If she talked, she went to prison. If she ran, she was a fugitive. If her captors caught her again, she was theirs forever.
Lincoln’s hands had curled into fists on the desk. He made himself flatten them, press his palms against the cool surface, but the tension had moved into his forearms, his shoulders, the base of his skull.
He thought about the cuts on her arms. Parallel lines, neat and systematic. He thought about the box they’d found her in—four feet by four feet, no room to stand or stretch.He thought about the terror in her eyes that first night, the way she’d tested the door handle over and over, unable to believe it would actually open.
And now he understood why.
Someone had looked at Morgan—at Mercury, at the woman who typed in waltz time and quoted Dickinson and made him feel less alone in the world—and seen a tool. A storage device. Something to be used and contained and kept in a box when it wasn’t needed.
The rage didn’t feel hot this time. It felt cold. Settled. Like something that had taken up permanent residence in his chest and wasn’t planning to leave.
He didn’t know their names yet. Didn’t know their faces or their operation. But he knew what they’d done. They’d taken her memory—the thing that made people uncomfortable, that made her lonely, that she’d spent her whole life learning to hide—and turned it into a cage.
He was going to find them. And when he did, they would understand exactly what they’d made into an enemy.
“Gary. Display all pending requests from federal contacts.”
The messages reappeared. Twelve requests from agencies he’d worked with for years. They were asking him to help track down the woman sleeping in his guest room.
“You’ve been staring at that screen for two minutes,” Gary said. “Your heart rate has elevated. Do you want me to run a diagnostic?”
“I want you to be quiet.”
“That’s not in my programming.”
Lincoln almost smiled. Almost.
He thought about what responding to those messages would mean. The federal contacts he’d spent years cultivating. The access they’d given him, the trust they’d extended, the doors that were open because Lincoln Bollinger hadnever let them down. If he turned her in, all of that would survive. The agencies would understand. They’d probably be grateful.
And Morgan would be arrested. Processed. Held in a cell while lawyers argued about jurisdiction and evidence and intent. Maybe she’d eventually be believed. Maybe some investigator would look at the same data Lincoln had and reach the same conclusions.
But even then—what would they do with a woman carrying hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of classified intelligence in her head? They couldn’t just let her go. She’d disappear into protective custody at best. Indefinite detention at worst.
If he didn’t turn her in, he could lose everything. His reputation. His access. His freedom, if it went badly enough. The federal government didn’t look kindly on people who sheltered their most wanted.
But the math didn’t support Morgan being the architect of this attack. She didn’t have the skills. She didn’t have the resources. She didn’t have anything except a perfect memory and the terrible luck of being noticed by the wrong people.
And he knew her. Two years of exchanges. Two years of poetry hidden in code and jokes about inefficient encryption and conversations that made him feel like his brain wasn’t a liability.
And that was before he’d met her face-to-face. He knew her even more now.
Neither Mercury nor Morgan was a criminal. She was the only person who’d ever made him feel understood.
Lincoln closed the federal messages without responding.
He’d made his choice.
Whatever came next, whatever it cost him, he was on her side now. Not the agencies he’d worked with for years.Not the system he’d always believed would eventually find the right answer.
Her.
He stood up from the workstation. His body felt different—heavier, older, like he’d aged a year in the last hour. He could feel it in his shoulders, in the set of his spine. He was carrying something now that would change his posture forever.
“Gary. Lock this analysis under my personal encryption. No backup to external servers.”
“Done.” A pause. “Lincoln. Are you sure about this?”
“No.”
