Chapter Thirty Seven

Chapter Thirty Seven
Bexley

Dad rushed out to greet me as we arrived. I ran into his arms and hugged him tightly.

“I’ve missed you so much, sweetheart,” he expressed, burying his face in my hair. “Have they been looking after you? Are you hurt?” he asked, pulling back to scan his eyes over my for any sign of an injury. “I’ve ben so worried about you.”

“Dad, I’m fine,” I promised, “but I could eat my way through your pantry; I’m starving.”

Dad chuckled. “Let’s get my princess something to eat,” he said, putting his arm around me.

“And us,” Dominic piped up behind us. “Don’t forget us, Uncle Jaxx. I’m sure those energy bars Ulrich gave to us were out of date. They took ages to chew.”

Dad and Uncle Zane ushered us inside their secret base. Their ship, the Triumph, bobbed lazily on the ocean, two miles away from land. Its purpose was to detect any vessels approaching the island. Dad and Zane used jet skis to travel back and forth, spending most of their time out on the water. The beachside base looked like a paradise retreat, surrounded by palm trees with hammocks, sun loungers, individual sleeping pods that were splayed out on jetties, and a main building with a round roof that resembled a shabby straw hat. Either they bought it straight from a holiday company or they purposefully designed it that way to blend in with the other resorts. I couldn’t wait to enjoy a pina colada as I soaked up the sun. Emilio had wasted no time in acquainting himself with the beach; his skin had a sun kissed glow as if he had been sitting out in it all day. I took a seat at the rustic dining table and gazed out through the panoramic ceiling-to-floor glass doors at the moonlit view. My men slumped down onto the chairs beside me. We were all exhausted after our ordeal. This mission had zapped all our energy. All we wanted was to eat, then find somewhere to crash out.

Unlike Alpha One, this place had one resident member of staff, a housekeeper called Mae. She was shorter than me, and wore her dark hair up in a tight bun. It was difficult to determine her age because she looked amazing. Dad told me she was 43, unmarried, with no children. Those were the requirements to stay here and work for them. Mae didn’t speak fluent English, but she understood the basics. Dad asked her to bring us some food, and she obliged. I caught the strange way Uncle Zane and my father were looking at her as she bustled past us, and the meaningful smiles she threw back at them. It made me wonder if there was more to their arrangement than just “keeping house” and if it was more like “playing house”. That made me shudder. I did not want that imagery floating around inside my head. Mae laden the table with bread, meats, cheeses, and fruit, then left to fetch some drinks. Uncle Zane accompanied her and offered to carry a tray. My eyes almost bugged out of my head as I noticed his hand slide to her ass as they were leaving the room.

“What is it?” Asher asked me, smirking.

“Nothing,” I dismissed.

He chewed the inside of his cheek as if he found my reaction amusing.

Had he seen them? Did he know something that I didn’t?

I glanced around the room at all the oceanic artifacts that had been collected over the years, wondering whether my mother had touched any of those items or where they had been accumulated beyond her time. Mum loved to scuba dive. It would be just like her to form a collection of large shells and remnants of a shipwreck.

God, I miss her.

Mae and Zane came back as we were all eating. He stayed but she retired to her bedroom. Ulrich and Teddy followed her with their eyes as she left, then swung their gaze around to Dad and Uncle Zane. They shared a knowing look that I had seen before in the Wolfe brothers, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it.
Dominic produced the flash drives from his backpack. We were all eager to get started. After our early-morning feast, we made our way through to the control room to download the information from the drives. Just like in Svalbard, the control room had a wall of computer monitors that curved halfway around the room, and a complex-looking panel with thousands of buttons and knobs.

“Is everyone ready?” Dominic asked, looking around at us all.

“Let’s do it,” Asher prompted, then exhaled a shaky breath.

This was the moment of truth, and it was as if no one dared to breathe. One by one, Dominic plugged in the USBs and we saw the search bars pulsing across the monitors as the computer began decrypting each one. But just as it scanned the final flash drive, another pop-up box appeared, asking us for the key.

“Shit!” Dominic hissed, then huffed into his hands. “Now what do we do? We can’t take wild guesses or it will lock us out.”

Asher flicked his gaze to me. “Bexley . . . what do we do?”

