Chapter 1
Claire
Standing in an elevator, wearing a 3-D printed mask that made her look like her supervisor, Nadia, Claire Ramsey had a passing thought that the term “crazy girlfriend” just might apply to her.
In her defense, the tipping point between “crazy” and “best business practices” could be tricky in her line of work. For example, Jack wore disguises all the time when he needed to get something done.
Totally normal.
Just like flying away on a jet earlier that morning had also been normal for him.
What wasn’t normal was how long this trip had been planned, and how long Jack, Margot, and Ren would all be out of communication.
Three days.
They were all disappearing for three days and Claire was supposed to…what? Go on that cruise they bought for her and take in the sun?
Claire wasn’t built that way. And while that made her sound clingy, it wasn’t like that.
In the year since she started working with Jack, she’d gone way longer than three days without seeing or talking to him. But during those times, Margot always knew where Jack was and Claire knew where Margot was. Now Margot knew where Jack was, but Claire didn’t know where Margot was and she wasn’t able to get in touch with any of them for any reason.
Why not?
It was obvious that Jack, Margot, and Ren had gone somewhere together. But when Claire had tried to get Jack to admit as much weeks ago, he’d dodged answering.
Why not just admit that they were all going somewhere together? What was with the secrecy? It made her anxious, and she’d been doing very well with her anxiety lately, thank you very much. She still had moments, but they passed and never impacted the end-result of her work. The last couple of months, Claire had even started daring to believe that her OCD was curable.
Then this trip landed on her radar, and her newfound composure had tattered and scattered like Tibetan flags in a windstorm.
All she wanted to know was where the three of them went, why they’d hidden the fact they were going together, and why she wasn’t invited. That wasn’t asking too much, was it?
Apparently, it was because they’d never told her.
It hadn’t been until six weeks ago that it occurred to Claire that this might be a test.
Margot was always trying to get her out from behind the computer and into the field. She said that Claire was more valuable if she could do her work onsite, which seemed unnecessary. Everything was so much better when Claire was in a nice, safe office. She concentrated better. There were fewer distractions. Claire could block everything out and focus on Jack, and that was better for everyone.
Maybe this whole secret weekend was a diabolical plan to drive Claire crazy enough to “go out into the field.” And maybe Margot had intentionally let Claire see that her identity would be locked out of the building in their absence, and her key code generator disabled until their return. Perhaps Margot wanted to see if Claire would rise to the challenge of walking the walk and not just talking the talk.
Either that, or Claire was breaking into a locked facility with a stolen keycard, wearing someone else’s face. If that was the case, she was about to spend the next three days in jail because no one would be around to bail her out for breaking and entering.
You’re not going to get caught, she assured herself.
No one plans on getting caught, genius, doubt whispered back just as the elevator moved past the twelfth floor.
She took a deep breath and reminded herself not to listen to last-minute jitters.
Everyone got performance anxiety at show time. At least, that’s what she’d heard, and it was good for her sanity to believe it at the moment.
Claire’s track record wasn’t exactly packed with instances of her doing the brave thing. She was more the type to calculate the probability of success and choose the safest route.
Well, not anymore. Tonight, she was unveiling a brand new Claire.
If Margot and Jack had devised this whole plan of dropping off the earth to get her out of her shell, then … job well done. Claire was sweating through her business blazer and every inch of skin itched under her Nadia mask, but she was definitely out of her Claire shell and ready to blow their minds with her newly acquired B&E skills.
If this was a test, she was on track to pass it. This wasn’t some idea she’d hatched up last night. She’d spent six weeks revisiting every detail and making sure every base was covered.
“You’ve got this,” Claire muttered through a calming exhale, willing the elevator to finish its climb. It must be her nerves, but it felt like it was going half-speed.
You ride this elevator a minimum of four times a day, a little voice whispered in the back of her mind. You know what slow feels like. You know something is different right now.
No. No. No.
Starting to second-guess things now would feed a runaway mental train she had no desire to play chicken with. There was no slow-elevator conspiracy. Her brain only wanted an excuse to freak out.
Well, too bad.
“I’m doing this,” she muttered to herself. Followed by, “I’m doing this. I’m doing this.”
