Page 56 of Make Them Pay

There's no teasing in his voice now. Just calm certainty. The kind that makes it impossible to argue.

"Real food," he adds, "and at least a couple hours of sleep before the next crisis decides to find us."

I smile despite myself. "You always this bossy?"

"Only with women who forget they're human."

"I didn't forget."

He gives me a look. "You skipped two meals, hacked into a criminal network, and somehow still think coffee counts as dinner."

"...It was a large coffee."

A laugh escapes him, low and warm, and for one perfect second the world feels almost normal. He slides his hand back to the small of my back, guiding me toward the kitchen. "Come on, Trouble."

I let him guide me to the kitchen.

Just this once.

22

Enley

The trace hits at eleven in the morning.

I’m in the kitchen drinking the first real cup of coffee I’ve had in nine days when Dean’s phone buzzes and the whole room stops moving. He reads the screen, then reads it again. He walks to the doorway of the operations center and says one word.

“Brownstone.”

Within three minutes every member of the crew is in the room. It’s the first time we’re mostly all together. Still missing Juno, River, and Salem who are all safe in Saint Pierce.

Arrow is leaning against the wall by the window, arms crossed. The cut on his forearm is bandaged and the shadows under his eyes look deep enough to lose something in. But he’s here.

Gage is right beside him, because of course he is. He’s holding a protein bar he hasn’t taken a single bite of, just keeping his hands busy. His jaw is set in that stubborn angle I’m starting to recognize as his default setting.

Knight stands near the door, positioned so nobody can leave without him noticing. Lark’s in the chair closest to him. They’re not touching and they’re not looking at each other, but you can feel the connection anyway. Two people who always know exactly where the other one is.

Ozzy’s on the couch with his knee propped up. The medic replaced the bag of frozen peas with a proper compression wrap. He’s stopped trying to hide the tremor in his hands. Nobody comments on it. These people understand that the body deals with trauma on its own schedule.

Poe’s in the chair at the head of the table. He insisted on being here. Singh wanted him horizontal for another twelve hours, but he looked at her with his one good eye and said, “My crew is briefing. I’ll be there.” She let him go. She’s worked with Dean’s people long enough to know some arguments aren’t worth having.

He looks terrible and alive at the same time, and every time I glance at him my chest does something complicated.

Render’s at the table beside me. Not the careful two-inch gap from before. Not pressed right up against me either. Just a steady closeness that feels like a decision we both made without needing to discuss it.

Dean stands at the front of the room with a tablet showing live updates from his contact in financial crimes. The rest of the BRAVO crew sits around the table as well. Sawyer, Rae, Miller, Riggs, and a few others that I don’t know their names yet.

“Serafina accessed a personal account forty minutes ago,” he says. “A brokerage account at a private bank in Havenridge that wasn’t connected to Goldenbell at all. She liquidated three hundred thousand dollars and started a wire transfer to a bank in the Caymans.”

“She’s running,” Arrow says. First words I’ve heard from him since the extraction. His voice is rough, but the sharp mind behind it is clearly still working. “Three hundred thousand is travel money. Not rebuild money. She’s buying distance, not a new operation.”

“Agreed,” Dean says. “The transfer takes four hours to clear. During that window she has to show up in person at the Havenridge bank to authorize the final release. They require face-to-face verification for anything over two hundred thousand.”

“So we know where she’ll be,” Gage says. “And when.”

“We know where she’ll be in about three hours. The question is what we do about it.”

The room goes still for a moment. It’s not really a tactical question. It’s about what kind of people we’re going to be. Do we hand the location to the FBI and let Orchid’s handlers handle the arrest? Call the police? Or do we go ourselves?