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“What if I want more?”
Her lips parted. “Like what?”
“Like you becoming my wife. Because I’m never letting you go. And I’ll be damned before I let you go back to Indiana. I want you happy, Aubrey. Completely, utterly, deliriously happy. Always smiling, always sparkling.”
“I’m happy with you.”
“Good. Then that’s where you’ll stay.”
Somehow, the tiny woman pressed to his side had become his sun, the center of his universe. That realization made Gray smile bigger than he ever had in his entire life. And from that point forward, he vowed all of his smiles would belong to her.
Chapter Twenty-One
Zane “Banshee” Hawkins
Zane moved out of his and Gray’s bungalow shortly after the team returned from the Bahamas, opting to share a place with Inda. He wanted to give Gray and Aubrey their privacy, especially after they announced their engagement. The last thing they needed was a cocky, sarcastic, third wheel. Besides, he didn’t need to hear the constant sex he knew was happening. But, he was damn happy for his friend. He hadn’t seen Gray smile like that since…
Hell, ever.
Aubrey was a light to his darkness. The only one who’d been able to banish the demons and bring Gray back into the land of the living again. And, for that, Zane would always be grateful.
Tempering a smile of his own, he swung back and forth on a hammock he’d installed between two palm trees. He needed to channel his efforts into searching the Dark Web for more intel about the Mercier twins. Or, should he say Mercier twin? Now that Julien was dead, he had a feeling Camille would prove to be an even bigger threat. If she sought revenge, which she most likely would—hell, that seemed to be a theme around there—then she’d probably already informed The Agency that at least some of the members of Ex Nihilo were alive and well.
Granted, she’d only seen Saint, but from what Zane knew, Camille Mercier wasn’t a woman you underestimated.
With a sigh, Zane bounced from site to site. Maybe he should go deeper. Delve into the Shadow Web, a layer of internet ever deeper than the Dark Web. A well-known hub for criminal activity. It would be exactly the place a person would go to hire someone like Camille Mercier.
Why the hell not?He hadn’t checked there yet and since he wasn’t finding the answers he needed in the normal places, Zane dove deeper. Finding information was what he did, his superpower, and there weren’t many hackers better than him.
A select few perhaps. But even that was questionable. Zane could hold his own against the best of the best and—
His fingers froze and he frowned.What the fuck?
Someone just locked him out of his own goddamn computer. Zane sat up straighter, adjusted his glasses, and tried to override whatever was happening. Nope. Didn’t work.
Suddenly, foreboding music came out of the speakers and a video started playing. It looked like Zane’s screen cracked and then shattered. As the broken pieces appeared to fall and land in a pile, a graphic emerged, letter by letter. Like graffiti being spray painted on a brick wall.
Cipher was here.
Stabbing his finger against several buttons that should’ve exited the site didn’t work.
“Fucking hell,” Zane hissed. A jester appeared on his screen, pointed at him and doubled over with laughter.
His computer had just been hacked. And he was pissed.
Zane kept trying to turn it off, stop the connection between him and this Cipher character, but nothing was working.Christ.Someone was trying to access his hard drive and Zane growled, fighting the attacker off, using every trick he knew.
“C’mon, let’s go.”
Whoever the asshole was, he was just as good as Zane and they battled it out. Every time Cipher tried to get into a file, Zane blocked him. It felt like a tennis match, back and forth, each one trying to outwit the other.
Zane refused to let the asshole get into his files. “No fucking way, dick.”
After what felt like forever, Cipher disappeared. The screen returned to normal and Zane hurriedly closed out of all the open windows and shut his laptop down. By the time the screen went black, he was sweating bullets.
Who had just broken through his firewall—which was the best of the best—and cyber attacked him? The better question was did he get whatever he wanted?
Zane squeezed his eyes shut and raked a hand through his hair. His life was on this computer, not to mention endless intel on The Agency and Ex Nihilo.