Uh-oh. She was starting to think and speak in threes. That wasn’t a good sign.
Claire took another deep breath, closing her eyes and reminding herself that she had two choices in the moment: run and hide, or take a chance.
“Actions speak louder than words,” Claire whispered as the elevator dinged its arrival on the top floor.
This was it. Game on.
She pulled Nadia’s forged keycard out and glanced at her watch. The current time was 5:21:46. In 74 seconds, she would have a ten-second window to enter a sixteen-digit code. If she missed the window, then that was that.
Game over.
The sixteen-digit code regenerated every ten seconds, and Claire knew the number the system would accept at 5:23:00 like most girlfriends knew the code to their man’s lock screen. The algorithm that generated the code was supposed to be unpredictable, but math was math and Claire had always been good with numbers.
Using Nadia’s face to get inside without tripping alarms was the hard part. Claire dug around in her replica of Nadia’s purse to make standing around look a little more natural to whoever was watching on the cameras.
One minute left.
When the rummaging started to feel a little excessive, Claire pulled out her phone and started reciting the sixteen-digit code in her head—looping it again and again (and again)—to distract herself from the ping in her gut that whispered she was missing something.
She refused to listen.
What if Jack doubted himself when he was out in the field? What if he flinched back when he needed to push forward?
Where would they all be then?
Claire needed to do what Margot had been pushing her to do for months and start stepping into her power.
She. Could. Do. This.
When time hit 5:22:50, Claire walked over to the door, key card ready.
Three… two… one.
Claire swiped the card and punched in the sixteen digits. The light flashed green, and the door lock released.
Boom. She was in.
Claire wanted to congratulate herself on ninety-six hours well-spent to get that part right, but this was a timed event. She had thirty seconds to enter a secondary code inside the doors, and two minutes to log in at Nadia’s desk.
You’re missing something, a voice in the back of her mind whispered. When Claire ignored it, it upped its taunting. You’d need an abacus to count what you’re missing right now.
Refusing to be bullied by her own cowardice, Claire entered the standard code into the secondary security system.
Another green light. Hurdle two complete, and one more to go.
A study of Nadia had revealed she was one of those types who only changed her password when a system popup forced her. Those popups appeared every three months in the office, and her last password change had been two weeks ago. She’d reset it to [email protected][email protected] Hard to guess, but easy to memorize.
Quick steps took Claire from the second security panel to Nadia’s computer. The press of a key brought the computer out of sleep mode, and all Claire had to do was type in the password before the lights for the entire floor came on as if it were normal work hours.
Success! The floor was officially clear … so why was she twice as nervous as she’d been on the elevator?
Claire looked up from Nadia’s screen and down the hallway to Margot’s office.
Don’t do it, an invisible voice warned. You won’t see what’s coming next.
If the little voice hadn’t swayed her before, it was definitely falling on deaf ears now that her plan was on track. She refused to allow vague fears to dictate her actions when she was standing in the middle of planned success.
What was the point of breaking in only to run away from what you came for?
Going into Margot’s office was a requirement now.
Stepping away from Nadia’s desk, Claire walked down the hall to Margot’s office. She walked these halls every day, but nerves suddenly had everything feeling unfamiliar and a bit hostile.
A desk can’t be hostile, she reminded herself. A desk was a desk. She knew that. This new sensation of being watched from every direction was a trick of the mind.
Everything’s fine, she coached herself, still walking. It’s your imagination. Nothing’s moved. You’re fine. It’s fine.
You’re missing something.
No. That was not the inner voice she needed right now. Ignoring it, Claire doubled-down on her pace until her hand wrapped around the cool doorknob. A turn and a step later, she was in.
See? Claire thought as she stepped into the familiar office. That wasn’t so hard. No reason to—
Her eyes locked on the only movement in the room: a timer counting down on the wallscreen.
3:32 … 3:31 …
That was new.
What was it counting down to? And why? Claire had no idea, which meant she didn’t know where to start in stopping it. Although finding its control panel seemed like a great first step.
Knowing Margot’s desk was the best place to start, Claire raced over and took a seat.
“Okay,” she breathed, trying to focus. “There should be a prompt or something, right? Do I just need to log in?”
