Page 101 of The Honeymoon Hack

The room erupted. Multiple voices started talking at once. Someone was going to verify the story with someone. Someone else said they were going to check additional footage. Another voice spoke about securing their comms.

But the roaring in my ears overtook it all.

Two setsof bloody footprints.

Either one of them was Brie’s. Or the blood was hers.

“Who are Lark and Sully?” I asked, but no one paid attention to me. Possibly, my voice was too hoarse for them to hear me.

The crowd inside the room moved as one, exiting the holding room and crossing the hallway into the security command center. Six of the men in tactical gear congregated there, two of them conversing with Mnemis guards who were operating the surveillance cameras. On one of the large display screens, they had a blown-up image of the door next to the security checkpoint.

In the image, the door was open, frozen on a moment where one of their own had fired his gun at one of the Mnemis guards. Through the open door, I spotted bodies on the floor. Brie was in a chair behind the gunman.

I staggered forward, closer to the display.

Brie. Oh god, Brie.

“Hurry up with the comms,” barked one of the men. Their leader? “Percival, call HQ—I need Lark’s complete profile and psych evaluations.”

Another man moved between the tactical team, checking their radios and jotting something in a notebook.

Moss’s voice cut through the chaos as he charged toward the leader. “Your boss swore no Mnemis personnel would be harmed if we cooperated!”

The leader turned to Moss, ignoring his comments. “We need access to all of your cameras, tracking systems, and anything that can locate him. Lark knows our protocols. We can sort out what happened after we secure him.”

Every radio carried by the tactical team blinked four times, and one of the men—who must have been the communications specialist—said, “Radios are rekeyed. Lark’s off our comms.”

“What about Brie?” I asked again, louder.

The security displays flashed faster and faster, switching from camera to camera through the facility.

“I’m initiating Code Silver.” Moss pulled out his phone, swiping rapidly through an app. The blue warning message on a panel at the back of the room switched to red. An alarm sounded from the hallway, and half the lights changed colors.

An automated voice echoed from speakers in the walls: “Attention all personnel: This is a Code Silver lockdown. Find secure locations immediately. This is not a drill.”

“Where is my wife?” I yelled, and finally someone looked at me.

Claire—the woman behind all of this—actually looked at me and uttered the most useless words I’d ever heard in my life. “We don’t know yet.”

“You have this many fucking cameras and you can’t find her? There are GPS locators in the badges!” Why was I the only one worried about her? “Someone needs to fucking find her!”

“Will?” Rav appeared next to me. “They told?—”

“No one’s looking for her!” I grabbed his shirt. “We have to do something.”

“You need to calm down.” He took my hands, surprisingly gently. “Panic never fixes anything.”

“The badge tracking system,” I yelled, the words bursting out of me. “She put her ID badge on before they broke into our room. It has a GPS locator. We can find her.”

“We need eyes on that room to confirm.” Percival approached, pulling down his mask.

“Câlice,” muttered Rav as the two men shook and patted each other on the arm. “If ever I needed a friend, this is it.”

“Bobcat, the Lark files are on their way to your inbox,” Percival called to his team’s leader. “I’m moving up to do some recon, and I’m taking this guy with me.”

He pulled a pistol from his holster and checked it. He reversed it to pass to Rav, who declined.

“Give me one minute.” Rav pushed through the crowd into a room in the back. He returned with a duty belt and protective vest over his shorts and T-shirt, an M4 draped across his body. To the men in the room, he said, “If Lark has Brie, he’ll need her ID card for access. That means you can track her with it. Radio us when you find them.”