Chapter 25

Cole wrenched Thorne’s arms behind his back, securing him with heavy zip-ties he pulled from his tactical vest. Thorne struggled briefly, then went perfectly limp, returning to his infuriatingly calm demeanor despite being pinned to the floor.

I rushed over to Celeste. Her hands were bound tightly to the metal chair with thick plastic cuffs. I pulled a pocketknife from my jacket and sliced through the restraints. She slumped forward, coughing violently.

"Are you okay?" I asked, catching her by the shoulders.

"I didn't tell him the passcode," Celeste gasped, wiping blood from her split lip. She looked up at me, her eyes filled with a desperate intensity. "He forced my biometric scan to open the vault, but the internal briefcase requires a secondary cipher. Your father's cipher."

I looked at the silver briefcase resting on the table. It was heavily reinforced, featuring a complex digital lock on the latch.

"He tortured me for hours," Celeste whispered, leaning against me for support. "But I couldn't tell him the code because Thomas never gave it to me. He told me the person who needed it would already know it."

I turned my attention to Thorne. Cole hauled him up onto his knees.

"It's over, Thorne," Cole stated. "You're going to a black site. You'll spend the rest of your life in a box smaller than this bunker."

Thorne laughed softly, a wet sound in the back of his throat.

"You think this is a victory?" Thorne sneered, looking directly at me. "The Apex Key is completely useless without the cipher. And if I don't check in with my network in exactly one hour, a dead-man protocol will execute. A coordinated strike on the Georgian house. Your mother, the organization, all of it will burn."

The blood drained from my face. "You're lying."

"Am I?" Thorne smiled coldly. "I know about Rosa. I know about Miguel. I know exactly where Evelyn sleeps. Give me the briefcase, let me walk out of here, and I will abort the strike. Refuse, and you lose everyone."

Hannah ran over to one of the ancient server terminals, her fingers flying across the dusty keyboard. "He’s telling the truth," she panicked. "I'm seeing a timed execution script looping on an external server. It’s counting down. Forty-five minutes."

"Call Miguel," I shouted.

May you like

After seven hours trapped in a failing elevator, my firefighter husband...

David thought he had broken the only woman who could stop him

My husband thought he had humiliated a helpless new mother—until he disc...

"The jammers are still active!" Hannah yelled back. "No signals are getting out!"

We were trapped underground, and my mother was sitting directly in the crosshairs.