Page 53 of Never Forget

Naz rolls his eyes. Me too, he mouths back.

Simon doesn’t have a ton of luggage with him, so it doesn’t take much time to get him situated in the private suite Naz had set up for just this reason. No sooner than we have all his things stashed on top of the bed to be unpacked does my phone start ringing.

“Hey, Cory. What’s up?” I say, stepping out of the room.

“Is everything okay where you are?”

“Yeah. All fine here. Why?”

“We have a problem.”

The tone of Cory’s voice has my spine stiffening and my jaw clenched tight. “What kind of problem?”

“There’s been another incident.”

Fuck.

THIRTEEN

SCOTT

Unknown: Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

“What do you mean, they’ve been compromised?!” Naz shrieks, loud enough that the construction crew on the other side of the property probably heard him. It’s pretty unlikely Simon didn’t hear it from just inside the house, that’s for sure.

“Everyone is safe. No one was seriously injured,” Blake says calmly.

“What do you mean by seriously injured?” I clarify.

“Jesse and Luc both have some superficial wounds, but they’re okay,” Cory says calmly. “They’re being treated by a private physician in a secure location, and I’m here with them. Will and Ari are completely unharmed and are with Eric in a second location.”

“Weren’t both of these locations supposedly secure?” I ask, trying to keep the pitch of my voice down. I’m usually calm in these types of situations, but my stomach is churning painfully.

Could I have stopped this?

“What happened exactly?” Naz asks. We still haven’t heard the whole story. All we know is that something happened at both locations and that none of us are as secure as we thought.

“The house Will and Ari were staying at was vandalized,” Cory answers. “They weren’t in the house when it happened, but they came back to a broken window, scorch marks on one side of the house, and some burned landscaping. The only evidence the police found was some debris from commercial fireworks, but Mr. Carter is working on pulling security footage.”

“And Jesse and Luc?”

“Drone attack. Apparently Luc came out on the deck to see a drone hovering. He said it looked like it was holding something, and given recent events, rightly assumed it might be dangerous. He knocked it out of the sky, but instead of crashing into the water, it ended up crashing into the boat and exploded.”

“Jesus. They could have been killed!” Naz exclaims. He stares at me with wide eyes, and I move to put my hand on his shoulder.

“They’re okay,” Blake assures him. “Luc has a few first-degree burns and caught some shrapnel in his leg. He took the brunt of it, though. According to Jesse, Luc tackled him and knocked him into the water. He has a minor cut on his forehead and some bruising on his torso where Luc hit him.”

“The Coast Guard picked them up almost an hour after it happened. They were floating on a buoy just far enough away that they could still see the boat. Luc was worried the whole thing would blow,” Cory adds.

“He’s definitely the kind of guy you want around in an emergency,” I say.

Naz looks shocked. “How did the Coast Guard even find them?”

“The yacht had an onboard monitoring system that sends out an alert if any alarms are tripped. When the company called to check in and didn’t get an answer, they automatically reported it to the Coast Guard with the last known coordinates,” Cory answers.

“Do we think the two events are related?” I ask, knowing the answer. I feel it in my gut.

They warned me.