“You think?”
“I can’t be one hundred percent, but I’m the only one who can do this.”
“We want Kessler broken; we want everything he’s done uncovered.”
“If I can get inside, I can find everything you need.”
“Then, we want to kill him,” Jamie said flatly, the flick of his lighter sharp in the quiet. He stared right at me, expression serious, and Caleb didn’t even try to mask his discomfort.
“Kill Kessler,” I repeated, half-expecting it to be some kind of twisted metaphor. But Jamie didn’t crack a smile. His jaw was set, his eyes steady.
“Yeah,” he said. And the weight behind it hit me harder than I expected.
It wasn’t a plan, but it was a line drawn, and they’d already stepped over it. “That’s nothing to do with me,” I murmured.
“Okay then,” Jamie said and picked up the phone, turning it to him. “Caleb?”
“We’ll work it together,” Caleb said. “I’ll brief the team.”
Jamie ended the call, then pulled the chair near me and sat down. “Tell me what you need from us.”
Jamie listened while I rattled off everything I needed—a temporary digital ghost shell I could use to work without setting off the alarms built into Kessler’s AI. He nodded with each demand, not asking questions, but absorbing it all. Then, he stood,already pulling his phone from his pocket, and left the room with a quiet, “I’ll sort it.”
With him off sourcing that, no sign of Robbie and everyone else working, I lasted about an hour before I got antsy and shifted restlessly. I managed to get out of bed and brace myself against the back of the chair. My legs trembled, dizziness swam behind my eyes, and every part of me felt used up—tired to the bone.
Still, I needed to take stock. If I was going to make it out of here on my own steam, I had to know what I was working with.
I tested my range, flexing muscles cautiously. My right arm screamed in protest, but it moved. My ribs ached, a deep, pulling pain with every breath, but nothing cracked. I bent my knees slowly, trying not to let the tremor in my thighs knock me off balance. A shallow squat. A careful change of weight. Every movement mapped another limit in my body. Ankles stiff, abdomen bruised, spine rigid, but I could stretch a little.
That was something.
I tried to loosen everything up. A slow twist at the waist sent a ripple of discomfort across my stomach, but I held it. Rolled my shoulders, neck cracking like old branches. Every piece of effort pulled a differentthread of pain, but I kept going—testing range, breathing through the burn.
I pushed my arm over my head, winced, and brought it down again. Rotated the joint. Repeated on the other side. Hips tight. Back sore. Knees shaky. But it was better than being numb. Better than lying still and wondering if I was broken.
Stillness meant helplessness, and I’d had enough of that.
But I wasn’t alone.
I felt him before I heard him—Rio, standing behind me. His silence was a weight, and I didn’t turn around. Didn’t want to see his expression, didn’t want to invite whatever lecture was brewing.
“You should be resting,” he said, low and calm, but with that razor edge beneath it.
I ignored him.
Instead, I went into another round of stretches. This time, I pushed harder. Deeper bend at the waist. A longer twist. Muscles pulled taut and flared with heat, my body warning me I was going too far. I shifted my weight, and the floor tilted under me—no, my knees just gave a little—and for a heartbeat, I was going down.
But Rio was there.
A hand landed on my hip—warm, steady, sure—and the other hovered near my elbow as if he was ready to catch me if I swayed again.
“Enough,” he murmured, not unkindly, but with a note of warning I couldn’t ignore. “You’re gonna tear something, and I’m not dragging your stubborn ass back to bed.”
“I’m not lying there waiting for things to happen to me,” I said, more harshly than I meant.
Rio was quick to reassure me with a ready lie. “Nothing is going to happen to you.”
“You don’t know that.”
