Page 3 of Night Fury
Luke looked at the comparison of their skin on top of one another—Dani’s dark brown, to his olive—and used it as a visual aid, an anchor to remind him that she and Greg were right there. He would not drown. They would keep him afloat.
With more care than Luke had ever taken with anything in his whole life, he opened the folder. In it was a pack of pages with faces of people who worked for their company. Luke tilted his head as he recognized the data from their HRIS system, and then he saw it. An extra number on the first page circled, another on the next, two on the next, five after that. Every page he flipped through had a circled set of numbers.
“I don’t understand. What is this?” Luke asked, squeezing the folder too tight as his nerves began to furrow and bundle under his skin, making his heart beat faster.
“It will make sense with this.” Greg handed him another folder, his hazel eyes gleaming.
Luke snatched it from him. Opening the folder, he first saw a header containing a key with numbers and corresponding page counts, which seemed familiar though out of place, and several sets of coordinates. On the other side were pictures of mapped areas.
The question of the key picked at Luke’s mind, and he studied it until he realized what it meant. His eyes darted from one folder to another, comparing the numbers and flipping through the mapped areas and overview points of each location. The pieces fell together like that of a giant puzzle, and he realized that the key referenced the HRIS data folder, and the coordinates were made from the circled numbers within it. Luke finally looked up at Greg and Dani, and jabbed a finger at the paperwork. “Where did these come from? What’s here?”
Greg slid his arm around Daniella’s waist as he leaned forward to tap on the first set of coordinates. “This is where we’re going today.”
“And as for where we got them from”—Dani’s eyes shone as they stared into his own—“they came from Johanna.”
“What?” Luke gasped, drawing back. “That’s impossible, she’s not … We didn’t—”
Find her, he finished internally, unable to say the words aloud.
“I asked Mya to look into what Johanna was doing before she was taken,” Greg began.
Luke’s throat constricted at the word ‘taken,’ and his shoulders tensed. Dani squeezed his hand again and he gave her a small nod, trying to convince them both that he was okay.
Greg tapped on one of the circled numbers. “Mya noticed that some of the employees’ ID numbers were too long, some by one number, others by several.” Greg tapped on the roster of locations next. “Once she figured out their pattern, Mya made the key and put together whatever coordinates she could. She was able to find seventeen locations. There’s more to work through, but Mya can’t make sense of them until we find Johanna.”
Luke shook. He didn’t know whether it was from excitement, hope or fear, but it was uncontrollable. It was only when Dani gave his hand another hard squeeze that his gaze flickered to hers and he realized he hadn’t been breathing.
Breathe. You can’t have a panic attack. You need to pay attention to what’s going on here.
“It’s okay,” Dani said, as if she were reading his mind. “Just breathe, it’s okay.”
Luke nodded like a child and followed her advice: One breath, in, hold, out, second breath, in, hold, out, and another, and another.
Greg leaned forward, and Luke’s wide eyes moved to his. Greg’s presence reminded him that he was safe, that if Greg was in control, Luke could also be in control. Luke nodded again, and then once more, not trusting himself to speak.
“Luke, you know that I am going to do everything in my power to get her back to you, don’t you?” Greg said.
Luke nodded again. He felt calmer, surer, and yet somehow still as if he were floating, as if he’d taken some sort of drug, maybe speed and acid mixed together, that had him flying through the clouds with a sputtering engine, constantly high but scared of the drop he knew would come.
“And you know that I wouldn’t lie to you, right?” Greg said, his voice calm but strong.
Luke’s hand balled into a tight fist under Dani’s, and he watched as her gaze slid to Greg’s and then back to his own. That drop, the free fall, the flipping of his stomach as gravity pulled him down, it was coming so fast, so soon, he could taste it. Still, Luke answered, “Yes.”
Greg gave a short, stiff nod and then sighed. “We don’t have any way to survey these areas before we attack them.”
Luke understood immediately. They had no way to confirm if Johanna was there, if his mate would be found in this location or any of the ones on this roster.
Greg continued. “We’re going to hit them hard and fast. But by doing this we’re running a risk. If Johanna is at any of these locations, we’ll grab her, but if she isn’t then they might move her … or worse.”
Blame her.
Luke swallowed. As far as they knew, she was the only one who had come into contact with the inner workings of both their group and Zachariah’s. It would be easy for Zachariah to suspect her of slipping them information at some point, especially if they didn’t find more information at the location they planned to raid in a few short hours.
“What’s important to remember,” Dani said, snapping Luke out of his thoughts, “is that somehow she found out about these locations. She could have found them on a computer or some sort of paperwork, but I don’t think that’s the case. There’s simply too many for someone to remember unless they saw them several times.”
“Or had been at those locations multiple times,” Luke said.
“Exactly.” Greg smiled. “And if she’s been at these locations multiple times—”
