He doesn’t trust me.
I wait.
Thirty seconds.
Sixty.
Ninety.
“Knight has entered the west side,” Arrow murmurs over comms. “Approaching side door. Guard’s distracted on his phone. I’m looping cam three…”
Ozzy adds, “Chatter in the Silk channels say the buyer’s running late. You’ve got maybe twenty minutes before extra assholes show.”
My fingers drum on my knee.
I shift.
I look out the window.
I glance at my bat under the blanket in the back seat.
Knight slips inside the warehouse, and the door swings shut behind him.
It takes me exactly twelve seconds to decide I have absolutely no intention of sitting here like some obedient golden retriever.
I pop the glove box, pull out my burner tablet, and tap it awake. My favorite stolen network-mapping overlay flickers to life, picks up the warehouse’s basic wireless footprint, and overlays it on the city grid.
“Arrow,” I say sweetly, “you still got that feed loop going on cam three?”
A pause. “Yeah. Why?”
“Can you give me a piggyback on the internal cam system? Just the low-level stuff. Nothing fancy.”
“Why?”
“No reason.”
“Lark.”
“Arrow.”
I hear him sigh. “Okay, you’ve got a visual relay. But if Knight asks, I didn’t help.”
“You are an angel and I appreciate your moral flexibility.”
The tablet fills with grainy, slightly skewed footage—inside the warehouse. Crates. Dust. Stacks of unlabeled boxes. A shabby office in the back with a cheap metal desk and a wall safe.
And Knight.
Moving through the shadows, hugging the walls, pausing whenever he hears something.
A guard walks past an interior window, and Knight freezes, blending into the darkness like he was born there.
I stare, a mix of pride and worry twisting in my chest.
He’s so controlled it makes my teeth ache.
My gaze flicks to something else in the feed—little blinking blue lights above some of the interior doorways.
