“Thankfully, Trevor showed up before they anticipated.” Now that I knew it was probably Beau or Rhett who’d hit her with the butt of their gun, I’d be returning that blow with a lot more force when I ran into them next.
“We told Beau where to find your ring.” Ryder hung his head in frustration. “We handed it right over to the fucker.”
“Not your fault.” Audrey tossed her phone aside and went over to him. “And I told Trevor the same thing when he started blaming himself for missing the truth about Beau when he ran a background check on him after he started dating his sister.”
“I take it Natasha checked him out this weekend and didn’t find any red flags?” Reed asked Gwen over the web call.
“Yeah, my stepmom is also on the same guilt train as everyone else. Beau’s cover was as bloody good as Rhett’s, and she missed it. After we learned about Rhett, I should have checked myself.”
“How about we cut the blame all around? Mitch had over a year to plan everything out, and we’re working from behind.” I lifted my brows, eyes sharp on Audrey with a silent directive I needed her to get on board with.
“As for Beau, he’s more than likely just following Mitch’s orders. Him. Rhett. They were both Trojan horses. Beau played the long game for him, and Rhett was brought in for the final play.” Hollis joined in on the conversation while closing her laptop. “What I’m still trying to understand is, why Mitch did all of this in the way he did. Why not just give the evidence to Rhett or Beau to hang on to, come for Audrey when he was ready, then send word to Chandler that he’s actually alive and bait everyone to New Zealand? No need for the vault. For Beau dating Eden. The attack at the lodge. Clean. Easy. And boring, sure, but ...”
Ryder urged Audrey to sit, and once she was safe and buckled, he answered, “Our assumption is that Mitch is a paranoid asshole who didn’t trust anyone with what he had. We also know hethinkshe loves Audrey, so he wouldn’t want to outright put a target on her head by storing the evidence in her possession. Safer for her to have the key without knowing about it. Or for anyone to know what the key even was—probably not until the last minute, when he needed Beau to grab it over the weekend.”
“For that matter, something tells me Mitch would rather Audrey remain in our custody until the final showdown than Beau’s or Rhett’s.Maybe he was worried if they had both her and the key, they’d cut him out. Or, well, worse.”Is Mitch keeping Audrey safe from two men who might want more than just money from her?Was his twisted obsession, in some weird way, protecting her?
“I guess that makes sense.” Hollis’s hesitant tone wasn’t all that inspiring as to whether she believed our theory. “Trust is important.” She looked away from Audrey as if pained at the memory of breaking her best friend’s trust by lying to her. “I can see Mitch doing what he did for those reasons.”
“But you’re still having doubts?” I asked her.
“Just trying to wrap my head around Beau, or whatever his real name is ... moving to Colorado to embed himself in Audrey’s life in preparation for this moment,” she replied. “There had to have been an easier way to be a Trojan horse.”
“Trevor,” I reminded her. “They knew the kind of man they were up against. The security he’d have. Probably caught wind he was suspicious of Mitch and had poked around about it. They had to be careful. Play their cards right to earn his trust so they could walk right into his own house without Trevor realizing he’d invited the enemy to the dinner table.”
Hollis nodded, but there was something in her eyes that still told me she wasn’t convinced.
“Where are you in determining who’s been helping Mitch out? Hacker or insider?” Ryder turned his focus on Gwen. “Someone had to have given Beau a heads-up that Echo Team was en route.”
“It was Trevor,” Audrey whispered. “Another reason why he blames himself. He told Eden they were being relocated to the base and SEALs were on their way to get them.”
“Trevor also let Beau know we were Delta,” I said at the memory, thinking back to dinner on Saturday night.
Audrey shot me an apologetic look as if that were her fault. No, not even close. Not Trevor’s, either.
“So that’s how they knew. No one had to look into our files. We told them everything ourselves.” I cursed, tearing a hand through my hair.
“Well, this all makes a lot more sense,” Gwen said a quiet moment later. “My grandfather personally vouched for everyone who knew Echo was on their way, so I’d assumed it’d been a cybersecurity breach. But this is a best-worst-case scenario. Otherwise, if someone had hacked my grandfather’s servers, then we’d be dealing with a much bigger problem.”
“Mitch still has to have someone highly skilled helping him with everything, right?” I asked Gwen. “Anyone capable of creating Beau and Rhett’s new identities while also scrubbing CCTV evidence from existence the way they did are pros. But at least we have the original Stratos files and all the operatives’ names.” Beth saving our asses with that was another curveball I’d yet to wrap my head around. “Were the new identities provided to Beau and Rhett when they were placed into retirement different—”
“Different from now, yes,” Gwen confirmed. “Which makes things a little tricky in trying to find if any other ghost operatives in these files are assisting Mitch. A simple search of the covers the government provided them in 2013 won’t turn up anything useful if their names were changed again by this hacker.”
“Need some help from my brother on that?” Hollis offered. “Two of the best cyber minds coming together should be able to easily handle one hacker, right?”
“Any chance I can get a name and face to go with this brother of yours who seems to be my rival?” Gwen smirked.
“Maybe one day.” Hollis winked. “For now, you can get his help, though. Nothing breeds success more than healthy competition.”
Before Gwen could respond, Audrey raised her hand. “I have a question unrelated to cyber stuff. But I’m confused. If Mitch prepared everything down to the last detail, including trading me for Eden once we arrive, then doesn’t that mean he has a contingency plan if that doesn’t work out?”
I hung my head, not wanting to be the one to answer that.
Because yeah, he would.
The man had gone to major lengths to set these domino pieces up as he did, ensuring that when he knocked the first one over, they’d all fallhow he wanted them to and we’d end up in the mousetrap, while he’d walk away with Helix destroyed, rich, and worst of all ... with Audrey.
“He’sthe backup plan,” Ryder said, when clearly no one else wanted to be the one.
