And my father had traded him.
“You sold my husband,” I said, my voice eerily calm, detached from the nuclear explosion happening in my chest. “To be tortured. To be a ghost. So I could live.”
“He agreed to it!” my father pleaded, reaching for my hand. “Lucas knew! When he realized the scope of what Halcyon was, he told me to do it. He sacrificed himself so you could come home.”
I slapped his hand away. “Where do they want us?”
“They don’t have the full key,” my father confessed, shrinking away from me. “I only gave them half. I told them if they ever touched you, the other half would be released to the press. It was my insurance policy to keep you alive.”
“Where is the other half, Dad?”
He looked at my left wrist. At the scratched, battered silver watch Lucas had given me the night before we deployed. I had never taken it off.
“Inside the backplate,” he whispered. “They know you have it now. And they want it.”
My phone buzzed again. A text message. Building 32. South Annex. 45 minutes.
Building 32 was a decommissioned training structure on the far side of the base. Isolated. Perfect for a quiet execution.
I looked at my father. The man who had built my life on a foundation of corpses. “Get up.”
“Emily, we can’t go there, they’ll kill us both—”
“Get up!” I roared, drawing the attention of Commander Hayes and Senior Chief Jonah Mercer, who were rapidly approaching our alcove.
Mercer, the man whose life I had saved in that same valley six years ago. The man who had, in turn, pulled my brother Ryan from a pool when he nearly drowned during training three months ago.
“Captain,” Mercer said, his eyes scanning my face, reading the violence there. “What’s the situation?”
“We have a hostage situation in Building 32,” I said, my voice cold, professional, dead. “Halcyon.”
Hayes swore under his breath. “I’ll scramble the Quick Reaction Force.”
“No,” I said. “They see a team coming, they put a bullet in his brain. It’s just me and my father.”
