Page 50 of The Lazarus Protocol

Fine. Whatever he was told to make up later.

Kind of like when she’d called in hours ago, a day ago, whenever that was. He’d used voice augmentation and had the conversation with her as her “supervisor” ordering her to retrieve the drone by whatever means necessary.

Now Simon said, “State your passcode.”

She rattled off a series of letters, symbols, and numbers, and he established that it really was her. Voice analysis confirmed. “The Division Zero team was ordered to kill me.”

His screen flashed. Her dossier appeared—along with a new note at the bottom.

OPSEC COMPROMISED. ASSET UNCONFIRMED.

“I’m afraid you have a bigger problem than that.” Simon paused. “I guess you don’t know.” He figured his contact had added this note to her file. The one that now flashed with another message.

FURTHER CONTACT SUSPENDED.

“Don’t know what?”

“We only have a few seconds before this call will terminate. You’ve been burned.”

“What? That’s insane.”

He scrolled down the notes on her file. Division Zero had been dispatched to retrieve her. Exfil confirmed. She called in and was ordered to relieve them of tech they had. The why wasn’t really relevant—she only needed to do as ordered. “Thank you for your service.”

“Are you…kidding?” she sputtered. “This can’t be⁠—”

The call cut off abruptly.

On his screen, lines of code popped up. His mouse arrow moved across the open database as if someone else had remotely logged into his computer, and now text scrolled down her personnel file.

SUBJECT CONSIDERED DANGEROUS.

ELIMINATE ON SIGHT.

He grabbed the mouse and tried to click out of the file, but nothing happened. Three dots popped up on the messaging app in the corner of his screen.

Do not interfere.

Simon stared at the words. Whoever she was, Stephanie-Jo now faced a ticking clock on her life. She wouldn’t last much longer in this world, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. As soon as she showed her face in public, someone would take her out. The last thing he needed right now was an attack of conscience. In this business, ruthlessness was the only currency people respected.

Whoever this was on the other end of his internal messaging, they were going to do whatever they were going to do, and Simon would most likely be finished as well when it all went down in flames.

He needed a way to contain the fallout.

When it seemed they were done augmenting the files he had open, Simon grabbed his mouse. Watched the chat. Nothing. He clicked over to the Division Zero file and added a note that they had failed to follow orders.

If he was going down, everyone else was going with him.

EIGHTEEN

Undisclosed Location, France

Steph tossed the phone back at the Division Zero guy and walked off the plane, more than ready to get out of this confined space. At least he’d cut her hands free. Now her fingers itched to wrap around her necklace and play the only card she had left.

Her eyes widened and she about tripped off the last step, drawing the attention of these Division Zero guys.

A wide stone structure towered over a lake to the right of where she stood. In the expanse of land between, an open strip had been graded into a runway that ran down the center. To the left was a wall of tightly packed trees that probably left the ground between each towering spruce in near darkness. Not a place she wanted to get lost in, even if she wanted to find a way out. But she might not have a choice if they’d simply brought her here to get her to let her guard down so they could kill her.

The dense trees circled everything, even the far side of the lake at the base of the hill where the castle watched over everything, an impenetrable moat of foliage that would prevent anyone from stumbling on this place by accident.