Everything Zach taught her evaporated. All those careful instructions about staying calm, about breathing through panic, about trusting her body—gone. Her muscles screamed in terror. Her hands clenched the wheel in a death grip, knuckles bone-white, and her brain held nothing but static and terror.
Too fast.
The tires pitched on bouncing gravel as the cart careened downhill, untethered. Sand sprayed from the edges. Trees whipped past on either side, blurring. She saw a palm. Another. Too close. Then another, right in front of her.
She yanked the wheel hard to the right to avoid the palm.
The front tires jerked violently, skidding toward the shallow drainage ditch at the side of the path. A moment later, the cart struck the embankment with a crunch, a metallic groan that melted into the surreal sound of everything going sideways. Literally sideways.
The cart tipped. The world spun.
She landed with a thud of dirt, metal, and jangled nerve endings. Half-pinned under the cart, dirt in her mouth, ears ringing. A dull, stabbing pain flared in her elbow. Her thigh burned with the sting of a scrape—she smelled her own blood: copper and salt and fear. The engine coughed beside her, whining low. Dying.
Okay. Okay, she was breathing. That counted for something, right?
A wave of fury broke through the mind-numbing shock.
This was no accident. The mother-effing cart tried to kill her.
She gritted her teeth against the pain in her leg and tried to wiggle free. Her leg twisted the wrong way beneath her, but the more she fought to move, dragging herself through the gritty sand and weeds, the more mobility she found. A groan escaped her lips—part ache, part war cry.
“LENA!” Someone was shouting her name. No—not someone. David.
She barely heard his footsteps over the rush in her ears, but his voice cut through it all—sharp, frantic, filled with something she never expected to hear from a man made of logic and wired to code: fear.
And then, he was there. Charging through the sea grass like a wild creature let loose, dark hair wind-whipped, eyes wild and burning with intensity. She was halfway out when he dropped to his knees beside her. His chest heaved. There were tiny sweat beads on his temple that made him look terrifyingly human.
He didn’t touch her right away—his hands hovered in the air, palms flexing—before he gripped the roof of the overturned cart with both hands and lifted, muscles taut, releasing her legs. She rolled free with a gasp, every joint and nerve crying out, her ankle screaming in agony.
“I’m fine,” she whispered, her voice thin. “I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not.” He skimmed her face, her arms, her legs. “Jesus, Lena. That could’ve?—”
She didn’t let him finish. If he said it out loud, it would become real. And she couldn’t handle hearing the word that would follow. Not yet.
So she reached for him instead.
She fell forward and pressed herself into his chest, burying her face into the soft cotton of his shirt that smelled of lemongrass and warmth and him. His arms wrapped around her a beat later—tight, full-body, like he didn’t care who noticed. Right now, she didn’t.
Tears threatened behind her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. Her limbs trembled too hard to stop. Her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt. His heartbeat pounded against her cheek, solid and fast and grounding.
“I’m here,” he murmured into her hair, shaking with held-back rage or relief—she didn’t know. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
And for the first time in hours, in days, Lena let herself believe it.
Chapter 33
Storm in a Bottle
Back at Security,the fluorescent lights buzzed, sterile and cold against the sticky heat still clinging to Lena’s skin. The room smelled like antiseptic and stale coffee—comforting in a way that shouldn’t have been. She sat rigidly on the edge of a vinyl bench that squeaked every time she moved.
A guard dabbed at her scraped leg with something that stung like she’d been lit on fire. She hissed and gritted her teeth, blinking hard against the sting in more than her skin. He’d already wrapped her sprained ankle. Thank god she hadn’t broken it.
David paced the room like a storm bottled in human form, his long-legged strides eating up the floor. Hair mussed, fingers raking endlessly through it, lips pressed into a tight line.
Across the room, Zach stood statue-still, arms crossed, eyes unreadable—like some mythic sentry posted at the gates of her unraveling sanity.
“Brakes don’t fail like that,” David’s voice cut sharp as flint, dark with restrained fury. “Not on that model. Not unless someone messed with them.”
