He pulled back. He studied my face, his thumb brushing my lower lip.
"Steady?" he asked.
"Steady," I breathed, my heart hammering a new, slower rhythm.
He stepped back, but he kept a hand on my lower back. He guided me to a door further down the hall.
"Guest quarters," he said, opening it.
The room inside was dark, cool, and smelled of lavender detergent. High thread count sheets, just like Juno promised.
"Go inside," Mateo said. "Sleep. Do not open the laptop."
I stepped into the room. I turned back to him. He filled the doorway, a sentinel in a suit.
"The lock," I said, eyeing the handle.
"I'm the lock," Mateo said. He leaned his shoulder against the frame, crossing his arms. "I'm staying right here. Nobody gets in."
He paused, his eyes dropping to my mouth, then back up to my eyes.
"Including me."
I swallowed hard. "Okay."
"Sleep, Quill."
He pulled the door shut.
I stood in the darkness, feeling the phantom weight of his hands on my shoulders. I was in a strange building, working for people who seemed like criminals, with my actual career in ashes.
But for the first time in countless hours, my hands weren't shaking.
FIVE
Mateo
The apartment smelled of peppermint, graphite, and stale panic.
I stood by the door, my back against the reinforced wood, watching Rowan Quill dismantle her life. She moved with a jagged, frantic efficiency that was painful to watch. She wasn't packing; she was liquidating.
Suitcase open on the bed. Hard shell. Expensive but scuffed. It was the luggage of someone who lived in airports, not vacation resorts.
"You don't need the three-hole punch," I said. My voice sounded too loud in the quiet room.
Rowan didn't look up. She was vibrating again. Not visible tremors, but that high-frequency internal hum I could almost hear if I stood close enough. It was the sound of a nervous system redlining.
"It’s a heavy-duty Swingline, Mateo," she snapped, wrapping the cord of a scanner around her hand like a tourniquet. "Do you know how hard it is to find a punch that doesn't jam on cardstock? I’m taking it."
"We have office supplies," I told her. "Juno has a procurement budget that could buy a small island nation. We can buy you a stapler."
"I don't want anewstapler," she hissed, shoving a stack of color-coded binders next to a pair of sensible heels. "I wantmystapler. I want my friction. My variables."
She grabbed a ceramic mug full of pens. She dumped them into a side pocket.
I checked my watch. We had been here eleven minutes. The window for a "quick extraction" was closing rapidly. Juno was circling the block in the armored sedan, monitoring the comms, but static targets were dead targets.
"Clothes," I instructed. "Pack clothes, Quill. Prioritize warmth and mobility." Juno had given her some clean clothes, thankfully, and we could get her more, but I was sure she'd be happier if she had her own things.
