Page 63 of Fury

More than could be said for Leila. Ever again.

Any lightness she’d felt seconds ago vanished. She shoved the covers back and sat up. Yawned as she squinted out the window. Sand stretched as far as the eye could see. Soft lines of red, orange, and pink hues hovered on the horizon. The sun was sinking, not rising.

How long had she slept?

She looked around but didn’t see her phone. What she did find was her laptop sitting on her weekend bag in the corner of the room. Davis had already gone and come back, then. She crossed to the bag.

Voices filtered down the hall from somewhere in the house. Was the team making plans to save Archie? Or would he just be collateral damage in this twisted game? She wanted her friend back alive. Wanted themallback.

How many more would die before this was over?

The heavy weight of trepidation resumed its seat on her shoulders. Tugging some clothes from her bag, her hand froze over the small Bible Davis had packed along with the rest of her things. He must have found it in the dresser with her computer. She kept it there to remind herself to read a passage before any work started.

Sinking onto her knees, she brushed the well-worn leather binding and opened the book to Psalm 46, which she’d long ago memorized. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” She spoke the words quietly. Read down to verse five. Repeated it. “God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns.”

She took comfort in the words. A strength that wasn’t her own. She was far from alone, and this was far from over.

Hollyn let the verses run through her head as she changed into fresh clothes and opened her computer. Sitting on the corner of the bed, she quickly connected to the internet and punched in her work passcode to access her project files. The Sparrow Project—as Dad had insisted on naming it, despite her objections?—was there. She breathed a sigh of relief and opened the file. The schematics and research were all there, but as she ran through her algorithm, the last sequence was missing.

Frowning, she ran through the code again. She must have misread. After the third time, heart beating faster, the code was still incomplete. Without the ending, the program was useless. “Where is it?” she whispered.

Hollyn scoured all of her other files to see if she’d somehow saved the end sequence to the wrong place—though she couldn’t imagine how that would have happened. Still nothing.

The only thing that calmed her to some degree was that the man the team had captured didn’t have it. If he did, none of this would be happening. But the question remained:whywould he want that project?

A few more attempts only confirmed that the algorithm she’d spent years finishing had vanished. She was going to be sick. All that work . . . for nothing.

On a whim, Hollyn checked to see when her files had last been accessed.

1:23AM 9 FEBRUARY

But the attempt had been flagged.

Hollyn thought back. That was the day of the break-in. A day shehadn’tdone anything work-related. She eyed the IP address next to the attempted login. Was it possible there’d been a virtual hack that paralleled the physical break-in?

Hollyn started a backtrace on the address. The computer filtered through one IP after another. She bit her lip, tapping her fingers on her thigh. Whoever had tried to get in had used a VPN to mask their actual location. At least the system had prevented access. Still, why hadn’t she been informed about the attempt?

Despite her best attempts, she came up short finding the actual location for whoever had run the hack. It just bounced around from one country to another in a never-ending loop.

She clenched her teeth and logged out before pulling up a list of the files on her hard drive. Never in a million years would she accidentally save her projects there instead of the work servers, but better safe than sorry. She dug through the programs, folders, files . . .

Another dead end.

“No.” This couldn’t be happening. Breathing was getting quick and shallow as her mind raced.Wherewas the rest of her work? Years of trial and error, millions of dollars spent on funding, and the key to the whole thing was just . . . gone.

“No, no.” Hollyn tried to keep it together. There had to be an explanation. She slammed the laptop closed and shoved to her feet. Had to find Davis. Maybe there was someone on the team that had a greater skillset for this than she did.

The house had gone quiet. Eerily so. Where was everyone?

“Hello?” she called from the living room.

Silence was her only reply, so she turned down a hallway she hadn’t been in yet. Heard muffled sounds from the end. Followed it. The hallway was wider on this side of the house, but the tile floors looked the same.

Repeating sounds played on a loop like a stuck record or something.

“Hello?” she asked again.

Still the only sounds were muffled conversation and the short soundbite. But then she heard Fury bark.

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