She hesitated. Then shook her head. “Nothing.”
“You’ve got good instincts, Jen. Don’t apologize for them.”
“We should start the lockdown sequence.” She carried her coffee to the main terminal and dropped into the chair, fingersalready moving across the keyboard as the familiar interface bloomed to life.
Wyatt was behind her, close enough to watch the screen, but his body angled toward the door, as if he expected it to burst open any second. Heat radiated from him. “Talk me through it.”
“Missile loading systems,” Jen pulled up the central command protocols. “Overhead cranes. Launch tube mechanisms. Exterior access hatches. I’m locking down everything they’d need to physically move the missiles off the platform.”
She worked quickly and efficiently, the way she always had. This was her world, her domain. Seven had been her exile. The only place left after Clive made sure every door closed. Eighteen months of isolation. Of skill and expertise no one saw.
But this—this mattered.
Stopping these men. Protecting these systems. Protecting her people. She might never get her reputation back. Maybe Clive had made sure her name would always come with a footnote, if it appeared at all.
But she could do this.
She could stop the terrorists.
She pulled up the missile bay security feed, her jaw tightening as the familiar shapes appeared on the screen. Sixteen interceptor missiles. Silent and waiting.
And they’re going to stay that way.
Something caught her eye on the feed. A flicker on an edge where there shouldn’t be any. A shadow that didn’t match the static equipment.
She squinted at the screen, her heart rate kicking up. “Did you see that?”
“See what?” Wyatt turned.
“There.” She rewound the footage, slowed it, froze the frame. The image was grainy, but clear enough—a figure pressed against the far wall, partially hidden by equipment.
Orange coveralls.
A person.
Her breath caught as she zoomed in, enhancing the image as far as the system would allow. The figure shifted, just enough for the camera to catch a face.
“My God,” she whispered, ice flooding her veins. “It’s Caro.”
10
Fuck.
He’d felt it the second he’d met her gaze in the dark glass of the monitor—too still, eyes locked on the parts of him he kept buried under layers of uniform and distance. It hadn’t been desire that hit, but recognition—and that made everything inside him lock down hard. He didn’t want to be seen like that. Not by her. Whatever flicker had passed between them—heat or connection—he’d already filed it where he put everything dangerous.
Off-limits.
A woman like Jen deserved clean edges and daylight. He was what happened when things went wrong.
“Who’s Caro?” he asked, forcing his thinking back to the here and now.
“Caro Sparks. My junior engineer.” Jen couldn’t look away from the screen. “She’s twenty-six. I hired her myself eight months ago.” Her voice thinned. “She wears a pink t-shirt under her coveralls every single day. I looked at her efficiency proposal this morning and told her it was good work. Her whole face lit up as if nobody had ever said that to her before.”
She pushed back from the counter and pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers. “She reminds me of myself when I was that age—shit. She was running coolant checks on the missile tubes when this started. Must have gotten trapped when the lockdown engaged.”
On screen, Caro paced, arms wrapped around her middle. Three steps one way. Three steps back, the confined space of the missile bay visible around her.
Jen toggled controls. “Caro. This is Jen in Engineering. Copy?” She waited, flicked switches. “Caro. Can you hear me?”
