Page 95 of The Honeymoon Hack
Claire moved to stand beside her, holding her own tablet. She tapped the screen and turned it toward me.
Security footage filled the display, featuring four different camera feeds arranged in a grid. High-def video of Brie moving through the Atlantic section appeared in the top left feed.
“Your wife was recorded loitering in the Atlantic section around clusters fifty-seven and fifty-eight.” The timestamp read 19:13. Three of the four feeds went black, leaving only runningtime counters where the video should have been. “And then, several cameras in the area went out.”
My heart sank—they’d discovered us sooner than I’d expected.
Claire continued, her voice cold. “We don’t have proof you disabled those cameras directly, but Ronnie’s maintenance override code was used. Ronnie was speaking with me at that time. And we have footage of you in that area both before and after the incident.” She tilted her head as though challenging me to deny it. “It’s clear you cut the cameras.”
Think fast, Will. “We snuck off to make out, that’s all it was. You can ask Ronnie—he caught us.”
“Oh, we will,” said Claire. “However, the curious part is what happened after you disabled the cameras. Your wife logged into one of the KVM terminals at quarter past seven.”
Goddamnit! Brie had been so careful about wiping the server logs. They must have stored the KVM session logs somewhere else.
The dark-haired woman leaned forward again. “Let me make sure I understand your story. You disabled the security cameras in order to ‘make out’ in a server room. And while you were doing that, your co-worker was distracting Claire, and your wife happened to log into a KVM terminal?” Her eyebrow arched. “Does that sound accurate to you?”
I grasped at anything that might get us out of this mess. “She doesn’t have access to open the rack doors, let alone to log in to one of the KVMs. And before you accuse me of doing that for her, I don’t have access either.”
Claire looked at the woman across from me, and something passed between them that felt like checkmate.
“At least,” Claire said, “not before Tremblay created her new ID card.”
The woman with the dark hair glanced at the tactical guard by the door—Percival—and something like pain flickered across her face.
Claire swiped to new footage. The security office from yesterday was shown, with Rav at the computer terminal, his back strategically positioned to block the camera’s view of his screen. Scarlett argued with the guard, while Malcolm prompted Brie to accidentally-on-purpose collide with Scarlett as she waited for her turn.
“Your friend was very careful about his positioning,” the dark-haired woman said, her jaw tightening. “Almost like he was intentionally blocking the cameras while your other two accomplices were distracting the guard.”
She let the question hang for a moment, then began raising fingers as she listed my crimes. “Fake employment history. Shell company that doesn’t exist. Coordinated insertion into Mnemis. Camera bypass using stolen credentials. Fraudulent ID card creation with a sophisticated distraction operation. Unauthorized server access. This is not a series of coincidences. This is a planned infiltration operation.”
I ran through the situation, searching for weak points in their arguments or excuses I could possibly make. But every angle led to the same conclusion: we were fucked.
Completely and thoroughly fucked.
“Now.” She pulled out a clear plastic pouch from her tactical vest and withdrew a photograph, sliding it across the table toward me. “Tell me about your work with Dr. Haddad.”
The face staring back at me was familiar—a middle-aged man with warm brown skin, graying hair, and dark eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses.
I’d seen him before. Possibly at the lab at Dalhousie, but after so many years, I wasn’t sure. “I’ve never worked with anyone named Dr. Haddad.”
“He gave several talks at Dalhousie. His research assistant worked there while you did.” She tapped the photograph. “Your molecular lab work. The same field as his research. The same university. The same time period. And now you’re here, accessing the exact server where his research is stored.”
That wasn’t even on my resume. How did she?—
Claire kept asking about your time at the lab.She’d been tying me to this from my first morning.
“There’s been some confusion,” I said carefully. “I did some tech support at a lab during college—maintaining their computer systems, modifying equipment for their research team. But I never worked directly with any research scientists.”
“Tell me about Greek Fire.”
Where the hell did that question come from? “The incendiary weapon used by the Byzantine Empire?”
“Dr. Haddad’s research.” She said it as if she were correcting a student who’d given a deliberately obtuse answer. “What do you know about it?”
“Nothing. I hate to sound repetitive, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her gaze hardened. “Why did your team infiltrate Mnemis? Why did your wife access the server containing his research?” One of her hands clenched into a fist. “Are you planning to sell it? Black market? Foreign government? Or did someone pay you to retrieve it?”
