Page 32 of Her Mountain Man Protector

Banks whistles once, low. "Clinic can wait. If Billy's leaving numbers in photographs, he's leaving a door. Don't kick it without a second exit."

Alden is in the room now. I didn't hear him arrive. He looks at the pin, then at Colt, then at me.

"We don't roll in daylight," Alden says. "We sit on it. We get Crewe eyes. We don't take the photographer to a Northline box because she found the lock."

"I'm already the lock," I say. "The files are in my bag. The coordinates were in my shot. If they wanted the camera, they wanted me. Sitting here pretty doesn't change that."

Colt's voice goes quiet in the way that is worse than volume. "You're not going to Yard 4 until I walk it."

"Then take me with you. I can handle it."

His mouth flattens. He wants to decree. I watch him swallow it. The swallow costs him. I file that too. "Dusk," he says to Alden. "Small. You, me, Crewe if he's close. She stays in the mill with Marin."

"I stay where the breadcrumbs are," I say.

"You stay breathing."

Marin lifts a finger, about to cut the argument into columns, and the Watchline dies.

Not a flicker. Not a dip. The screens go black all at once, the glass loft dropping into river-colored dim, every fan in the ceiling spinning down to a silence so complete I hear my own pulse pound in my ears. The tablet in Marin's hand is a dark brick. Banks's voice is gone. The map with my pin is gone. Total blackness.

Emergency strips along the floor stutter on, thin and red.

Colt has my chair and then he has me, up, turned, his body between my back and the stairwell before I finish standing. His other hand is already at his hip.

"Marin," he says.

"Building power," she answers, already moving for a hardline on the wall. "Not a laptop. Not a glitch. Somebody cut us."

Alden's flashlight clicks. The beam finds the stair, the glass, the lot cameras that are no longer feeding anything. From somewhere deep in the mill a door slams that nobody on this floor asked to slam.

I still have the coordinates in my head. I still have Billy's numbers burned behind my eyes. I close my fingers in Colt's flannel and I don't let go, because the mill just went blind and the last thing it saw was a pin on an abandoned yard that was never abandoned, and whoever killed the lights already knows we found it.

11

Colt

Red strips paint the Watchline floor. Oakley's fist is twisted in my flannel. I keep her behind my shoulder and count the stairwell.

Alden doesn't ask what we heard. He’s already moving.

"Lockdown. Now. Marin, hardline and the backup cell. Rowe stays in the inner office. Nobody opens a door I didn't name."

Steel answers him from three floors at once. Maglocks bite. The lot gate slams in a sound I feel through my boots. The mill becomes a closed fist.

Oakley’s breathing too fast against my back. I reach behind me and find her wrist. Her pulse hammers my thumb. The fear that hits me then is simple. Losing her in a building this big would be easy.

"Stay on me," I tell her.

"I'm on you. Go."

Marin has a handset jammed against her ear and a paper map slapped over dead glass. "City grid is fine. This is us. Cut at the river feed. They knew which line to pull."

Alden's flashlight sweeps the stairs. Empty. Too empty. He tips his chin at me and we take the steps in a pair, Oakley tight between us, her camera bag banging my hip because she didn’t leave it on the table.

The side door is still sealed from the inside. Front dock too. No forced frame. No broken glass.

"They didn't come through a door," Alden says.