LN was LyricNight, that much was obvious, but the rest of the message made no sense. If he was implying I wanted the billions that came with his AI system, then he was dead wrong.
I wanted none of it.
I wanted LyricNight gone.
I minimized the window, set a tracer script in motion, and leaned back in the chair with a sigh. The shower hadn’t calmed the static in my head.
Jamie had taken over a second desk that he and Enzo had heaved up, his laptops and portable drives arranged in a semi-circle. We didn’t talk much when he was there. Didn’t have to. Everything about ourlanguage was built in keystrokes and compressed logic. He didn’t seem to spend a lot of time downstairs with Enzo, Rio, and Robbie, but there was a lot more to Redcars than I first thought. Including the fact they actually were a garage and had cars in every day, and a project they worked on together. I knew that, because Robbie had spent most of yesterday sitting next to the bed inRio’schair and telling me everything.
No one had stopped me from leaving the room, technically, but no one had encouraged me to explore either. It was clear—upstairs was safe. Downstairs? That was a maybe.
Enzo was on edge. He tried to hide it, but the tension crackled. If anyone found out Robbie was here… well, I’d heard enough to piece together Kessler’s part in what had happened to Robbie. Heard the low murmurs, the way Enzo went still every time Robbie’s name came up in a sentence that didn’t end withsafe.
If someone came looking, Enzo would kill, simple as that because Robbie was his entire world. And I didn’t blame him.
I set another crawl running on one of the machines—low-key, quiet, enough to comb for backend leaks in the sandbox copy Jamie hadmounted. I was restless. Out of the loop. Unused to being on the edges of operations I used to run from the center.
Someone knocked on my door, and I jerked toward the sound, heart skipping at the ridiculous hope it might be Rio.
Rio doesn’t knock, idiot.
“Come in,” I called. The door creaked open, and Robbie poked his head around it. Of course, it was Robbie—he was the only one polite enough to knock.
“Hi,” he said, his voice carrying that same nervous note.
“Youcancome in, you know—unless Enzo’s about to lose his shit on me for breathing near you.”
Robbie gave me a tremulous smile. “Nah. He knows I’m up here. It was his idea.”
Enzo trusted me with Robbie. That was… novel.
Robbie finally stepped into the room, holding two mugs in one hand and a small plate of cookies in the other. He nudged the door shut with his back, the softclickof it closing not lost on me. Deliberate. As though he was shutting out the rest of the world.
Robbie hesitated a second, then asked, “Can we talk?”
“That sounds ominous,” I said, keeping my tone light.
Robbie shrugged and moved deeper into the room. He set one of the mugs on the small table beside the bed, then added the plate of cookies—snickerdoodles. “I know you enjoyed these last time I made them,” he said, almost shy. “And the coffee has cream and sugar. Just how you like it.”
“Not that I’m suspicious of your motives, but you can have anything for a cookie,” I joked.
But Robbie only managed the smallest of smiles. He was flustered, awkward, as if he didn’t know what to do now that my coffee and cookies had been delivered. After a pause, he set his mug on a scarred coffee table in the seating area and stared at the sofa.
“Sit down,” I said, and he did, perching on the edge as if he was expecting to be scolded.
I grabbed my mug and a cookie and took the chair facing him.
I took a bite, closed my eyes, and hummed in exaggerated appreciation. “Crisp edge, perfect sugar-to-cinnamon ratio, soft center. A textbook example of the underrated snickerdoodle. Bold. Confident. A cookie that knows what it’s about.”
Robbie gave a huff of laughter, the tension in his shoulders easing a little. That was the goal.
This felt more serious than cookies and caffeine. And Robbie? He wasn’t hiding the nerves well.
“Can we talk about something?” he blurted out, the words rapid fire as if they’d been held back too long. I froze, cookie halfway to my mouth, all sense of comfort vanishing in an instant.
“Sure,” I said, and replaced the cookie on the plate. “What about?”
Robbie bowed his head, fingers twisting in his lap. “E-Edward Lassiter?”
