Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 64044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
“Can I ask you something?” I say between bites.
“Yeah.”
“The video. Serafina said she would start with the person who matters most to the one she sent it to. She was talking about me. Threatening me to get to you. She sent it to your channel, not Poe’s. She knows you’re the one who came for me. Why would she think hurting me would matter to you specifically?”
The storage unit goes very still.
Render stops eating. He swallows and looks at me. “I thought I hid it well.”
What is he talking about? “Huh?”
“Because she’s right,” he says.
The words settle between us. Simple. Honest. Delivered in that flat tone he uses for facts. But they change everything.
“Render,” I say. I don’t know what comes next. His name is all I can manage.
He sets the meal pack down and crosses the small space between us. Three steps. The same number it took him to reach me in the container.
His hand comes up to the side of my neck. His fingers press gently against my pulse. He must feel how fast it’s racing because mine is hammering against his touch.
“Tell me to stop,” he says. His voice is rough now. Raw. Nothing like the controlled tone he’s used for days. This voice carries years of held-back want.
I don’t tell him to stop.
He kisses me.
It’s not soft or careful. It’s the breaking of something long contained. His mouth meets mine with heat and hunger and the taste of shared meals and too many sleepless nights. My hands move on their own. One fists in the front of his shirt. The other slides to the back of his neck, fingers threading through his hair.
He pulls me closer. His palm presses against my lower back through the oversized hoodie, heat bleeding through the fabric. I’m against him completely. Chest to chest. I can feel his heart pounding in time with mine.
His fingers slide into my hair and tilt my head. The kiss deepens and everything else fades. The video. The plan. The clock. There’s only his mouth on mine, his hand in my hair, and the terrifying thrill of crossing a line we can’t uncross.
The laptop pings.
The sound cuts through the moment. A message on the hidden channel from Orchid. We both freeze.
Render pulls back just enough for our foreheads to rest together. His breath is warm against my lips. His eyes are dark and intense, filled with everything he’s been holding back.
“The channel,” I whisper.
“I know.”
We don’t move for three long seconds. The laptop pings again. The world’s still turning. The team’s still in danger. The kiss didn’t stop the clock.
He steps back. His hand slips from my hair and the loss of contact feels like falling. I turn to the laptop with shaking hands that have nothing to do with fear.
The message loads. Orchid has new information. The timeline has moved up. We now have forty-eight hours instead of seventy-two.
I tell Render. He stands a couple steps away, one hand braced on the shelf, rebuilding his walls brick by brick even as I watch.
“Contact Knight,” he says. His voice is almost steady again. “Tell him the timeline changed. He needs to meet us sooner.”
I nod and send the message.
The work continues. The plan adjusts. The clock ticks louder.
We don’t talk about the kiss. Not yet. There’s no time. But I can still feel it. His mouth on mine. His hand in my hair. The way he looked at me like I was the only thing in the room.
The wall is going back up. I can see him doing it. But I know what’s behind it now. And he knows that I know.
Forty-eight hours.
The clock sounds different. Faster. And underneath it, steady and impossible to ignore, beats something new between us. Something we’ll have to face when this is over.
Soon.
11
Render
Knight arrives at two in the afternoon looking exactly like he always does when the job is serious. Calm. Focused. Ready.
He slips through the gap in the fence the same way I brought Enley through earlier. He’s known these kinds of places for as long as I have. We grew up in the same world, learned the same hard lessons, and have been watching each other’s backs since we were kids.
Enley’s asleep on the cot. She finally crashed two hours ago after we spent the rest of the night and into the morning tightening the plan for the shorter timeline. She didn’t bring up the kiss. Neither did I. We worked side by side with the same careful two-inch space between us, but that space now feels different. Warmer. Heavier. Like something alive is sitting in it.
Knight’s eyes land on her, then shift to me. He’s been watching me watch her across rooms for years. Seeing her asleep in my hoodie in my safehouse needs no explanation.
He doesn’t comment. Knight only speaks on personal matters when they become operational problems. Instead he drops his pack on the table, pulls out a folded map, and says, “Show me.”