Page 70 of Cipher: Lethal Algorithm

“Exactly my speed.”

The debrief officially ends. Dax leaves to secure the drive. Hutch takes the encryption keys and heads for the elevator.

Walking out into the sterile concrete corridor, Julian falls in beside me.

The silence between us is heavy, but it isn’t the jagged, terrified silence of the airfield. It’s the quiet aftermath of a war closing out.

I stop halfway down the hall. Julian stops with me.

“I didn’t build my exit strategy because I don’t trust you.” I keep my voice level under the buzz of the fluorescent lights. “I did it because I was terrified of watching you take a bullet meant for me.”

“I know.”

“I spent three years treating absolutely everyone as collateral damage. I’m trying to unlearn the muscle memory. I’m trying to?—”

He closes the distance between us. He doesn’t let me finish the sentence.

He cups the back of my neck, his thumb resting against my pulse point, and kisses me.

It is slow, deep, and absolutely certain. He kisses me like a man who knows he has all the time in the world, anchoring me entirely to the present.

My hands come up to grip the front of his shirt. I sink into the kiss, the last rigid, defensive walls inside my chest collapsing completely.

He breaks the kiss, resting his forehead against mine. I feel the steady, reassuring thud of his heart against my ribs.

“You’re not a ghost anymore.”

I close my eyes, holding onto his shirt.

“I know.”

23

Signal

JULIAN

Dawn breaks slowlyover the Atlantic Ocean. The light filters through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the apartment in Lisbon, casting long, pale shadows across the hardwood.

It is completely silent.

But for the first time in ten years, the silence is not tactical. It doesn’t hold the latent threat of an ambush or the coiled tension of a hostile extraction. It’s simply the quiet of a shared room.

I sit at the dining table. A secure terminal runs a sequence of decentralized federal architecture queries. Across the table, a second monitor hums softly.

Wearing one of my shirts, Ivy sits opposite me. The sleeves rolled up to her elbows, her bare legs tucked underneath her on the chair. Typing with blinding speed, she dismantles a corporate firewall with the casual indifference of someone solving a crossword puzzle. She’s been operating on Task Force 9’s behalf for six weeks.

I drink my coffee and watch her. I could watch her work for the rest of my life.

I open a secondary window on my terminal and pull up the global news feeds.

The headline dominates every major paper across three continents simultaneously.

DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL THOMAS CALDER INDICTED ON 48 COUNTS OF INTERNATIONAL RACKETEERING, FRAUD, AND MURDER-FOR-HIRE.

The deployment is flawless. It’s Hutch’s controlled release, executed perfectly in tandem with the DOJ’s unsealing of the grand jury documents. Our routing tables are the bedrock of the prosecution. It will take two years to try the case, but the Consortium’s financial structure is completely obliterated. The trial is just a formality.

“They dropped it.” I push the laptop toward the center of the table.