Page 102 of Unspoken Promises

The hum dies down, only for my next words to ramp it up again.

“Ava Scott has been abducted.”

I raise my voice above the din. “She’s been gone an hour. What we need from you is any observations of strange cars, people… anything in town that’s been unusual.” My eyes search the crowd and pick out Penelope’s landlord. “Geeta, can you and Raj get us the CCTV footage for the last few hours around the apartment complex?”

She nods. “Right away.”

She and her husband leave immediately.

“The cell tower signal from Ava’s last message showed her on the west side of town, so we should sweep down San Antonio Valley Road, too. Anyone with contacts along that road, let’s make phone calls.”

Santi raises his hand. “We have a drone with night vision at the stables.”

“We have one at the station as well.” Callum turns to Luke. “Get that going now. Keep it below four hundred feet.”

The whole town is operating as one. Callum and I workas a team to assign tasks, making sure everyone has the correct reporting mechanism so we get information fast.

But as the room clears out apart from me, Rio, Callum, and Penelope, I know in my gut we need a lot more than just police procedural.

In the sudden collapse of energy, I can’t help but think…I’ve missed something.

I sit at my laptop. Rio and I still work with our people using our tools in GhostEye headquarters, feeding anything and everything that could help us find out who Anton or Ava’s father are. I rub my temples hard with my thumbs, head down, eyes on my laptop screen.

If I’m going to find Ava alive, I need more than drones and CCTV.

What’s the missing piece?

Why did her father keep her in captivity?

Why does he want her back now?

The details I’ve learned about Ava over the past few weeks swirl in my mind. She was kept until she was twenty-five. All those years with no apparent use apart from encouraging her computer science abilities. Then, suddenly, they send her to college.And she wins our hacking contest…

It sounds too easy when laid out like that. Almost like he let her go to college. To come to GhostEye…

My eyes dart up to my brother’s blue-lit face across from me.

“Rio. What if Ava was always meant to escape captivity?”

Penelope is on her computer, next to me with her ham radio and some other gadgets around her. When I mention Ava, her gaze flashes to mine. A sadness weighs on the corners of her eyes. Callum briefed her quickly on their ten-minute drive to Trailblazer after she was drugged. This has been one hell of a night for her. Findingout her new friend was kept against her will for fourteen years.

I wish we had time to comfort her. But we don’t.

“What if her father wanted her to come to us?”

Rio smooths a finger along his upper lip. “I’m listening.”

“Think about it. Ava is locked up for over a decade. She’s sent to college shortly after we open our contest, wins, comes here with no option but for us to give her a job… what if that was the plan for her? What if she was groomed… for GhostEye?”

Rio shakes his head. “I don’t know, Zo… it feels like a coincidence. We had a hack before opening the contest.”

“Ava told me she had so-called teachers who always set her on tasks. Maybe her code led helped them perform the attacks. Maybe they used her work and code as a clue how to get through the back door. They must have been trying to penetrate GhostEye before we opened the contest.”

Our company has been a target for black-hat hackers since it started. There’s nothing unusual about that.

“What if her father’s organization has been trying to take down GhostEye for a while. If they used her code for the first hack, they’dknowshe could win the contest when we opened it. Maybe they sent her here to get inside information that would allow a full take down? She has that information now…” A hot, sharp ache coils inside me.

Her father wants her back to finish the job and he sent Anton to fetch her.

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