by Elise Faber
Not now.
Instead, I nodded. “She told me earlier that we’d talk later.”
Laila’s expression filled with determination. “We need to get a lock on her movements ASAP. Figure out what she discovered.”
“I know.”
Hannah appeared behind us. “I agree.”
Ignoring them as they hashed out which agent was going to do what, I moved toward the desk, toward the scattering of papers and quickly snapped shots of the mess, just in case we needed them later. Then I began picking up file folders and printouts and began sorting through what Olive had been working on.
Laila helped while Hannah coordinated.
Then Dan found us and began helping, too.
Ava and Ryker had been ordered to scour the area surrounding the base for any sightings of her—hacking into the security systems of nearby gas stations, bus stops, train stations, airports and seeing if any cameras caught her, then set up backdoors into their systems that would alert us if Olive was moved. Hannah also mobilized Jesse and Lily to help track down Olive’s pin and keycard so we could trace her movements from the day.
Jack, since he was our resident tech guy—he’d helped set up the security protocols that protected KTS’s internal servers—had been given Olive’s laptop and told to work on it and report back if he’d been able to recover anything.
“Got it,” he said, taking it from Hannah. “I’ll be in my lab if you need me.”
Hannah nodded. “Roger that.”
And I was left with . . . signs of a struggle, no blood—which made me only mildly less worried because a person could do a lot of damage without spilling blood—and aside from those two facts, I had nothing.
I knew Olive wouldn’t disappear without telling me, without at the very least, telling someone or leaving a note.
She wasn’t the type to run off half-cocked.
She was smart and deliberate, like I needed to be.
I blew out a breath and refocused.
Once Jack had left, Hannah came over and joined us to help stack the papers. “Let’s bring these to the conference room,” she suggested. “We’ll have room to spread out and sort through everything.”
Since that was logical, and I really needed logical right now, I just nodded, picked up what I could carry, letting the others get the rest, and hauled ass to the conference room we’d been working in. One movement of my arm shoved the materials we’d been studying earlier to the side (and most of them onto the floor, though I wasn’t worried about that in the least). My next was to set the papers down, fingers and mind flying through them as I tried to sort them into some sort of order. It took Laila coming in on one side, Hannah on the other for them to make any sense, and then once we’d realized what she’d had—security reports from Tom—the process moved quickly. The files fell into proper stacks.
“Go talk to Tom,” Laila ordered Dan, who’d joined in on the sorting.
He nodded, disappeared out of the room, and the rest of us kept working. Sorting the papers by date, scouring them all for anything. Anything.
And then I saw it.
The word is circled in red ink.
Just is.
“What the fuck?” I murmured.
“What?” Laila asked.
I showed her and Hannah, then flipped back through the rest of the papers in front of me. Nothing else was circled, and the word is appeared plenty of times throughout the reports. “See if you can find page six in all these reports,” I said, seeing the number on the bottom right.
She and Hannah didn’t ask questions, just tore through the files and found any page six they could get their hands on. We shoved the others back, stacked those page sixes in front of us, searching for something that made sense. They all had the is circled, and further that, even though the is was found on different parts of the page, they were all part of the same sentence.
“They’re all identical,” I muttered, trying to figure out what in the ever-loving fuck Olive had been looking for.
“The same sentence,” Laila agreed, her finger running over the page as she read.
I followed suit, skimming all of them, looking for anything other than the word is circled in the sentence, All measures were executed and processed as is standard. But that’s all it was. One hundred and fifty-two page sixes, all with is circled, all surrounded by that same sentence, and not one other fucking clue on any of the papers.
There was a knock, and since it came at the point in this process when I was ready to tear my hair out, I shoved back from the table and went to the window, just barely resisting the urge to punch the fucking glass until I hurt, until I felt something other than this fucking panic that was twisting my insides into knots. I wanted to feel anything other than scared. I wanted to do something besides staring at goddamned papers. I wanted to make sure Olive was safe.
And I wanted to tell her that I loved her.
Because I hadn’t had the chance yet.
Because I’d planned to tell her on the fucking date I hadn’t yet taken her on, the one I’d plotted and arranged down to the minute, the one I’d promised myself would be so special and perfect that she wouldn’t be able to tell me anything except she loved me right back.
But now, I was fucking terrified that I wouldn’t get the chance to take her on that date, to tell her that I loved every fucking inch of her.
“Linc.”
Hannah put her hand on my back.
I resisted the urge to shake it off, knew that was just because I was feeling frustrated and worried and—God, those two words couldn’t even begin to encapsulate exactly what I was feeling. They were too small. They were fucking shadows of the emotions tearing through my insides.
“Yeah?” I asked, turning slowly from the glass. It was too dark to see outside, and anyway, there wasn’t anything to see—anyone who was on base was helping with the effort to locate Olive.
“You need to hear this,” she said, and I followed her back to the table.
Tom had a file in hand.
He set it on the table. “She came just a few minutes before my dinner”—which meant just before 6:30, since Tom ate in the mess at that time every day like clockwork—“asked me if I had a paper copy of my security report. I did and gave it to her.”
