Unmasking Ghost

Turbulence

Lara POV

I finally retrieve the laptop. It's been sandwiched between the others, and it's flat. I manage to find a power source in the toilet floor of all places that fits my plug.

I'm sitting cross-legged outside the closed door of the cockpit.

Once I'm into the laptop, I know I only have one shot. I have no access to the internet, so I'm essentially relying on a scrape of saved files, incomplete files, and locally stored emails.

I set up the permanent eraser, fumbling through the raggedly notes I made an hour or so before. I input the criteria and click 'run'.

"What the fuck are you doing?" the voice cuts the silence like a knife.

I jump up and drop the laptop.
"Shit," I grunt, checking that it's still running.

"Ghost, what the fuck," I exclaim.
He closes the distance between us and almost steps on the laptop.
"Careful, you'll..." but before I can finish, he slams me into the bulkhead door to the cockpit.

"I asked you what the fuck you are doing... I fucking told you that you couldn't access your laptop," he hisses at me.

His mask is 6 inches from my face. His hazel brown eyes are almost invisible as he screws his face up under the mask.

I can't breathe or move.

"What part of that fucking order didn't you understand?" he continues to bark at me.

I still can't breathe, the weight of him pushing my chest down.

My eyes start to stream with tears. He releases his weight, and it only fuels my emotion now that I can breathe.

I take a sharp intake of breath and slide down the wall, crying in a heap.

He looms over me. Silently.

"I'm trying to," I start between sobs, "help you," I continue getting my breath back.

He sinks down, bending his knees into a squat.

Suddenly, his eyes open wide. Remorseful.

"You dickhead," I finish.

He furrows his brow at that last bit.

"I've been kidnapped, had my colleague shot next to me, been beaten, almost raped, rescued, been held captive again, and then put to work," I suddenly blurt out. Tears fall onto my T-shirt.

Ghost looks over at the laptop.

"I might not be trained like you to not give a shit about these things, but I am smart, you asshole," I continue with my verbal assault.

"It's not my fucking laptop," I point at it.

"It's Evan's," I splutter, the tears welling up again.

"They know he's dead. They won't be looking for him to access anything. We have no network connection. I have his password because we share admin access to one of the main systems. We've discussed all the acquisitions that we know of, and based on the time frame and location you guys have given us, I created a way to access everything," I finally breathe.