Page 109 of Perfect Order

Carys saunters into the conference room. “I came to let you all know he’s on his way to New Hampshire. He took Paige to pay his respects to Leanne without his security team.”

I curse roundly. “Why now?”

“Why does he do anything?” Carys counters.

I groan, “Because he’s trying to escape the media, and he had free time on his hands.”

“Exactly. And with what was printed today by StellaNova…” Carys’s voice trails off.

A hand lands on my shoulder. I whirl around and find Sam there. “What was printed?”

I open my mouth to ask why it matters, but Carys acknowledges. “Hey, Sam.”

“Carys. What happened?”

She explains what StellaNova posted a few moments ago, and several people’s teeth snap together. Sam’s jaw locks. “Do you have the URL?”

Carys drops her hand to her folio and draws out her phone. “Why, I have that very thing right here,” she drawls.

He drops back down to his chair and starts typing in the URL she calls out. I crowd in behind him as his fingers pull up a terminal window next to StellaNova's website. He bellows, “Thorn, over here. Stat!”

I lean over his shoulder to see if I can understand anything amid the garbage of characters on the screen. There are only two things I can read. The first is the Dioscuri copyright. And the second, a few lines down, is a small cracked heart.

Her flat voice echoes in my head.I need to tie up a few loose ends. Then, I’ll find my way to say my final goodbye.

And the feeling of dread that began in the conference room coalesces into something much stronger—abject fear—when Sam snaps, “She accessed Dioscuri. No, she’s not even trying to cover her tracks. Her equipment is hot. She’s luring them to her.” His fingers begin flying at a familiar pace I’ve become accustomed to.

My voice is broken when I step forward. “Stop.”

Thorn’s voice is like a whip. “What do you mean, ‘Stop?’”

“You heard what she said. There’s only one place she’s going to say goodbye.” You could hear a pin drop, everyone has gone so quiet. I swallow and push the words out. “Kylie. No matter how long it takes, she’ll go to Kylie.”

“Did you hear that?” Sam demands of the people on the other end of the conference call. Without waiting for confirmation, he pushes a button to disconnect New York before turning his attention back to his laptop. We wait until he mutters a curse. “Holy hell. She laid a trap inside of Dioscuri.”

“What kind of trap?” Thorn presses.

“The kind that will require a special passcode to access all of the data inside. If she’s wrong about the identity of who’s after her, Leanne just painted a multinational target on her back because there isn’t an enemy nation who won’t want the data she just laid out as bait—access to Dioscuri’s mainframe.”

I swallow the lump and ask, “How do you get the password?”

His fingers still for a whole five seconds before they resume their furious typing, in an effort to do what, I’m not entirely certain. “She’s using a biometric blockchain cryptography.”

“And?” He doesn’t respond. I shake his shoulder to get his attention. “Come on, Sam. And? What do you need? That’s some sort of special code, right?”

He whirls around to face me, whereupon I note the blood has drained from his face. “You could say that. Leanne’s done something I’ve rarely seen before. She’s using physical attributes as part of the passkey. And she chose not one, but two items to decode it—her retina print and a fingerprint.”

Thorn yells, “That’s impossible.”

“It’s not,” Sam argues, pointing at the screen.

“It has to be. She doesn’t have any fingerprints, Sam.”

His eyes widen before he whirls around, and he looks at the coded bomb Leanne may have set off. “Then whose is she using?”

Thorn pounds the table next to him. “Faster, Sam!”

Sam brushes him off with a “Not now, Thorn!”