Beck, surprised.
Dredyn, wary.
Jasper, understanding.
I force myself to breathe. “Sorry. I just... thirty-seven days. She’s been locked in that penthouse for thirty-seven days and we’re sitting here, looking at spreadsheets.”
“What would you have us do?” Dredyn sets down the gun he’s been cleaning, giving me his full attention for the first time all morning. “Storm the building? Get ourselves arrested or killed before we can actually help her?”
“That’s something you would normally be all for, Dredyn. What the fuck!”
“We’re waiting for an opening. One mistake, one gap in security, one chance to get her out without starting a war that’ll get her killed in the cross fire.”
“And what if that opening never comes?”
“Then we make one.”
Jasper signs,“She is strong. She is doing okay.”
The words hit harder than they should, because Jasper is right.
But it doesn’t stop the images that play on repeat in my head. Mara alone in that penthouse. Chase’s hands on her. The cameras we know are watching her every move. It doesn’t stop me from wondering if she’s eating, sleeping, if she’s scared or angry.
It doesn’t stop the guilt from eating me alive.
“I should’ve fought harder,” I mutter, dropping onto the couch beside Beck’s chaos of papers. “At the party. I should’ve?—”
“You’d be dead, or in custody. Either way, you’d be useless to her,” Beck says.
“At least I’d have tried?—”
“And she’d still be locked up, except then she’d be grieving you on top of everything else. You think that helps her? You think she needs that weight?”
No. Of course not.
But logic doesn’t touch the part of me that’s screaming to break down doors and drag her back to where she belongs.
“I need to see her. Just... just to know she’s okay. Five minutes. I’m not asking to extract her or start a fight. Just... let me see her face.”
Dredyn and Jasper exchange a look.
“No,” Dredyn says.
“You don’t even know what I’m planning?—”
“I know you well enough. The answer’s no.”
“Dre—”
“They’ll be watching for exactly this kind of move. You show up at that building and they’ll either turn you away, or worse, they could use you as leverage against her. You want to give them that power?”
I hate that he’s right.
I hate all of this.
“There has to be something. Some way to get a message to her—let her know we’re still here, still working?—”
“She knows,”Jasper signs.“She knows because she knows us.”
