Page 154 of What Remains

Yeah, let my sister know we didn’t die.

“Hangar is ours,” Sebastian says. “Officially, we’re not here.”

“How soon until Gideon and his team arrive?” I ask.

Carter checks his phone. “About fifteen minutes out.”

“I’ll try and lock down a location for Julian and, um . . .” Gwen lets her voice drift.

And find the woman who may have betrayed us?

Gwen flexes her fingers like I’ve seen her do a million times before she locks in. “Once we have the coordinates, we can spin up and finally put this all behind us.”

She gives us a tentative smile, like we’ll ignore her use of “we.”

“Maybe we can borrow two helos from Gideon for you and Nash to fly?” she suggests. “Without a repeat of an RPG hitting us and taking us down, of course.”

Wyatt and I step forward in unison, but I beat him to the order. “Like hell are you coming with us.” My inability to check my tongue or my possessive need to keep her safe comes through loud and clear when I grit out, “Non-fucking-negotiable.”

CHAPTER 55

Gwen

The cabin is only half as full as it was up in the air, but the energy and intensity has doubled. Everyone in here is restless and waiting for the green light, which requires me to get a target location. As Natasha and I work, I tune in and out of the conversations happening around me. Theories and ideas. It’s enough to make my head spin if I hang on to every word.

“She also knew about the helo crash in Surrey while we helped Julian’s sister. Knew about me taking off after the crash.” Easton’s words have my hands going still over the keyboard. “And she’s the reason I was called back.”

He’s digging Zoey’s grave with every word he speaks.

“Elaina’s and Camila’s visions,” Carter notes, voice tight. “She knows about their abilities.”

That’s right. Shivers burst under my hoodie. “She must’ve guessed how I felt about Easton.” Even before I acknowledged it. “She knew how depressed I would be about their undercover assignment, then she planted that seed with Natasha about taking me on a trip to get my mind off things.”

Easton and Zoey shared a roof for a month together as husband and wife, and that was her doing. It was her knife in my chest, carving out pieces of my heart every day she was off on that island with him.

“I’m sorry I said yes to the op.” Easton’s jaw tics, a storm of emotions radiating from him.

“I pressured you. You didn’t want to go.” Carter’s words jerk my attention to him. “The only one to blame here is me.”

“How about we don’t do that?” Griffin stands, his hands up, palms out in a placating gesture, like he can somehow alleviate everyone’s guilty conscience that way. “No one on board this aircraft is to blame.”

“He’s right,” Natasha agrees. “Given this new information, we need to think this through carefully and play back what we know with a new set of eyes.”

“Like how Zoey kept wanting to go rogue after my rescue?” I go back to typing while talking. “And how many times did she say it was all her fault and act remorseful?”

Were the signs really in front of us all this time, but we were blinded by trust?

“We made it off that island alive. It makes more and more sense how and why we did,” Easton continues. “And it’s because she was working with whoever was in charge of that compound.”

I manage to keep unscrambling code while I theorize, not missing a single key. “It’s possible Zoey didn’t know Jezebel beforehand, and actually thought she was tied to the trafficking ring.”

“And tied to The Chechen. To Preston’s killer.” Carter’s voice is steel and gravel. Each word continues to shoulder blame despite Griffin’s insistence not to. “Someone turned her somehow. That’s the only way this makes sense.”

I stop typing, my eyes flashing to Carter’s. “You think Zoey was somehow tricked into believing we’re her enemy?” An idea impales my mind like lightning striking the second I say that.

“What is it?” Easton asks, reading me well.

“Oh God.” My stomach roils as the truth digs deeper. “What if Zoey was shown a deepfake AI video of something?” I pause to let that sink in. “Zoey and Molly have been friends for a long time. Molly knows how desperate she is to find Preston’s killer. She could’ve used that to her advantage.”