Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 60921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Arrow: About time, Sleeping Beauty.
Ozzy chimes in a second later, his icon a pixelated frog with a knife.
Ozzy: Cabin play okay?
I huff softly.
Knight: Cabin’s solid. No signs of company. No digital leakage.
A new icon lights up—a stylized G with a halo and tiny devil horns.
Gage.
Gage: How’s my sister?
Guilt punches me in the sternum.
My hands hesitate over the keys.
How’s your sister?
Well, she’s been shadowing me on missions, got her face uploaded into a criminal Pinterest board, and kissed me until my brain turned into static last night.
She’s also braver than any of us, infuriatingly reckless, and currently sleeping ten feet away in a bed while I pretend I’m not thinking about going in there and—
Nope.
I shove all that down into the mental box marked Danger – Do Not Open and type:
Knight: She’s fine. Holding up. Still annoying.
The reply is instant.
Gage: If she stops being annoying, THAT’S when I’ll worry.
Arrow: Status on the board?
Ozzy: That’s the fun part.
A new icon appears—shield logo, clean lines.
Dean Maddox.
I sit up a little straighter.
We’ve never brought him into our little vigilante mess like this before Gage and River’s situation. Now? Half of what we do is brushing up against, if not directly into, Maddox Security territory.
Dean: Arrow looped me in. You two picked one hell of a hornet’s nest to kick.
I type:
Knight: You’re welcome.
Ozzy: So. Good news?
Dean: We’ve traced the bounty node to a cluster running under the Cathedral umbrella. Less decentralized than it looks. They’ve got admins, hierarchies, protocols. That’s exploitable.
Cathedral.
Of course.
They’re like mold—always in the walls somewhere.
Arrow: Can we get the bounty down?
Dean: We can’t erase your faces from every creep’s hard drive, but we can make it more trouble than it’s worth to chase you. I’ve got BRAVO and a couple of external assets chewing through their infrastructure. We’ll find the handler who posted the order.
Knight: Timeline?
Dean: You’re dark until I say otherwise. No patterns. No repeat routes. No comms except this channel in the window you’re using right now.
Five minutes feels like a joke all of a sudden.
Gage: Knight’s probably already gone stir crazy. Cabin. Lark. This is his personal hell.
Arrow: He’ll crack before she does. My money’s on Lark being fine and Knight starting to alphabetize the canned goods by day three.
Ozzy: Please send pics.
I roll my eyes.
Knight: You children know I can see this, right?
Gage: Bro, you’re trapped in a small wooden box with my sister and zero distractions. Don’t pretend you’re not five seconds away from chewing through the door.
My fingers stutter.
I can imagine his voice too easily. Half-teasing, half-serious. Trusting me.
The guilt crawls higher.
I force a laugh into the text.
Knight: She’s been breaking into the pantry and insulting Ranger’s canned food choices. No one’s bored.
Arrow: Seriously, though. Any sign anyone followed you?
I switch back to mission mode.
Knight: No. I checked perimeters twice. No tire tracks, no footprints, no thermal signatures I couldn’t explain.
Dean: Good. Stay put. We’ve got people working angles on our end. You two keep your heads down and your signals minimal.
I almost ask what exactly “people” means. Which teams. How deep Maddox Security is going for this.
But the timer icon in the corner of the app flashes yellow.
One minute left.
Gage: Hey. For real. Thanks for getting her out.
My chest tightens again.
I stare at the cursor.
Then type, softer:
Knight: Always.
Arrow: Check in tonight if you can. If not, we’ll assume you’re alive until proven otherwise.
Ozzy: And if you die, I’m inheriting your tech.
Knight: Touch my rig and I haunt you.
Dean: Stay sharp, Hayes. If they’re hunting you, odds are they’re proud of themselves. People who are proud of themselves get sloppy. Use that.
The connection timer blinks red.
System: Connection closing in 10… 9… 8…
I fire off one last message.
Knight: Cabin going dark. Catch you on the flip side.
The app drops back into offline mode. The signal light on the little modem goes dark.
Just like that, we’re alone again.
I sit there a second, staring at the black screen.
Dean’s confidence helps.
Gage’s trust hurts.
Arrow and Ozzy’s teasing feels like a lifeline to normalcy we don’t get to touch right now.
I shove the box back into its place, coil the antenna down, and kill the last of the boot power.
The cabin feels even quieter now.
A floorboard creaks behind me.
I turn.
Lark stands at the edge of the hall, rubbing sleep out of her eyes.
Her hair is a disaster—half falling out of a messy bun, flattened on one side. She’s drowning in one of the cabin’s oversized t-shirts she must’ve dug out of the dresser, hem hitting the top of her thighs, sleeves dangling past her elbows.
She looks soft and sleepy and completely unaware of the landmine field that is my self-control.
“Morning, Birdie,” I say.
She squints at me. “Morning, Control Freak.”
Her voice is rough from sleep, lower, somehow more intimate. She pads barefoot into the room and stretches, arms overhead, shirt lifting enough for a teasing glimpse of the curve of her hip.