Wyatt hissed through his teeth.
“Connection’s through,” Jen said. “Running signal diagnostics now.”
“Good.”
More metal sounds. A sharp intake of breath.
“Problem?” He glanced back. Her hands were working fast, but her fingers were red raw from the cold. “Your hands okay?”
“Fine.”
“How’d you end up out here?”
“What?”
“On Seven. Middle of nowhere. You don’t strike me as someone who does things by accident.”
A pause. The snip of wire. “Needed a job. This one was available.”
“Chief engineer on a weapons platform isn’t justa job.”
“It is when no one else will hire you.”
Something in her voice made him glance back again. She was bent over the housing, face hidden. But the line of her shoulders was ramrod straight.
“Why wouldn’t they hire you?”
“Long story.”
He’d heard that kind of deflection before—in teammates who carried wounds no one could see.
Wyatt kept scouring the catwalks. “We’re perched on a shelf above the Pacific. I’m not exactly booked up. Hit me.”
She let out a faint, tired huff—half sigh, half surrender. “I had a breakthrough,” she said finally. “Adaptive targeting algorithms for missile defense systems. My mentor took credit. When I pushed back, he made sure I couldn’t work anywhere else. So I ended up here. Forty-seven miles from nowhere. My dream job.”
Wyatt processed that. The way her work was precise even when she was shaking from the cold. The way she’d mapped the entire station in her head.
“His loss,” Wyatt said. “You’re better than this place.”
Her breath hitched as if the compliment had landed somewhere unexpected. She looked up at him, her expression unreadable in the rain and fading light. Surprise maybe.
“Thanks,” she said quietly.
She was stuck here with him in the middle of nowhere, rewiring a transmitter older than both of them. Because someone had decided her work was his.
Wyatt turned back to his surveillance, needing somewhere else to look. But his awareness of her didn’t fade. The sound of her working. Her breathing. The small, frustrated noises when something didn’t cooperate.
“Needle-nose,” he said.
“What?”
“You need needle-nose pliers.”
She wiped rain from her eyes. “How did you?—”
“You’ve looked at that connection point multiple times.” He reached for her tool belt and pulled the pliers free. “Figured you needed something smaller to reach it.”
Their fingers brushed—a tiny contact—but Jen inhaled sharply. “Thanks.”
