Page 15

Chapter Fifteen

Abriella

Cold, meager light bathed the small room in flickering light, the emergency fluorescents threatening to fail at any moment as Bella stalked past the white boards that held monochromatic pictures and printouts that she didn't have time to examine. In the wake of the most recent incident, the ‘big picture’ was too massive to worry about the original focus of the investigation. The headquarters felt like a war room on the losing side of a battle too big to fight, usually a fortress of efficiency filled to the brim with the hum of electricity, the glow of screens flooded with intelligence feeds, the continual clatter of keystrokes and phone calls filling the air with perpetual sound. Now, the most powerful intelligence agency in the country was filled with an energy just shy of panic. Screens were dark. Phones were unreliable. Systems that should have been failsafe were failing left and right. Bella was not having a good fucking day.

Pacing the perimeter of the room like a caged animal, her high heels clacked with an echo against the surreal quietude. Her hair was a frizzy mess, her blazer was a wrinkled disaster, and the coffee clutched in her hand was cold as ice because there was no way to reheat it. She was one impulsive decision away from throwing the entire carafe at the nearest blank screen.

“Mierda!” Her mug hit the metal surface of the table with a sharp clank. “Porfa, someone tell me something!”

Taz’ face lifted at her outburst, his features gaunt in the blue glow of a lone laptop hooked up to something that looked a lot like a rigged up car battery with a strange metal arm grotesquely attached to the top. Bella knew it was actually some sort of advanced device to keep the device running so he could do his job, but the monstrosity looked more like a McGyver-esque disaster than a piece of equipment utilized by the FBI. He grunted and returned his intense gaze to the screen without a response.

Luke, his body just as tightly wound as Abriella’s, stood behind him like a stone sentinel. The man’s jaw was tense enough to make her teeth ache in sympathy. She expelled a strained sigh and turned her gaze toward the only other occupant of their fortress of frustration—Marissa Robbins. Today's hair color was a dark black. Fitting, she thought to herself. Black like their collective mood. She, too, remained silent as death.

“Someone? Anyone? Bueller?!” Abriella's hands flew up with an exasperated flail.

“What do you want me to fucking say? This was a surgically precise cyberattack against the goddamn infrastructure of the entire fucking city! When I know more, you'll know more!” Taz snapped, his eyes promising murder over the edge of the laptop.

Bella leaned forward, one hand flat against the surface of the table as she stabbed a finger at his face with the other. “Ay, dios mio. Explain to me like I am sixty-five and do not understand how Wi-Fi works!”

“Except you're twenty-nine and don’t know how Wi-Fi works,” he bit back with a venomous tone. Nevertheless, his long fingers danced over the keyboard as his eyes took on that familiar unfocused focus that meant he was staring at six different things all at once, processing information faster than she could ever hope to herself. “They didn't concentrate on the power grid alone. It's financial networks, transportation systems, government databases, fucking everything. Not a minor inconvenience, this was a whole ass fucking destabilization tactic.”

“They, they, they. Who the fuck is they, T?”

“Bell, I don't know!” Taz pushed his chair back with a screech of metal against linoleum before rocking forward to rest his elbows on his knees and drop his head into his hands. “I don't know.”

Luke sprang into action, gripping the back of Taz’ neck in a broad palm, kneading gently as he loomed over the hunched figure and shot Bella a warning glance. They were all on a hair-trigger, but Taz more so than any of them. She knew better. She really did. Connor had been at his wit’s end with terror when he showed up at her apartment with the news about Theo. Taz had witnessed the flight first hand and she chided herself silently over the insensitivity of her actions. If they lost Taz to a spiral, they'd be truly fucked.

“Pequeno, lo siento. I'm sorry.” Bella shifted around the table to perch a hip on the edge, running her long nails through Taz’ tangled hair. “We will figure this out. We will get him back.”

“No one is taking credit yet?” Marissa’s voice cut through the heavy stillness with sharp precision. Taz recovered with an exhausted exhalation, shifting upright before tucking his chair closer to the whining laptop that sounded like it desperately wanted to die an explosive death.

“No. No chatter from the usual suspects, no foreign rogue nation whipping their dick around, no bragging terrorist cells. Which means one of two things: they're either waiting to use this as leverage, or—”

“Or it's someone on the inside.” Marissa sank back in her chair with a grim expression.

“Gold star for Mary fucking Poppins,” Taz groused bitterly as he resumed his endless gauntlet of scouring the world's largest biome accessible through a screen powered by a goddamn car battery.

Bella turned her attention to Marissa. “You're telling me someone in our own government took down the capital of the country?”

Her stony expression met Bella’s with equal intensity. “I'm telling you we can't rule it out.”

“Puta madre,” Bella swore with hissed conviction.

For a moment, silence pressed in on them like a living thing, the tension a physical weight bearing mercilessly on the very air they breathed. With a sharp exhale, Abriella pushed a hand roughly through her tangled hair.

“Meanwhile, Theo is out there being hunted like a goddamn criminal while the real traitors sit pretty in their offices.”

Taz went still, deathly still, flexing his knuckles once before resuming his quiet typing. He didn't need to say anything at all—they all felt it. The helpless rage of knowing someone they cared about was being used as a scapegoat and running scared in the great unknown. Even greater than the rage was the fear. She'd fought corruption, she'd fought battles, she'd fought hand to hand in darkened streets to take down enemies with faces, motives, guilt. This was greater than all that combined. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she grappled with the real and present paranoia that they might be too late.

Abruptly, Marissa pushed to her feet and snapped her suit jacket straight with a no-nonsense efficiency that snapped them all to attention.

“Well, we aren't going to sit around on our asses waiting for the answers to come to us. Taz, I want you running every single back door channel you can get your hands on. I don't care what rules you need to bend to do it. I want names. Luke, touch base with Homeland. See if there are any coded messages from foreign entities we can tie this to.”

Marissa and Abriella's eyes met in perfect synchronization. “And you're going to Elias Cohen-Williams.”

She blinked once. “Pardon?”

“Elias is about to become the biggest target in the entire country… world, really. I'll be screwed seven ways to Sunday if I don't put someone I trust implicitly on his ass.”

Abriella expelled a weighty sigh. “Si. Fine. I'm not just babysitting, though. I want updates. I want answers.”

“And we’ll get them.” Marissa nodded, a single sharp, jerky movement. “I'll make sure all of you have a sat-phone.”

As the group dispersed, Abriella took a moment to calm herself, familiar prayers to angels and saints filtering through her mind as she gripped the edge of the table. The cool metal was strangely soothing, grounding her despite the residual tension in her muscles and the simmering anger rippling beneath the surface of her skin. She needed to keep her head in the game for all of them. With that, she pushed herself upright, smoothed her palms over her blouse, and exhaled a measured breath. She had a presidential candidate to protect. God help anyone who tried to get in her way.