Page 26 of The Wrecked One

Mason held out his hand, then slowly retracted the offer, remembering I wasn’t ready to be touched by the opposite sex yet. How long would that last? But now wasn’t the time to think about how that Interpol agent had threatened to rape me, all as an evil ploy to have Oliver kill an innocent man. Well, all to break us.

Finally on my feet, Sydney cut around the cabin to stand alongside Mason and face me.

“Bloody hell,” Gwen remarked a second later, her English accent sliding through her panic. “Someone, somehow, just hacked my firewalls and my server and created a chat box in incognito mode. They’re typing now, but it’s encrypted.”

“What are you talking about?” Mason asked as we all keyed in on Gwen.

“It’s this old-school hacking trick that—” She cut herself off. “Ah shit, no time to explain how they’re doing this, but I just decrypted the message. It’s a link to something. A video.”

“Play it,” Sydney prompted, and Gwen shifted her screen to the side so we could all see.

A montage of video footage of our entire team was on screen. Recordings from inside that building where Falcon, all masked, had stormed in to rescue us. Including the moments before where Oliver had killed that man.

There was aerial footage depicting Falcon’s SUVs leaving that building for the airport in Thailand. More images of all of us leaving this airport for the hospital earlier and all maskless.

“Another message.” Gwen clicked it open and began swiping through images. “They hacked the hospital’s surveillance cameras to grab our photos. They have IDs on every one of us. Our real freaking names. Well, only Oliver’s alias still, since that’s what anyone would find connected to him online with a search, but . . .”

“They know who we are,” Sydney clarified, as if still working through the shock of it all. I doubted the shock wore off, but she went ahead and made a call, presumably to alert Carter or Gray of the situation.

“This was a trap.” My knees went weak, but I didn’t fall. “The Sorens used us as bait to draw out our whole team.”

“Those Interpol agents probably had no idea they’d be martyred just to get to us,” Gwen said. “That’s why I could track you all to that location quickly, but it wasn’t easy enough I’d spot it as a trap.”

“They wanted us together so they can?—”

“Kill us,” Gwen finished Mason’s line of thought after opening another message. “Oh, shit. It’s the schematics to our jet. They’re going to take us down from the sky when we take off, aren’t they?”

Make it look like an accident. That’s their MO. “Oliver’s out there all alone, and he has no idea about any of this.”

“Can you type back to this hacker? See who they are and why they’re doing this? How do we know this isn’t another trap?” Mason asked her as Sydney told us the team was coming back to the airport.

I set my hand to my stomach, tears sliding down my cheeks again as I tried to catch my breath. Eyeing the door, I contemplated making a run for it. I wouldn’t leave Singapore with Oliver somewhere out there—even if he’d left me first.

“I’ll try.” Gwen quickly worked her fingers over the keys, her words changing to scrambled symbols just before she hit send.

Bubbles popped up in response, as if this other hacker was typing.

“They answered.” Gwen decrypted the message and read their line out loud: “I’m on your side. Deep under on theirs. Your only choice is to hide. They won’t stop coming for you until you’re all dead.” The transmission ended, and her screen went black. She began angrily stabbing at her keys. “How the hell . . .?” She blinked rapidly. “What do we do now?”

“Getting off this jet in case they’ve managed to get a bomb on here would be a good start.” Mason reached into his pocket and produced his phone.

I had a feeling more bad news was coming, and the look on Mason’s face confirmed it.

“What is it?” I took his phone from him, careful not to touch him in the process. I turned from the others in the cabin to read the message on the screen.

Blocked Number: Tell Mya I had to go and that I’m sorry. Take care of her for me, Mason. I failed her. Don’t you dare fail, too. And don’t reach out, I’m destroying this phone now. – O.

I fell to the floor right along with the phone, tears spilling down my cheeks.

“We have to go, Mya.” Sydney was behind me now, forearms hooking beneath my armpits, urging me to stand. “They know we’re here. It’s not safe.”

I covered my face with both hands, a sob breaking loose.

Memories from that morning, of Oliver trying to save me, pushed through the haze, and every part of me crumbled.

I was destroyed.

Completely and utterly broken.

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