Better than expected.
I reached back down into the opening and motioned.
Libby climbed swiftly and silently. The moment she was through the opening, I eased the hatch shut, flush with the cobblestones.
We moved without a word. I crouched low, heading for a dense cluster of shrubs at the park’s edge, keeping my profile to the ground. Libby mirrored my every move, her breathing controlled, her footsteps precise.
“Down,” I murmured.
She slipped under the branches and into the shadows with practiced ease.
I dropped in beside her, immediately scanning the street beyond the park’s iron fence.
Clear.
Then, without conscious thought, my gaze found her.
In the dappled light filtering through the leaves, she looked just as she had in that house—the same worn clothes, the same stray hairs escaping her tie-back, the same weariness etched beneath her eyes. But there was a new resolve in the set of her jaw, or perhaps one I hadn’t noticed before. Pressure sometimes did that: brought underlying truths to the surface.
She had navigated those tunnels from memory, without complaint. She had followed every instruction, without argument. When that thing had lunged at us in the alley, she’d gone pale and faltered for a split second, then kept moving. Most people didn’t do that. Even trained individuals didn’t always do that.
She had just kept moving.
I found myself studying her in the dim light—the strand of hair across her forehead, the slight parting of her lips as she steadied her breathing—and didn’t immediately look away.
I should have.
I pulled my eyes back to the street, fixing them there. I checked the fence line, the storefront.
It didn’t help. The awareness had already seeped in, like the cold. Quiet and ill-timed, it settled just beneath the tactical focus I needed, and the more I tried to ignore it, the more space it seemed to occupy.
“Not bad,” I said quietly.
She glanced at me. “What?”
“The hatch. The concealment behind the pedestal. It was a good call.”
Something flickered across her face—surprise first, then something warmer. The corner of her mouth fought a smile.
“Thanks,” she said.
Her eyes lingered on mine a beat longer than the conversation warranted.
I looked back at the street.
My focus should have been on the street, but I was acutely aware of her beside me. I couldn’t find the mental switch to turn it off.
Across the park, a glass storefront, dark inside, double doors closed, a sign unreadable from this angle. No movement was visible through the windows. Dark and revealing nothing.
I kept my voice low. “We move fast and straight across. Stay low, through the doors, take what we can carry, and get out. Don’t stop for anything that isn’t essential.”
She nodded, the softness from a moment ago replaced by something more focused. “Okay.”
“You good?”
She held my gaze for a moment, then her eyes dropped—just briefly, for the length of a single breath—and when they met mine again, I saw resignation there. Not panic.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m good.”
