“You think he’ll talk?” Nick asked without looking away from the path ahead. The ambient glow of the dashboard highlighted his profile, all sharp angles and focused concentration.
David considered the question, turning it over in his mind like a puzzle piece, examining it from all sides. “Depends on who he’s more afraid of—Zach or whoever hired him.”
“Zach can be pretty terrifying.”
“True.” David smirked. “Zach’s also right in front of him, which gives his fear something concrete to focus on. If he’s more afraid of some vague, distant threat, someone who might retaliate against his family or destroy his life in ways Zach won’t, that’s tougher to leverage.”
Nick grunted in agreement, downshifting as the trail steepened. The ATV’s motor whined, compensating, finding traction on the loose soil. “You got anything off his device?”
“Some.” David let his awareness sink into the data pulled during those crucial seconds while the saboteur had been pinned. “Let’s see… basic corruption protocols, timed deployment, nothing sophisticated. The interesting part is what’snotthere.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning no fingerprints. Not digital ones, anyway.” David’s fingers moved across the screen, highlighting sections of code, following the architecture of the malware. “Surface level crude, but effective. This was written to be disposable. One-time use, no callbacks, no command-and-control infrastructure. Whoever created it didn’t want any connection back to themselves.”
“Professional?”
“Very. Not an amateur.” The word tasted sour on his tongue. David preferred an amateur, someone sloppy, someone who left trails. Professionals were harder to track, harder to predict, harder to stop. “The device itself is probably a burner, purchased with cash, untraceable. We might get lucky with forensics, but I’m not holding my breath.”
They emerged from the thickest part of the jungle, the trail widening as they approached the resort’s outer perimeter. In the distance, lights glowed like earthbound stars—the main building, the guest cottages, the landscaped paths that made everything look effortless and natural courtesy of the small army of groundskeepers who maintained the illusion.
Home.
“Lena’s probably wondering where you are,” Nick said, and there was something in his voice—amusement, or meaning, or both.
Heat, which had nothing to do with the tropical climate, crept up David’s neck. “She worked second shift today, so she’ll be sound asleep now. She won’t even notice I’m gone.”
“Right. Because she definitely didn’t watch you leave. Definitely didn’t worry when you didn’t come back at the normal time. Definitely isn’t checking her phone every five minutes.”
“How would you even know that?”
Nick tapped his temple, grinning. “Telepath, remember? Also, I have eyes. You two aren’t as subtle as you think you are.”
David wanted to argue, to insist that his relationship with Lena was normal, appropriate, completely professional. But the words wouldn’t come, mostly because they’d be lies. Nick would know they were lies, and there seemed little point in lying to a telepath who had probably caught him thinking about Lena seven hundred times today.
“It’s complicated,” he said in what was perhaps the greatest understatement of his life.
“It’s not.” Nick guided the ATV around the final curve, the main building coming into full view now, all elegant architecture and warm lighting that promised comfort and luxury. “You like her. She likes you. The complication is you making it complicated.”
“She works for us. She’s in danger because of us. Someone is trying to hurt her because she’s connected to the resort, to me, to—” David cut himself off, recognizing the spiral before it fully formed. “It’s not that simple.”
“No,” Nick agreed, his voice gentling. “No, it’s not simple, but it’s also not impossible. You’re allowed to want things for yourself, David. You’re allowed to have things that aren’t about work or the company or protecting everyone else.”
The ATV rolled to a stop in the staff parking area, tucked discreetly beside the building and surrounded by foliage, where guests wouldn’t see the utilitarian vehicles and equipment.
Nick killed the engine, and silence descended—not complete, never complete on a tropical island, but the absence of even the wheels’ hum made the ambient sounds of the night now audible. Wind whispering through palms. The buzz of insects. The eternal murmur of waves against the shore.
David sat there for a moment, not quite ready to move, to face what came next. They had a prisoner to interrogate. Questions to ask. Answers to extract. Beyond that, the larger mystery still loomed—who wanted to destroy them, and why?
Underneath all of that, woven through everything else, was Lena. The way she’d looked at him this afternoon while he explained his plan. The worry in her eyes that she’d tried to hide. The trust she’d placed in him despite barely knowing him, despite having every reason to keep her distance from wealthy men with power and secrets.
“I don’t want her hurt,” David mumbled. “Not because of me. Not because of this.”
“I know.” Nick’s hand landed on his shoulder, supportive. “So we make sure she isn’t. We stop whoever’s behind this, and we keep her safe. That’s what we do—we protect our people.”
Our people.
The phrase settled on David like a key finding its lock. That’s what Lena had become, wasn’t it? Somewhere between her first day at the resort and tonight, she’d graduated from employee to something more. Something that mattered in ways that had nothing to do with organizational charts or professional hierarchies.
