Chapter 935
Liam walked to the elevator panel, ripped the cover off, and checked the wiring. “They bypassed the safety. It’s going straight to the sub-basement. They have a vehicle waiting.”
“Why Victoria?” Alistair asked, holstering his weapon. “Why not you?”
“Logistics,” Liam said, wiping powder from his shoulder. “The Mastermind doesn’t need Oracle’s tech anymore — he has it. What he needs is a way to move something massive out of the country. The Hayes family controls every container ship in the harbor.”
Skye stood. She wiped the chemical dust from her face. She looked like a ghost of war.
“They want to ship something,” she said. “Or someone.”
“The Legacy Key,” Alistair realized. “They’re moving the components.”
Skye watched the elevator numbers tick downward. “We have to get her back. Not just for the city. Because she’s innocent.”
Liam looked at her. “There are no innocents, Skye. Only players and pawns.”
“Then we promote the pawn,” Skye said. “Let’s go.”
The war room at Oracle headquarters was silent except for the hum of servers.
P𝗼𝗽𝘶𝗹a𝗿 𝗌𝗍𝗈ri𝗲𝘀 𝘰𝗇 g𝘢𝗹ոо𝗏𝗲𝗅ѕ.𝖼𝗈m
Alistair slammed his phone onto the glass table. “Hayes isn’t picking up. The coward. His daughter is kidnapped and he’s ghosting us.”
“He’s negotiating,” Liam said from the corner, where he was icing his leg. “The Mastermind probably contacted him already — trade the shipping codes for the girl.”
“We can’t let him give up those codes,” Parker said, typing furiously across three keyboards at once. “If the Mastermind gets unrestricted access to the ports, he can smuggle in an army. Or a nuke.”
“We have to intercept,” Skye said, studying a map of the coastline. “Where would they take her?”
“The Citadel,” came a weak voice from the doorway.
Julian sat in a wheelchair, an IV drip attached to his arm, pushed by a nurse. He looked like death warmed over, but his eyes were sharp — his body pumped full of adrenaline and painkillers, running on borrowed time, yet his mind remained clear.
“Julian!” Skye rushed to him. “You should be in the ICU.”
“Ethan took her to The Citadel,” Julian wheezed, clutching his chest as a spasm of pain hit him. “It’s an abandoned offshore rig that used to belong to the Vance family trust. We used to play hide and seek there as kids. Before Blackwood.”
“It’s a fortress,” Alistair said, studying the map. “One way in, one way out. Heavily guarded.”
“Ethan has a weakness,” Julian said. He reached out and gripped Skye’s hand. “Fire.”
“Fire?”
“The Institute fire,” Julian whispered. “He started it — by accident. He was playing with matches and watched part of the East Wing burn. It broke him. It’s the root of his trauma. If you show him fire, real fire, he freezes.”
Skye looked at Parker. “Can we burn the rig down?”
“And kill Victoria? Bad plan,” Parker said.
“Not real fire,” Skye said, an idea taking shape. “Holographic fire. Parker, can you project a simulation?”