Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 106090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Knox says something I can’t hear and Liam laughs. Not the performative charm he usually puts on. An actual laugh, startled out of him. Knox’s mouth curves and he looks away, almost embarrassed, and I feel a pull in my ribs that I wasn’t expecting.
I’ve been so worried about what these two are to me. I haven’t stopped to think about what they might be to each other. They served together. They haven’t spoken in more than a decade. And yet sitting on that floor with a stolen circuit board between them, they look like two people who never lost the rhythm. Whatever happened between them—whatever drove them apart and kept them apart—it left a mark deeper than either of them is letting on.
There’s more . . .
Outside, the storm has finally eased into something softer—snow falling in lazy spirals past the windows, the world beyond them white and endless.
I drain the last of my wine and set the glass on the side table. “I’m going to bed.”
Both of them look at me. Knox gives me a small nod. Liam’s mouth opens like he wants to say something, then closes again.
“Good night,” Knox says.
“Sleep well, Hails,” Liam adds, his voice softer than I expect.
I don’t trust myself to say anything else, so I just walk to the bed and crawl under the covers, turning to face the wall.
Behind me, I can hear them still by the fire. The soft clink of a wine bottle against glass. The occasional shift of weight on the couch. And then, after a long moment, the low murmur of voices too quiet to make out.
I close my eyes, hyper-aware of them just across the room, and try to let sleep pull me under.
It doesn’t come easy.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Knox
Liam and I don’t stop working.
The circuit board sits between us on the floor by the hearth, guts exposed. We’ve been at it for an hour, maybe more, hunched in the blind spot with our backs to the wall. Liam’s got the butter knife in one hand and a bent fork in the other, stripping insulation off a wire with steady, careful strokes that make it hard to look anywhere else.
So I look at the board. At the wall. At my own hands.
“Hand me the corkscrew,” he says.
I pass it over. Our fingers brush in the hand off. I pull back too fast and he catches it, and we both let it go.
“The Wi-Fi module’s the key.” He turns the board so I can see. “If I reroute power from the camera feed, I can get it to broadcast independently. Fifteen minutes, maybe, before the whole thing fries.”
“Who’s going to be listening all the way out here?”
“Honestly? Probably nobody.” He pries at a connector with the knife tip. “Without knowing what network she’s running, I have no idea what’s in range. Could bounce off a cell tower if there’s one within fifty miles. Could get picked up by a passing aircraft. Could go absolutely nowhere and we burn our one shot for nothing.”
“So we’re just screaming into the void and hoping.”
“That’s about the size of it, yeah.” He glances up. “Best case, it pings some tower and gets flagged as an anomaly. Maybe somebody investigates, maybe they don’t. Worst case, Marlena’s network is completely isolated and the signal dies before it clears the tree line.”
“And the realistic case?”
“The signal goes out, lands on some server nobody checks for weeks, and by then it doesn’t matter.” He shrugs. “But I’d rather send it than sit here doing nothing.”
His knee presses against my thigh. Has been pressing, actually, for a while now. The board is small and the blind spot is smaller and there’s only so much room on this patch of floor, but he could shift over. Create space.
“Hold this.” He hands me the board and picks up a chip he freed earlier, no bigger than a fingernail. “I need to solder the bypass, and by solder I mean hold two wires together and pray.”
“Inspiring confidence over here, Liam.”
“Just hold the board and let me work.”
I hold it. He leans in, lining up the connection. His breath is warm against my hands. I can see the individual lashes framing his eyes, the faint scar bisecting his left eyebrow that I never got the story on. New. From the years between us. All that time and not one phone call.
His hand covers mine to position the module, pressing my thumb down against the chip. The pad of his thumb settles on the inside of my wrist. Right over the vein.
“Don’t let it slip,” he says.
I am not in any danger of letting it slip. I am in danger of forgetting what we’re doing entirely.
He bridges the wire. Holds it. His mouth is inches from my knuckles, and if he turned his head even slightly he’d be pressing his lips to my fingers. The thought lands before I can block it.