All eyes landed on me and the pressure was tremendous. I took a deep breath to steady my nerves and thought about it logically.

“The only key I have is this,” I said, taking hold of the pendant.

I removed the chain from around my neck and looked at the charm more closely. There were indentations at the bottom of the column as if it fit inside something else. I already knew it was the key to open the box, but what if it didn’t just unlock the box, what if it was the key to unlocking the files too?

My eyes landed on the final flash drive and noticed the circular hole in the middle. It was just a hunch, but as I began to insert the pendant into the hole, I found that it fit. The red triangle on the screen with an exclamation mark in the middle was replaced by a green tick, then the computer continued the download. Once it reached 100%, we were then asked to type in a four-letter password to access the files.

Asher removed his glasses and scrubbed a hand over his stressed-out face. Dad couldn’t sit still and paced the room anxiously. Braxton was looking fed up to hell, and Dom looked as if he wanted to bang his head on the control panel and cry. Zane scowled at the screen, as did Ulrich. Teddy wasn’t looking at anything in particular, he just massaged his forehead as if he had a headache, Emilio slumped back in his chair with a sigh, but Cruz remained calm.

“What do the symbols represent again?” Cruz asked, sparking Asher’s interest.

Asher whirled around to face his brother with wide-eyed astonishment.

“Yes!!” he exclaimed. “Of course.” Asher turned to me. “They represent the elements, don’t they? Earth, wind, fire, and water. But what do the other two mean? I can’t remember.”

“The other two symbols represent “universe” and “life”,” I told him.

The corners of Asher’s eyes twitched as he thought. “Life is the most precious gift anyone can give. Your mother loved you, Bexley. She would want you to embrace your life and live it to the fullest.”

Dominic typed the word “life” into the keyboard and hit “enter”.

The room illuminated with a bright green hue as billions of symbols fluttered across the screen. File boxes popped up one by one. We had done it. We unlocked the protected files, and now all that classified information was at our fingertips, we could finally identify the traitors and clear our names. The download was complete and Dad and Zane spent the next hour clicking through each file, their faces twisting with rage at what they found. Our uncles and my husbands peered at the screen, shaking their heads with disdain. Whatever it was, it was bad. We were all in agreement that the truth had to come out. Susan wasn’t just a turncoat agent; she stole information from countries across the world and sold them to the highest bidder. She had an elite network of spies working for her, influencing world leaders like they were all puppets on strings. Those protestors outside the Houses of Parliament were right. Our elections were being rigged. Her people were feasting around the table at number 10 Downing Street, blackmailing MPs like Malcolm into doing their bidding. The world had to know. We had to stop Susan once and for all.

Dad removed the pendant key and gave it back to me. “The charm contains the evidence, Bexley. It’s all on there—everything we need to expose Susan, and put a stop to her reign of terror once and for all. Your mother entrusted it to you to keep it safe.”

I secured the chain around my neck just as the monitors began to glitch.

We all glanced at the combined screens on the wall as a woman’s face appeared. Her blonde hair was pulled back from off her face in a military-style twist, and her blue eyes stared ahead like ice chasms. Whoever she was, her cold, unyielding gaze held no emotion as she commanded the attention of the room. Her face was unfamiliar to me, but Zane, Dad, Ulrich, and Teddy blanched as if they had just seen a ghost. Dominic frantically typed away on the keyboard, but nothing he did made the slightest bit of difference. We had been hacked, and this mystery woman was now in control.

“It’s her,” Braxton uttered. “She’s a lot older than she is in the photo that Dad showed to us, but I would recognise her anywhere,” he remarked, gritting his teeth with contempt.

“Chameleon,” Uncle Zane addressed her coolly. “Or do you still go by Susan?”

My eyes rounded on the woman who murdered my mother, sickened by her false smile.

“I believe you have something of mine?” she stated, looking directly at me. “I have something belonging to you too,” she announced, turning the camera lens to show another angle of the room she was in.

I recoiled with horror as the struggling figure came into focus. She had Caz gagged and bound to a chair. Tear tracks glistened on her cheeks; her eyes were bloodshot and raw. Susan angled the camera away from my helpless friend and glared at me as if she meant business.

“I was thinking . . . perhaps you would be willing to trade?” she purred as if she held the upper hand.