“Who are they?” I asked, leaning closer.
“Enzo,” Scarlett said, coming to stand beside me. “One of Fenix’s captains. He and Noah are the two highest-ranking operatives we’re aware of, each commanding their own teams.”
“The nastier of the two,” Malcolm added from across the room.
I nodded slowly. “The kidnapper and attempted murderer?”
“That’s the one,” said Malcolm.
“The timestamp shows this was recorded three days ago,” Drew continued, pointing to the time in the corner of the image.“The other figure appears to have been supervising Enzo, who set up the robot. Brie’s working on the image.”
“Three days?” I frowned. “If it’s been down there the whole time, why didn’t we run into it yesterday?”
Drew said, “The data shows it was programmed for an autonomous patrol sequence. I doubt they had an active handler nearby.”
“And no one’s come looking for it yet,” Jayce added. “Which means either they don’t know it’s missing, or?—”
“Or they don’t care because it already served its purpose,” I finished with a sigh. “Anything else?”
“Portions of the mapping data,” Drew said, rubbing his eyes. He’d been in this room every waking minute, and clearly not sleeping enough. “It seems to have been scanning structural integrity points along the drainage system. Looking for weak spots, maybe places to plant charges or equipment.”
Jayce approached him and dug her fingers into his shoulders.
Drew smiled up at her with so much love and devotion that it made my heart hurt. “But not enough to tell us where they’re focusing.”
“I’m still working through the decryption,” Brie said. “I’ve isolated what looks like communications protocols—it may have been relaying data to a receiver somewhere.”
“So we have fragments.” I set my empty espresso cup down with a sharp click against the table. “An image of Enzo and someone else, some partial mapping data, and the knowledge that they’ve had a robot in the tunnels for three fucking days. That’s it?”
“It’s more than we had this morning,” Scarlett countered calmly.
“Is it? Because from where I’m standing, we’re no closer to stopping the Greek Fire than we were yesterday.” I began to rakemy fingers through my hair, stopping myself from the old habit.People would see your neck. “We should have sent it straight to Pendragon. Their cybersecurity team could have?—”
“We’ve been through this,” Rav cut in. “Brie’s the best there is.”
“At Reynolds,” I snapped. “But Pendragon has resources specifically designed for this kind of encryption.”
“Pendragon has a leak,” Rav said firmly.
“We already found the analyst who tipped off the Carabinieri.”
“Are you certain that’s the only leak?” He moved closer.
Thousands of people could die in two days because we couldn’t decrypt a robot’s memory. “If Pendragondoeshave another mole, then Fenix knows we’re here. They know everything we’re doing. All this sneaking around is completely pointless.”
“They knowPendragonis here. Noah told us specifically that they don’t knowweare here. We may not beyourteam, but we know what the fuck we’re doing.” His voice rose. “And if Brie can’t crack the code, we’ll adapt. We have the underground cameras in place. We know their entry points. We’ll catch them when they move the Greek Fire in.”
“And if we don’t?” I stepped closer to him, proving he didn’t intimidate me, and jabbed a finger at his chest. “What if they slip past us? What if the first sign we get is when people start burning alive in that amphitheater?”
He grabbed the finger, and some stupid part of me sucked in a quick breath. Not because he’d hurt me or surprised me, but because it was just as electric as the contact had been last night.
The room fell silent.
“That won’t happen,” Rav said, his voice dropping to that intimate tone I remembered too well. “Trust me, Brooke. Everything will be all right.”
The words sliced through me. He’d whispered those exact words to me the night before our final mission. Lying beside me in the dark, his fingers tracing patterns on my bare skin.
‘Trust me. Everything will be all right. I’ll protect you.’
