Total pages in book: 30
Estimated words: 31866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 159(@200wpm)___ 127(@250wpm)___ 106(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 31866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 159(@200wpm)___ 127(@250wpm)___ 106(@300wpm)
I don’t deserve that kind of care.
And yet she keeps giving it.
I set a plate in front of her when the eggs are done. Toast. Coffee. The basic building blocks of pretending the world isn’t falling apart.
Riley takes one look at the food and then at me. “You’re trying to distract me.”
“Yes.”
She picks up her fork anyway. “It’s working. Slightly.”
She takes a bite, chews, then exhales. “Okay. I had a thought.”
I still. “What kind of thought?”
“The kind I hate,” she says, setting her fork down. “The kind that shows up at 3 a.m. and won’t leave me alone.”
My gaze sharpens. “Talk.”
“There’s something at my lab,” she says quietly. “Something I didn’t grab yesterday because I wasn’t thinking straight.”
My stomach tightens. “What?”
She hesitates. “It’s a hardware key. Not the kind someone can just guess or hack with a password. It’s… it’s old-school. Physical. And it locks one of my offline backups.”
I watch her carefully. “And you need it.”
“Yes,” she whispers. “Because if someone is trying to steal my work, I need to know exactly what they have. And what they don’t.”
I nod once. “We’ll go.”
Relief flashes in her face. “Really?”
“After breakfast,” I say, firm. “Then we go back on base.”
Riley studies me like she’s trying to see what else I’m not saying.
But she nods. “Okay,” she murmurs. “After breakfast.”
I turn back to the stove, jaw clenched.
Because going back to base means stepping into the lion’s den again. It means walking her into a place where someone already proved they can get to her. And it means I’m going to have to keep two impossible truths in my head at the same time:
Someone wants Riley’s program badly enough to destroy her life.
And my father might be alive.
I set another plate down, force my breathing steady, and remind myself of the only thing I can control right now.
Riley is sitting at the table.
Eating the breakfast I made.
Looking at me like I’m the safest place she’s ever been.
And I will not let the world take her from me.
TWELVE
RILEY
The lab smells like bleach and broken things.
Even after a night and a half-day of military police, security sweeps, and whatever “cleanup protocol” means in a place where shattered glass still glitters in the corners, the air holds the memory of violence—cold, chemical, wrong.
Crewe walks in first, shoulders squared, gaze sweeping every angle like the room itself might lunge. I follow a half-step behind him, clutching my bag to my chest like it can keep my ribs from cracking open.
I tell myself I’m calm.
I tell myself I’m thinking.
Mostly, I’m bracing.
“Stay close,” Crewe murmurs, not looking back.
“I’m basically glued to you,” I whisper.
His mouth twitches like he’s trying not to smile. “Good.”
We move deeper into the lab. What’s left of it.
My workstation is still a wreck. A monitor hangs by a cord like a broken arm. Papers are scattered in a sloppy fan across the floor. The shelf where I keep my notebooks is half-empty, the rest dumped out like someone wanted the satisfaction of watching my order turn to chaos.
I swallow hard and force my focus onto the reason we came.
The hardware key.
It’s small. Plain. Old-school on purpose. Not because I’m quaint or nostalgic, but because physical things don’t leak data when you’re not looking. It’s the lock on one of my offline backups—the stuff I don’t put on base systems, the stuff I don’t let contractors touch, the stuff I kept tucked away for worst-case scenarios.
This is worst-case.
“I’m going to grab it and we’re leaving,” I say, more to myself than Crewe.
His eyes track the room. “Where would it be?”
“In a safe place,” I mutter, already crossing toward the back wall, toward the old metal cabinet that looks like it’s been on base since the Cold War. I used it because it’s ugly. It’s unassuming. It’s the last thing anyone would think holds anything worth taking.
I kneel and yank the bottom drawer open.
Empty.
I blink.
No. That’s wrong.
I pull harder, checking behind the drawer, in the corners, along the metal lip.
Nothing.
My heart starts climbing my throat.
“It should be here,” I whisper.
Crewe’s presence shifts beside me. “Where else.”
“I—” I swallow. “I had it. I put it here.”
I pop up and move fast, crossing to my desk, my hands suddenly too clumsy, rummaging through a pile of papers like they might magically produce the one thing that matters.
Pens. Sticky notes. A cracked thumb drive. A little pink stress ball shaped like a brain.
No key.
I rip open a drawer.
Nothing.
Another.
Nothing.
My breathing turns shallow.
Crewe catches my elbow gently, grounding me. “Riley.”
“It’s gone,” I whisper, panic spiking. “It’s gone, Crewe. Someone took it.”
His eyes darken. “When did you last see it.”
“Before the break-in,” I say. “Weeks ago. I haven’t touched it because I didn’t need it.” I laugh once—sharp and humorless. “God. I didn’t think I’d ever need it.”
Crewe’s jaw flexes. He scans the room again like he’s looking for a person hiding in plain sight.