“What’s that?” Laila asked.
“A copy of what I gave her.” He shrugged. “I didn’t want it to get lost”—Tom also didn’t put a lot of faith in computers—“so I made an extra copy. She took the original.” He glanced toward Linc. “Now she’s gone, and I know it’s got to be important.”
Understanding finally dawning, I reached for the file.
“Be careful with it,” Tom said. “I—that’s my last one.”
I nodded, flipped the pages carefully, stopping when I reached the sixth. Hannah and Laila once again sandwiched me, eyes scouring the page until—
“There!” Laila said, pointing at the sentence.
I read . . . and felt disappointment flood through me. It was the same. No is circled, of course, but the same sentence.
All measures were executed and processed as is standard.
“What does this mean, Pop?” I whispered. “What did you find?”
“What are you looking at?” Dan asked, bending over the table. I pointed. He frowned. “Wait.” He straightened, began going through the papers again. “I thought I saw—yeah, here.” He held up a page. “You guys missed one.”
Laila snagged it, laid it next to Tom’s report.
“Find the other,” she ordered, and we scoured the stacks until we found the third page six that was from that date.
Tom stepped forward. “That’s my copy.” He tapped the upper left corner. “I print all of them on watermarked paper.”
“Why?” Dan asked.
“I—”
“It doesn’t matter,” I snapped. “Look.”
Because I finally got it.
The copy Tom had just brought and the copy he’d given Olive earlie
r had watermarks. The third did not—which made sense because we’d printed these off and not Tom. What didn’t make sense?
The fact that the copy we’d printed had no is.
“Find the rest of it,” Hannah ordered.
We dove through the pages, Tom muttering something about organization, but we were beyond that by now. We knew we were close to the answer . . .
Then we had all the pages.
We arranged them in order, read them line by line, comparing them with the watermarked reports.
And still the only difference was the is.
“Fuck,” I hissed, sinking into a chair, my head in my hands, my mind spinning, knowing we were missing something and so fucking frustrated that we couldn’t figure out what it was.
Tom sighed, started lining the pages up in proper order. “I’ll kill the bastard who fucked with my report. I work hard on making every sentence . . .”
He kept talking.
I stopped listening.
Because my eyes had gone to Hannah’s.
“Fucked with the report?” she mouthed.
And suddenly, what Olive had been looking for finally became clear.
Chapter Seventeen
Unknown location
Unknown hrs
Olive
I awoke slowly, carefully taking stock of my body—my head throbbed, and my knee felt like it had been twisted the wrong way, but no other injuries were apparent in my prone position.
That prone position was with my hands bound in front of me and in some sort of moving vehicle.
I wasn’t in a trunk—the material beneath me was too soft for that, but I also didn’t think I was riding high in the back of a limo. Nope, it felt more like the back seat of a sedan, especially as I became more aware of my surroundings and my body and felt the buckle of a seat belt dig into my hip.
Ignoring that—because I couldn’t risk moving and giving away any advantage of my being awake—I focused on the swaying of the car (gentle) and the noises outside (loud, as in we were moving fast).
Likely, I was on a highway.
The question was whether it was in a busy area where I might be able to evade whoever had kidnapped me from the base (and I had a fucking good suspicion of whom that might be) long enough to have a chance of finding a phone and calling in the big guns, or if it was in the middle of nowhere, and I needed to find a place to hide long enough for base to find my location via my tracker.
But . . . shouldn’t they have found me already?
Hadn’t anyone noticed I was missing at all?
I sure as hell hoped so, otherwise, my demise might be just around the corner.
“I know you’re awake.”
I stopped breathing.
Or not so much that, as I kept it slow and steady, even when another voice came closer and shoved hard at my injured side. Which fucking hurt. Just because the stitches were out and my namesake bandage was the shit at healing, didn’t mean the area loved being poked and prodded.
But I bit back my cry of pain, held perfectly still.
“She’s still out,” the man who’d poked me said, and I felt the air shift as he sat back into the passenger’s seat.
“I don’t get why you grabbed her,” the driver said. “You would have been better off killing her and then getting the fuck out.”
“She knew,” the passenger said. “She knew what I’d done. I needed to make sure she hadn’t told anyone.”
“What difference did it make?” the driver ask. “You were smoke anyway. She’s a liability and—”
“She’s mine,” the passenger growled. “She was never supposed to get hurt in the first place. That bomb wasn’t intended for her, and you know it. If you’d done your job correctly, she wouldn’t have gotten hurt, and then I—” He broke off.
The driver chuckled. “You what? Would have had her?” He laughed harder. “Bro, she’s never going to be interested in you. That’s not how Ms. Prim and Proper rolls. You’re dirty, and she avoids the mud like it would give her the plague.”
“She likes me,” the passenger muttered.
“She likes everyone.”
“I could have convinced her to come along. To help us.”
