried to sail around the world to get some freedom but my father found a way to control even that. So Latif worked out a way we could correspond in secret, even after his snooping was detected and the two of you had to go into hiding.”
“The game,” Samira said. “You communicated through the game. You were Erebus.”
Laura’s red lips widened into a sad smile. “The god of shadows. Latif named my avatar.”
“Why didn’t he tell me all this?”
The smile dropped. “He didn’t want you to worry.”
Samira closed her eyes tightly, for a second. Her side burned but the pain seemed distant, like it was happening to someone else. The entire scene se
emed to be happening in another dimension.
“Right before Latif died, he introduced me to Charlotte,” Laura continued. “He knew if he didn’t...survive, she’d help me track down what we needed. But in the end what we needed was you.”
Samira gulped. Latif had trusted Laura and Charlotte but not her. He hadn’t thought she could handle it. And maybe she couldn’t have, back then. Hell, two hours ago she’d have thought herself incapable of any of this.
“I finally found out where the evidence was kept but Charlotte didn’t have the skills to hack in,” Laura continued. “We needed you. We just didn’t know how to contact you. So she wrote the postcard and I mailed it from Paris. But apparently it got intercepted.” She looked at Jamie. “Some of this I’ve only managed to put together tonight... And then of course Charlotte disappeared and my father bullied his way into a trip to the UK. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why.”
Hyland advanced on Laura. “Last warning—keep back,” her bodyguard said, dark eyes glittering.
“I pay your wages,” Hyland hissed. “I hired you.”
“You pay me to protect your daughter and that’s what I’m doing. It’s what I’ve always done. You’ve bullied and used her long enough.”
“You fucking trait—”
“Yes, Pops. You put people on my detail who are loyal to you but not everyone remains that way, not after they discover what you’ve done.”
“You’ll lose everything, you stupid little girl.”
Laura’s bodyguard met her eye. She held the gaze, like she was downloading strength from him. “Not everything,” she said.