Page 99 of Shattered Veil
Balor
“What the fuck do you mean, she’s not there?” I bark at Denton over the phone.
Of all days for a breach to go down. This mess required my attention in the command center and forced me to spend hours focusing on and dealing with a deeply threatening situation, so bad that Shane is still scrambling to recode and swap out motherboards on my servers.
I’ve hacked into nearly every camera in this city and stored the feeds, filling up a football field sized room of humming machines holding petabytes of data.
We get breaches all the time from the feeds, amateur geeks hacking into them and creating fast-spreading viruses that, like the strong Hudson River current, drift into our network, banging on our firewall.
I sent Denton to pick up Ella and bring her here to see all this action. Most days, my techs keep their heads down and except for the occasional burp or fart, they don’t utter a sound, making this place dreadfully boring.
Today, the command center buzzes like the trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange. I figured Ella would get a kick out of seeing all the activity.
Only, Denton got to Fredricks Elementary and found it closed. The students, teachers,andtheir aides all gone.
Ella finished up work early, left, and didn’t tell me.
I stare from my glass office above the datacenter floor, watching the chaos below me, trying to stay fucking calm.
Calls to her phone go to voicemail and her location is no longer pinging. With my data feeds down because of the breach, I can’t look up the cameras near her school to see what direction she went after dismissal.
Two more hours pass, and I’ve gotten no message back from her while Denton circles the neighborhood checking coffee bars, restaurants, and shops.
Ella has vanished.
With my baby.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Ella
Hannah and Val stare at me in my father’s living room, their jaws dropped. Their astonishment is split between my baby news and that I’ve temporarily stopped talking to the father.
Who’s a hacker for the mob. Something else I had to delicately confess. Hannah’s worried eyes kill me.
Balor’s been calling me, and I had no choice but to turn off my phone and pop out my sim card so he can’t track me. But it’s only a matter of time before he shows up here.
I’ve lit a fuse that will no doubt explode spectacularly in my face.
“He’s going to force me to marry him,” I mutter, pacing.
“And that’s bad, why?” Val asks, shaking her head.
“What do you mean, why is that bad?” Hannah jumps off the couch. “She’s a person. She’s free to do whatever she wants.”
I smile weakly, knowing when you mix in a dash of mafia into that cocktail, it paralyzes rational arguments.
Val stands and grips my shoulders. “Ella, honey, do you love him?”
“We’ve only beenseeingeach other for two weeks.” I bite a broken nail. “If seeing each other is the right word for screwing our brains out.”
“Did he ask you to marry him?” Hannah throws that out there.
“No. But he made it seem like I wouldn’t have a choice if he did.”
“Of course, you have a choice,” Hannah cries out. “What you also have is an opportunity.”
I stop dead in my tracks and stare at her.