“You could have?” A moment passed. “No, dumbass, you couldn’t ever have convinced her to join our cause. Ms. Prim and Proper doesn’t have a traitorous bone in her body, and she’s so in love with the agency that she wouldn’t ever betray them.”
That was true.
My parents had died when I was a child, leaving just my grandmother to raise me. Still, it wasn’t the sad story it might seem. Yes, I’d lost my parents far too early, but my grandma had been wonderful. I’d felt loved and safe, and I’d never felt like I was missing out on anything. But it had just been the two of us for as long as I could remember. So when she had died, I hadn’t had anyone.
When I was recruited, straight out of medical school, I’d had high test scores, a decent amount of research under my belt, and plenty of letters of recommendation. With my grandmother gone, I hadn’t hesitated to take the offer, to sell the house I’d grown up in.
My life had been pathetically empty.
So, no, it hadn’t taken long for KTS to become my family, and the driver was right, I would never, ever betray them.
“I could,” the passenger said moodily. “I love her.”
Biting back a what the ever-loving fuck (because how could a man love me without me knowing?) I slit my eyes, carefully trying to see without giving anything away, but outside the car, night had fallen, so I couldn’t get a clear view.
Although, something I could see was there were no lights around, telling me that we weren’t anywhere near civilization. Fuck. So running off and finding a phone nearby was off the table, and hiding until someone hopefully located me and sent in the cavalry to save the day was my plan.
Let it be noted that I didn’t like this plan.
Tough shit, Ollie. Or maybe, suck it up, buttercup was just as effective. Either way, I kept my eyes barely open as I searched for anything that might be used as a weapon, and not finding any, I continued to take stock. I was just in my sweats and hoodie, but I had sneakers on. They, unfortunately, weren’t my boots with the hidden blade in the sole, so I wouldn’t be able to use the knife to cut my hands free.
But there were plenty of techniques to snap the plastic restraints, and I’d been taught each and every one. If I could get far enough away, I could get my hands loose. My legs weren’t bound, so that was a plus, though my knee was throbbing in a way that told me running would make me very unhappy in the morning.
Still, I’d take an angry knee and being alive to the alternative.
“You didn’t have a chance in hell in convincing her to join the Society, and you know it.” The driver sighed. “Now, I’m going to have to shoulder your shit and clean up your fucking mess.”
“You’re not killing her,” the passenger said.
“Then you are,” the driver retorted. “But either way, this bitch isn’t going back with us. You put the bullet in her head, or I do.”
“That’s not fucking happening!” the passenger shouted. “She’s coming with me. They promised she would come with me.”
“Hey! Fuck off!”
I opened my eyes fully to see the passenger, his body and face covered in shadows, reach for the steering wheel. The men scuffled, cursing and yelling, and then the passenger got his hands on the wheel. The car swerved, tires squealing on the pavement, and I dug my toes into the door, pressed my back into the seat so I didn’t fly onto the floor as it screeched to a halt.
“Fucking asshole!” The driver shifted and shoved the passenger back and—
Bang.
One gunshot, and the passenger slumped into the seat.
One more, and I knew he was gone, along with us having any hope of learning what the Society was and how many of KTS’s protected secrets he’d given them.
Then the driver turned toward me, and when I saw hi
s face, it confirmed what I’d already suspected.
Daniel lifted the gun.
I kept my eyes open now, didn’t bother to hide, but I did try to make myself as small of a target as possible.
His finger curled back, and now I shut my eyes, waited for the searing agony of a bullet tearing through my skin—
Honk!
The blare of a horn.
The shriek of brakes.
Then both were drowned out by a deafening crunch.
I heard the gun go off as my body was thrown forward, colliding with the seats in front of me, the center console crashing against my ribs, sending pain lancing through my torso. I bit back my cry of pain, forced my body to stay limp and rolled with the impact, lying still for one moment to suck in air.
Then I slit open my eyes, blinked against the bright lights shining through the window, and reached for the door handle.
It didn’t budge.
I wriggled to my knees, yanked the handle, once, twice more. Then I managed to wedge it open, to start to squeeze my way out.
“I-I—let me help.”
I looked up, saw a young teenage boy with blood dripping down his temple reach for the door. He pulled it back enough for me to slip free.
“If your vehicle is drivable,” I said, “get in it, and get the hell out of here.”
“I’m—I’m so sorry,” he said. “It’s dark, and your l-lights were off. The car was in the m-middle of the road”—he waved a hand, the bright lights of his SUV showing that Daniel indeed hadn’t bothered to turn his on, and that the tussle over the steering wheel had drawn the sedan to a halt in the middle of the dark, secluded road—“I didn’t see you. I—I—”
I grabbed the boy’s hands in both of my bound ones. “It’s not your fault,” I said. “But you need to go.”
He blinked, eyes going to my wrists then back to mine. “You’re tied up.”
I nodded, dropped his hands, and nudged him toward his car. “Honey, you need to get out of here.”
The kid stared at me, mouth agape. “But you’re bleeding.”
“So are you.”
He lifted his fingers to his temple, going pale when he saw the blood, wavering on his feet.
