“It’s good to see you,” Hawk said with a faint smile.
“You too. I just wish it was under different circumstances. Harboring you as a man on the lam isn’t how I envisioned our reunion.”
“Me either.”
Hawk shuffled toward the bathroom and took care of business before heading back to bed. On his way to the couch, something on Ray’s desk caught Hawk’s eye. Hawk noticed a folder with a code name on it. He eased down the hall to make sure Ray’s light was out. Satisfied that he had turned in for the night, Hawk eased back to the desk and rifled through the papers.
Hawk then stopped as his mouth fell agape.
I need to talk to Alex.
CHAPTER 2
Brighton, England
ALEX DUNCAN LOATHED MONDAYS for many reasons, reasons far beyond their simple existence on a calendar. Ultimately, they served as a stark reminder of the previous life she once had. She considered her job with Firestorm to be about as perfect as it could get, using her skills to shut down terrorists and keep Americans safe from rogue attacks. But today she stared at herself in the mirror as she combed her hair in an effort to look presentable before trudging off to her humdrum job.
When Hawk vanished, Alex and Blunt both decided they should do the same. Staying hidden in the U.S. was a difficult task given the amount of resources at President Michaels’ disposal. So, they both headed to Europe—Blunt to the coast of Italy, while Alex went to England. Alex wasted little time in finding a job working for Lloyd’s Bank in Brighton, a sleepy seaside town in the southern part of the country.
Using her hacking skills, Alex created an alternate identity for herself, complete with a healthy resume. However, she was careful to make sure that it didn’t stand out so much that it seemed overly impressive to her prospective employers. Enough to get a job working for the company’s cyber security division was her aim—and she succeeded.
In the months since the Firestorm team had parted ways, Alex struggled with the aftermath. The camaraderie she had experienced on a regular basis with Hawk trumped the mundane moments of sitting alone and pecking away on her keyboard. Yet now this was all she did with no respite. She shied away from developing any semblance of a social life given that she might have to disappear any moment and wouldn’t want to leave behind any clues, much less deal with the burden of lying to everyone she met.
However, Alex found one silver lining in her new life—access. Working for Lloyd’s gave her the ability to snoop without drawing much attention. She managed to hide her cyber footprint as she searched financial records and dug into the backgrounds of many aliases of terrorists and politicians alike. Although her work at Firestorm afforded Alex an array of resources, gathering the type of information that gave the team leverage over certain suspects also risked her exposure. One careless move and someone at NSA would have found great pleasure in turning her in to the agency’s brass. But at Lloyd’s, that precaution wasn’t so necessary as long as she maneuvered carefully through the bank’s system.
Working long hours and cyber snooping after hours, Alex compiled quite a treasure trove of useful information about some of Firestorm’s biggest enemies as well as the biggest threats to America. However, she couldn’t stop thinking about Hawk.
Before he disappeared, Hawk left Alex a note about a web-based account that he’d set up for the two of them. Instead of emailing messages back and forth to one another and risking the threat of capture, he suggested they communicate solely through writing drafts in the email account and leaving the messages unsent. By doing so, the messages would never be intercepted, allowing them to communicate as securely and discreetly as possible. The protocol was to erase the messages once the other person had read them.
Hawk had only sent two messages. The first one asked her if she’d heard anything about Shane Samuels’ status. When Hawk decided to leave, Samuels was still in a coma. And as far as she knew, Samuels still was. His tenuous health situation gave her pause before deciding to leave the U.S. Blunt assured her that he’d take care of Samuels, getting him out of the hospital to somewhere safe before they left. But that promise went unfulfilled when Samuels was mysteriously moved elsewhere. She pressed the hospital for information about Samuels’ transfer, but various nurses and supervisors denied her requests. Using her online sleuthing skills, Alex slipped into the hospital one night and asked one of the nurses for any details available on Samuels. She refused at first until Alex threatened to make public the married woman’s affair with the hospital administrator. However, the only information available about Samuels appeared in a locked file that mentioned his transfer was a matter of national security. Despite her best attempts, Alex had failed to unearth any further news on him. He could’ve died or remained in a coma—or he could’ve been walking the streets healed and healthy. There was no way of finding out, she eventually concluded. Shedecided not to let Samuels’ situation thwart her efforts to escape to Europe.
The second message Hawk sent pertained to where he planned to hide. Using a set of coordinates, he conveyed his location in the Al Hajar Mountains.
“Why would he go to Oman?” she wondered aloud when she figured out the meaning of his message before deleting it. “I guess it’s as good of a hiding place as any.”
Eight months had passed since she last read a message from Hawk, though that didn’t deter her hope that she’d someday receive one.
Alex’s daily morning routine consisted of grabbing a coffee at the corner bakery near her flat before visiting the library to check for a message from Hawk. She questioned her sanity for such
