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“Oh, hell,” Logan said. “She thinks she’s protecting all of us. Sam’s plan to kill a SEAL.”
“What?” They all looked at him.
“The listening devices. Sam was bugged the day she told us how she would kill a SEAL. She would plant evidence against everyone the SEAL cared about and—”
“Oh, God. No!” Jennie knew, without him finishing the sentence what the plan entailed.
“What?” Kelly asked. “And, what?” She was the only one who hadn’t been in the room at Sutton Capital that day.
Chad filled in the rest for her. “In Sam’s plan, you set up everyone a person loves to go down for something criminal or something along those lines, then demand they kill themselves. You tell the person, they either kill themselves, or everything they’ve set up to hurt your loved ones gets put in motion. Sam meant it as a joke. She said you’d give the person a timeline. What was the timeline, Logan?”
“Forty-eight hours. You tell the person they have forty-eight hours to do it or you release everything you’ve got on their loved ones. If Diya was really listening, she’s sick enough to turn it around on Sam and actually do it.”
“And, Sam is—” Kelly started but couldn’t finish.
“Sam cares enough about everyone to do it.” Jennie said what they were all thinking.
Logan was hanging on by a thread, but he forced himself to steady his breathing and look his friends in the eye.
“We need to stop her. We can’t let her do this.” Shit. His voice didn’t sound anywhere near as steady as he’d like it to. “Where would she go?”
“Well,” Chad said, “she wouldn’t take it lying down. You can bet she has a plan.”
“So what would she do?” Jennie asked.
“She’d hack them,” Logan said. He knew it with as much certainty as he knew his name. She would hack them right back. She’d think she could protect them and take Diya on by herself. “What does she need to do that?”
“Nothing,” Chad said. “Just her laptop and an outlet. Space to work in and a shit ton of candy and junk food. But, her credit cards haven’t been used.”
Logan raised his eyebrows, but Chad just shrugged.
“I have the passwords to her accounts. I checked them all. She withdrew three thousand dollars in cash. That’s it.”
Logan made a mental note to find out why Chad had Sam’s passwords later, but for now he just filed it away. “So, she wouldn’t go far. She’s probably just nearby somewhere in a hotel.”
“Would she go home? To her parents’ house?” Jennie looked around the group.
Kelly spoke up this time. “No,” she said, resting her hand on her stomach as if to protect the baby from what was happening, but Logan saw Jack’s eyes narrow in on Kelly’s hand. The protective gesture wasn’t lost on him.
“She wouldn’t go home,” Kelly continued. “She wouldn’t want to put them at risk or tell them what was going on.”
Logan slid a glance to Jack, who still watched his wife like a hawk.
Logan set out plans for each person. “Kelly and Jack, why don’t you wait here and see if Sam calls her phone or comes back. That way, Kelly can get some rest. Chad and Jennie and I can meet up with Zach and come up with a plan to narrow down hotels and track her down. I’m fine with fighting Diya, but Sam’s going to do it with all of us at her back.”
Kelly opened her mouth as though she might object, but Jack took her arm and led her to the couch. The look on his face didn’t allow room for her to argue.
“We got it covered, Logan,” Jack said. “Mrs. Poole is with Maddie. She’ll get her dinner and put her down to bed. I’ll ask her to spend the night just in case we don’t make it back for a while. We’ll stay here and hope Sam gets in touch.”
Logan nodded, but he knew Sam wouldn’t come back here. He needed to get out there and find her. Help her.
Chapter 32
Sam sat back with a grin. She had him. A black hat hacker who went by the name of PriorOfTheOri, a reference to some truly evil characters in Stargate. He was really Peter Gatorelli. The man was making a statement using a name like that, and it wasn’t a good one.
He was a man who would take money from anyone, to do anything, and apparently, that included framing innocent people like her friends and family, with the goal of forcing her to commit suicide. Sam swallowed hard because it was her own idea. She meant it as a joke, but the fact that this plot had come straight from her own mind made her feel sick.
She began to document as much as she could, outlining PriorOfTheOri’s moves as he set up her friends and family, capturing evidence in screenshots and putting them into a file for the FBI. It took her hours, but she needed to make sure her friends and family would have the evidence needed to clear them if things didn’t turn out the way she hoped.
