Searing, tearing agony ripped through my left shoulder. The force of the 9mm round spun me around, and I slammed hard into the concrete wall, sliding down to the floor. Blood instantly blossomed across the black fabric of my dress, hot and sticky.
“Emily!” my father shrieked, dropping to his knees.
“Back off, Richard!” Voss barked, aiming at my father.
I gritted my teeth, tasting copper. My left arm hung useless, screaming with pain. I pressed my right hand against the entry wound, feeling the jagged edge of torn muscle. It was a through-and-through. Mercer had deliberately missed the bone and arteries, but it was still a bullet wound.
Mercer stood above me, his face pale, his eyes begging for forgiveness he knew I couldn’t give.
“Very good, Senior Chief,” Voss said over the ringing in my ears. “Now, Captain. The watch. Or the next one goes in your brother’s knee.”
I looked at Ryan. His eyes were wide with horror, his rifle still trained on Mercer, but his hands were shaking. He was out of his depth. This wasn’t a training exercise; this was a slaughterhouse.
I looked at Lucas. He was shaking his head frantically. Don’t do it.
If Halcyon got the complete key, they wouldn’t just erase their financial trails. They would erase the burn files—the evidence of every murder, every bribe, every rigged election they had orchestrated. They would become untouchable ghosts. And then, they would kill us all anyway.
I unclasped the watch with my blood-slicked right hand. I tossed it across the smooth concrete. It slid to a halt at Voss’s boots.
Voss smiled. He picked it up, turned it over, and read the microscopic etching. He began typing on the tablet.
“Upload initiated,” Voss announced. “In three minutes, the Halcyon servers will be scrubbed, and the ghost protocol will be fully locked.”
I looked at Mercer. He was staring at the tablet.
“Maya,” Mercer whispered. “Let her go.”
“Oh, Jonah,” Voss sighed, not looking up from the screen. “You really are naive. The moment this upload finishes, the container in Long Beach gets dropped into the Pacific. Loose ends, you understand.”
