Page 101 of Every Last Breath

Harper clutched her pearls and wrapped an arm around herself. “I have a program where I can run personal data to help pinpoint a code faster. Most people pick passwords for their private laptops and cell phones from personal identifiers. If I had more information about her, it would speed up the process.”

The news was shifting from iffy to not too bad. “Collectively, those of us in this room probably know everything there is to know about Maddox.”

“First, I need to do some NAND mirroring.”

“What’s that?” Castle asked. “No geek speak.”

“The smartphone only gives you ten attempts at entering a password before you’re permanently blocked. I need to clone the NAND chip where the encryption security is onto a field programmable gate array chip and remirror the FPGA every nine tries, so I can input an infinite number of passcodes until I find the right one.”

Hope welled, and Cole prayed Novak wasn’t hurting Maddox. “I don’t care how it’s done, Harper. Just do it.”

Chapter 28

Somewhere along the Potomac River

9:52 a.m. EDT

A headache jackhammered Maddox’s brain. The foul smell of decay and mold smashed through the dissipating drowsy haze. Dryness caked her throat like she’d swallowed sawdust.

She sat against a wall, wrists bound above her head and ankles zip-tied together. Her heart lurched as details came back in a brutal rush. Electric blue light crackling. The grip of excruciating pain—a hundred fists twisting. The pungent scent of ozone.

Novak. It had to be.

Pressure built behind her eyes, her vision clearing. She was in a room. Decrepit, wide space. Broken windows. Walls smeared with black soot and grime.

A whisper of death brushed her hand, creeping, creeping down her forearm. Prickles slinking over her elbow, tickling. Goose bumps raked her clammy skin. She looked up at her wrists, bound to a rusty metal bar bolted to the wall.

Prickly, black straw-like legs crawled on her bicep, inching closer to her face. Not into her shirt. Not in her hair. Not in her ear. Please. She jerked, yanking down hard on the bar.

Novak drifted into sight, stealthy and eerie as a nightmare.

Terror slithered in along with him.

He knelt on the debris-covered floor beside her. “Ah, you’re awake.” He swept the spider off her arm into a pile of rotted wood.

Sweat matted her hair to her forehead and cheek. Panic cramped her chest as she stared into his empty, dead eyes. “You don’t have to do this.” Good, her voice sounded steady, calm. Even though her heartbeat was a feral, desperate roar in her ears. “We’ll back off.”

“Don’t lie. Not to me.” He gestured to his chest as if offended. “I hold you in high esteem. Don’t take that away.” His words rolled in a social tone like they were colleagues or business competitors, instead of sounding like the madman he was.

“What do you want?” Trembling, she tamped down the fear—of spiders, of Novak, of dying. She scanned the room for Novak’s son but didn’t see him. “Why are you doing this?”

“I suspect you have answers to both questions.”

He wanted revenge for his family, and she’d gotten too close at the hotel.

“Are you going to kill me?” She wasn’t ready to die, not here, not a victim. But if he was going to kill her, why hadn’t he already? A bullet in her head would’ve been easier than holding her hostage. Unless he needed her for leverage.

“I don’t want your life.” He tilted his head to the side, staring at her. “I want you as bait.”

Bait. In less than three days, she’d gone from A-team operative on the rise, to agency tool being worked like an asset, and now damn bait. Liability.

“I’ve every confidence your scarred-face man has the Gray Box stirred into a frenzy to find you. But I needed to galvanize their sense of urgency. So I made a little phone call.”

A smug smile played at his lips.

Her breath caught and held.

Screwing with her team by nabbing her wasn’t enough. This sick bastard wanted to play on their testosterone and alpha-male instincts—both of which, when dialed too high, became as volatile and unstable as nitroglycerin.