Page 75 of Peak’s Code

“We had one, but you showed up,” Peak said.

“Good thing I did, too,” Warden said. “I saved your ass.” Peak scoffed at his friend, and she cleared her throat.

“Can we get back to the evidence?” she asked. Maeve carefully spread the strip across the table. "Tide Before Dawn."

Peak slid a pen toward her. "What're you doing?"

"Write,” he ordered.

She looked around. "On a diner table?"

"It's laminated,” he said. She smiled despite herself and grabbed a napkin and began writing possibilities for solving the clue. She wrote the words: tide, current, flow, transfer, upload, and sync. None felt right when she sat back to look over her work.

Maeve stared at the words and then suddenly stopped. "Oh."

Peak looked up immediately. "What?"

She pointed to the word current. "Wren hated duplicate meanings."

"So?" he asked.

"So—” Maeve grabbed a napkin. She wrote the words tide and current, and then beneath it, she wrote: Current = Electrical.

Peak froze. "Oh..."

"What?" Warden asked, looking between the two of them.

"The steam pipes,” Peak said.

"What about them?" Warden asked.

"They weren't steam,” Peak explained.

Maeve's pulse quickened. "They were conduit."

Peak nodded. "Electrical raceways." She looked down at the coded strip again, rereading all the words that she had written on the first napkin. Current, tide, flow, transfer, electricity. She had a feeling that they weren’t dealing with water or boats at all. It was all about the networks.

"Oh my God—” she whispered, "Wren wasn't talking about shipping."

Peak was already opening his tablet. "She was warning us about the power grid." Within seconds, maps filled the screen of substations, transmission lines, and old utility corridors. Peak zoomed in on Cambridge. There was one abandoned seafood processing plant there, and it connected directly to the perfect place for them to be holding Wren.

Maeve's breath caught. "A data center."

Peak nodded slowly. "Hidden behind an electrical transfer station."

She looked at him. "It isn't a trafficking warehouse at all."

"No, it's a server farm." The realization hit both of them simultaneously. The Director wasn't simply moving women; he was moving information, money, and even identities. The women were only part of the operation. Wren hadn't been kidnapped just because she was brilliant. She'd been kidnapped because someone needed her to build something inside that facility.

Peak leaned back. "We've been looking at the wrong target."

Maeve nodded. "The warehouse is camouflage. The real operation is underground.” She pointed at the map.

Warden sat back into the booth and sipped his coffee. “I really hate where this is heading,” he grumbled.

Peak turned the tablet around, ignoring Warden’s sudden bad mood. "We're not raiding a warehouse."

Warden frowned. "Then what are we raiding?"