Pulling a recorder out of her pocket, Claire pressed play.
“Let’s get to work,” Margot’s voice said out of the speaker, which woke up the screen but did nothing to stop the clock. Claire tried moving the cursor over the timer and clicking. Nothing.
I told you, the little voice in her gut taunted.
“Shut up!” she hissed. “You couldn’t have seen this coming.”
You’re right, it replied. I saw the other thing you missed.
No. No. No.
She couldn’t entertain self-defeating taunts right now and start breaking down. She needed to focus on answers, not fears.
“Think, think, think,” she muttered to herself, looking around. The countdown was probably a secondary alarm. Margot didn’t leave anything to chance, and this building was basically her castle.
Claire closed her eyes, imagining the room with all its details before looking to see if anything new had been installed that might account for this unforeseen hiccup.
The room was exactly how she remembered it, and the clock was nearing two minutes.
She needed to make a choice: did she want to find out where Jack and Margot were, or did she want to keep looking for the code to the counter until security forces descended upon her?
Given that the latter seemed inevitable at this point, Claire moved back to the desk and went all in on Plan A: Find out where everyone was.
She selected the next file on the recorder and pressed play.
“Authorize Claire Ramsey as a user,” Margot said from the speaker, and Claire swallowed back her guilt for breaking her boss’s trust.
“Welcome, Claire,” the computer said.
“Hi there,” she replied, trying for normal. “Pull up the GPS locator, please.”
The wall filled with an atlas image of the earth. Claire took a breath, telling herself she was ready for both a best- and a worst-case scenario with what came next.
“Show me the locations of Jack, Margot, and Ren,” she commanded.
An Error icon popped onto the screen before the computer replied. “I’m sorry. That function is unavailable.”
Unavailable? How was that possible?
“Show me their last known locations,” Claire said, glancing at the countdown clock again. 1:43 …1:42 … 1:41 …
A glowing dot appeared in the middle of the South Pacific.
Well, that wasn’t helpful.
Claire pulled out the keyboard Margot never used, her hands flying over the keys to pull up the flight plans filed by the pilots of both Margot’s and Jack’s flights.
There were none. As far as paper trails went, their flights didn’t exist.
What was going on? It was one thing not to leave a trail in the real world, but Margot always kept her own records. Nothing was ever omitted there.
1:04 … 1:03 … 1:02 …
“Focus, focus, focus,” she coached herself. What was she missing?
0:53 … 0:52 …
She clicked on the countdown clock, searching for its source code. It didn’t seem to be attached to the computer’s operating system.
Focus, she told herself. You have forty-eight seconds. What are you going to do with them?
Taking a moment to reflect, Claire made the choice to pull up the security cameras in Margot’s jet hangar and rewound the footage to when she knew Margot left. When she reached the part where Margot pulled up her Tesla, Claire pressed play.
An SUV pulled up behind the Tesla and Ren stepped out. He motioned for two men to stay with Margot before stepping onto the jet for a security check. No doubt it had already been screened, but Ren never took chances when it came to Margot’s safety. Ever.
Everything looked normal to Claire, except for the amount of luggage. Margot was a heavy packer, but the bags for this trip made it look more like she was moving into a second home than taking a weekend trip.
Based on the body language of the men loading the jet, most of the boxes appeared quite light. They definitely weren’t moving gold bricks. And was that a hat box? The last time Claire had seen one was in her grandmother’s closet, but it had looked similar to what she was seeing now. In fact, it looked like 90% of everything being loaded might very well be clothing of some sort.
Intrigued, Claire didn’t notice the countdown clock again until it stopped.
0:00.
No alarms went off. No red lights started flashing. It just zeroed out and…nothing.
Was it a decoy? That would be far too convenient, and Claire had a sheen of sweat over her entire body that told her the countdown clock definitely came with consequences. If nothing else, it was only a matter of time before security popped up like a jack-in-the-box.
She stared at the office door, half waiting for someone to bust in and catch her. Or maybe they’d come at her through Margot’s private elevator.
Whatever the case, she’d look them in the eye when they came and accept her fate.
“You prioritize like a woman in love,” a baritone voice said from behind her, causing her to literally jump up out of her seat and scream like a little girl.