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“Grizz. That outside door is locking in twenty seconds. She shouldn’t see this.”
At my suggestion and without a second thought, Grizz steps forward to Dana. Lifting her around the waist, he pulls her out of the room, kicking and screaming, until the door closes behind them and locks.
“Jessa, I’m sorry. Take deep breaths. The first gas coming in is meant to disable you, then you won’t feel anything. It’ll knock you out before the cyanide releases. You can still stop it. Just kill everything.” Link’s voice echoes in the room, but there’s no going back.
Feed from my speaker cuts into the room, and I hit the mute button once more to block Maxwell out while I speak with the pilot, who should be approaching Maxwell’s location. I don’t want to give him the chance to get away now.
“TacCon, this is Ranger Three. We are locked on target. Awaiting strike confirmation sequence. Over.”
A few more keystrokes, and I’ve cracked the final code I need. “Ranger Three, this is TacCon. Confirmation sequence: Tango—Alpha—Kilo—Four—Six—Echo—Echo—Foxtrot. You are cleared to engage. I repeat, you are clear to engage. Over.”
The pilot rattles off a combined sequence of his own in acceptance before ending with “out,” and the line goes dead.
I turn on all speakers, and my body shudders on my next exhale as the weight of all my choices hits me.
I have one thing left to do, and I have seconds of consciousness left.
“Jack,” I choke out. My fear is taking over now, and I can’t control my panic as the realization of my mortality hits me. “I love you. I wish there was another way. I’m glad I got to see you again. I—” My body sways to the side as Maxwell cuts me off.
“JESSA!” Anger carries his words into the room, and I spin to look him in the eyes one last time.
“NO,” I command. “You don’t get to order me around. It ends now. Your servers are dumping everything into Logan and Jack’s servers. Link, you’ll be back online in fifteen minutes.”
There’s a thud behind the door as Hunter’s body falls to the floor in the smaller room. Following Link’s advice, I take deep breaths to avoid feeling the pain of what’s to come as I look up at Maxwell.
“We all make choices, Maxwell. You chose wrong.” I repeat the words he said to me when he held me captive as I raise my hand to offer him my middle finger.
The expression on his face morphs into pure hatred. It’s a look I’ve only seen once before, but it is short lived. There’s a piercing wail through the speaker. Then the room around Maxwell goes blindingly bright before everything goes dark, and I lose my connection to him.
My arm drops quickly back to my side as I turn and see Jack. He’s frantically attempting to find a way into the room, and my body floats out from under me.
I’m not scared anymore.
“I’m sorry, Jack. I love—”
CHAPTER37
JACK
“How does she sound like me?” Link yells at his team. He’s silent for a minute before he comes back to us. “Jekyll, I—Zane has accessed our previous mission tapes and pulled my voice and all call signs. Our teams in Arizona think they are taking orders from me. They’re executing theirmission.” There is no mistaking the shudder in his voice when he says, “The Night Stalker is in the air.”
One of our newest acquisitions is a fully operational and highly weaponized helicopter. We purchased it from the government under the condition that we decommission it from warfare use—except we haven’t yet.
Logan reflects my shock when we exchange a glance.
“Shit.” It’s not the first time in the last five minutes Link has used this word, but something in the severity of his tone tells me this is different.
“Link?” Logan’s low tone tells me he’s bracing for a blow as I watch Jessa type.
“Dammit, Jack. I’m sorry.” Link breaks off as he yells some unintelligible orders at his team then returns to us. “I—Jessa’s takeover has activated our defense systems. They are on a fail-safe. The only way to stop it is to cut everything. Jessa is rerouting the gases away from our locked rooms and into the area she and Hunter are in, including the cyanide. Jack, once it starts, they’ll be dead within minutes.”
Dead.
Link’s words burn deep into my bones. She has chosen this path. She’s made the stupid decision to sacrifice herself to protect us.
I waited ten years. All of that time, living a half-life without her, only to have her back to be taken away again.
In a moment of panic, I hurl the weight of my body against the glass. I see red, and every fiber of my being wants to break through the window and drag her sorry ass out of there.
