Page 34 of The Bait

God, it was so long ago . . .

“Uh...” Asher tried to wrack his memory. “He told me the password was the sun god. He said it was me because I saved him, or something. It was more ‘like a ray of sunlight in a dark world’ or some bullshit. He’s always sentimental like that. He said it was a password just for me.”

“So what’s the password?” Harry asked again. “Which sun god.”

“The Korean one.”

“Yes, but what’s its name?”

“How the hell would I know?” Asher said. He nodded to Harry’s phone. “Look it up.”

“He never actually told you?” Harry asked while typing into his browser.

“Well, yes. But it was a long time ago, and I honestly thought I’d never need it. He talked about a lot of spiritual stuff like that, but I was his darling ray of sunlight.”

Harry showed Asher the screen with the name on it.

“Yes, that’s it!” Asher said, about to type it into the password screen but stopping on the first letter. “Should I use a capital?”

“Oh Jesus Christ, Asher.”

“Okay, okay.” He typed it in. “Haemosu.” He took a breath and hit Enter.

Password correct.

They were in.

SEVEN

The tablet screen opened,producing a dark screen with icons and folders and files. “Oh god,” Asher whispered. Harry knew he was reluctant, and truth be told, Harry totally understood why.

Afraid of what they might find.

“CCTV,” Asher mumbled, clicking on a folder. There were hundreds of folders, filenames with dates Harry deduced were the dates of security footage. Asher clicked on the last entry. It was dated just days ago...

The footage began to play, the screen quickly dividing into separate boxes. Each box was a camera view of different locations within Yunho’s house and the island.

The first was of the boat house and dock, other cameras focused on the grounds area. Then inside the house was the living area and kitchen, the back of the house, upstairs hallway, and of course inside the war room.

Oh god.

Around six in the morning, Lucas entered the upstairs hall from the main bedroom. He wore sleep pants, a T-shirt, and slippers. He left the bedroom door open, wentdownstairs to the kitchen, and proceeded to make coffee and set the patio table with fruits and yoghurt, some bread, and condiments. He shuffled back and forth in a well-practiced routine. He looked... happy. Normal.

Then Yunho appeared in the hall, showered and dressed. He skipped down the stairs, breezing over to where Lucas was standing in the kitchen. He was fixing a plate of meat and cheese by the look of it. Yunho pressed a kiss to Lucas’s shoulder, murmured something the audio didn’t quite catch, then carried the juice to the table on the patio.

Asher sighed, frowning at the screen. “They look so happy,” he murmured.

They picked at their breakfast, sipping their coffee. Yunho pointed to and talked of a pair of birds who were back for the breeding season, they discussed the lawn maintenance, and they discussed the stock market.

Then at 7:03 a.m., Aranya appeared from a downstairs guest room. She walked out, fixing her hair. Harry had forgotten she stayed there while she worked to save her travelling by boat every day.

“Sawadee ka,” she said as she went outside to the table.

“Morning,” Yunho and Lucas both replied. They made small talk briefly about the beautiful day, and what their day ahead looked like: the market in the middle east, a data breach in China, leaking international finance fraud in Washington. All normal, everyday stuff for cyber hackers.

When, in reality, they had no idea what was coming.

Asher sighed. “Lucas will now go and shower, Yunho will go downstairs. Aranya will finish up breakfast and clear the table, like they do every morning. Lucas willcome by later and wash up.” He shook his head. “I’ll fast forward to the end. We can go back and listen to the whole day later.”

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