“You already figured out what they used me for.” Morgan looked at him, and something in her expression suggested she needed him to say it—to prove he understood so she didn’t have to explain from scratch.
“Human hard drive.” Lincoln’s voice came out rougher than he intended. “No digital trail. No download logs. Just your eyes on the data and your brain storing everything they couldn’t risk extracting electronically.”
She nodded. “A human filing cabinet.” Her shoulders dropped a fraction, some tension releasing at being understood.
“Six hackers. Twelve hours.” The rhythm was back in her fingers, tapping against the cup. “They hit everything at once. FBI. DEA. Marshals. Treasury. Homeland. Federal Reserve. I wasn’t really hacking—not the way they were. I was just…”
“Watching.”
“Drowning.” The word came out sharp, sudden. “Data flooding in faster than I could process—coordinates, names, account numbers, codes—and I couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t slow down. Couldn’t even?—”
She broke off. Her breathing had gone shallow.
Lincoln moved before he made a conscious decision, crossing the space between them on the couch. He didn’ttouch her, but he was close enough that she could reach for him if she needed to.
“Sometimes I was looking at screens. Sometimes Randall would read me information,” Morgan continued, her voice barely above a whisper. “Strings of it. Coordinates. Dates. Names without faces. Military codes—KILO-SEVEN-TANGO, things like that. And I’d memorize it. All of it. Every piece.”
“Did you understand any of it?”
“No.” The word cracked in the middle. “That was the worst part. I’m carrying thousands of pieces of something, and I don’t know what any of it means. Coordinates that could be anything—safe houses or targets or graves. Hell, buried treasure, for all I know. Names that could be witnesses or criminals or?—”
Her hands were shaking now. The tea sloshed against the sides of the cup. He reached over and took it from her hands before she spilled it.
“Filing cabinets don’t ask questions.” She said it with the particular cadence of a quote. Something repeated to her until it became reflex. “That’s what Randall said, usually followed by cuts. Every time I hesitated. Every time my face showed anything except compliance.”
He set the cup on the table. When he turned back, she was staring at her own palms as if she didn’t recognize them.
“I had already worked out the frame job,” he said quietly. “Your fingerprints were on every breach. Your keystrokes, your IP address—evidence that makes you look like the architect instead of a victim.”
“Insurance.” Morgan’s voice was hollow. “That’s what he called it. Said even if I escaped, I’d never be free. The evidence would always be there. Real evidence. Evidence that?—”
She couldn’t finish.
Lincoln understood anyway. The elegance of it—and that word tasted like poison in his mind now—was that every exit was blocked. Authorities meant arrest. Running meant being hunted. Capture meant disappearing forever.
“Honestly, I didn’t even care. My sole focus was just surviving. The cuts. The box. I?—”
Her voice broke. He didn’t think. He reached out and took her hand.
Her fingers closed around his immediately, gripping with a strength that surprised him. He could feel her pulse hammering against his palm, could feel the fine tremor running through her whole body.
“I can still feel it,” she whispered. “The walls pressing in. The dark. I count the seconds in the box and lose track anyway, and my brain keeps cataloging even when I beg it to stop?—”
“Hey. You’re not there.” Lincoln kept his voice steady, an anchor. “You’re here. You’re with me.”
Her grip tightened. She was shaking hard now, but she didn’t let go. Didn’t pull away.
“I thought I was going to die in that place.”
“But you didn’t. You made it out.”
When she spoke again, her voice had shifted—steadier, but weighted with something that sounded like shame.
“I haven’t let myself think about it. The data.” She stared at their joined hands. “I’ve been so focused on just…surviving. Getting through each night. I told myself I didn’t have to think about it yet. That I could take some time for myself first.” Her jaw tightened. “But people could be dying because of what’s in my head, and I’ve been hiding in your guest room feeling sorry for myself.”
“You were recovering from torture. That’s not self-pity.”
“It’s still selfish.” She pulled her hand back, straightenedher spine like she was steeling herself. “Maybe I should just turn myself in.”
