She blew out an explosive breath.
“Comms are dead. I can’t get through.” She rocked back in her seat and pressed the heels of her hands to the sides of her head. “This is insane. I keep Seven running. I don’t—” She gestured at Caro’s image on screen. “—run around playing action hero.”
The crack in her composure hit him sideways. Not panic—frustration. When you were good at your job and then your job turned into something you never signed up for.
He’d lived that feeling too.
“You’re doing better than you think,” he said quietly, leaning one hip against the counter. His knuckles were tender and swollen from fighting, the skin split across two of them. He didn’t straighten them. Didn’t look.
Her eyes flashed. “That’s not the point!” Her voice rose, sharp with frustration. “The point is, I shouldn’t have to. I should be—” She broke off with a rough exhale. “Fuck it. Doesn’t matter what I should be doing.”
She buried her face in her hands for a long moment.
Wyatt pushed off the counter.
“Hey.”
When she didn’t move, he stepped in front of her chair and gently caught her wrists, easing her hands away from her face. Her skin was cold despite the dry coveralls.
“Look at me.”
Her eyes lifted, stormy and tired.
“You’re keeping a missile platform from falling into terrorist hands. While injured. Freezing. And half the station’s trying to kill us.”
He tightened his grip on her fingers, gave them a gentle squeeze. “That’s not failing, Jen. That’s doing the job.”
For a moment she just stared at him, breathing uneven.
Her head tipped in a tiny nod, and the tension in her shoulders loosened a fraction.
He released her hands and nodded toward the monitors.
“Now let’s lock down those missiles. One step at a time. Right?”
She blinked once. “Right.”
Her chair rolled forward as she turned back to the console. “First things first,” she muttered, fingers moving again. “We lock in the missiles. Then we figure out how we help Caro.”
Her shoulders squared, jaw set. The same expression he’d seen on men about to step into fire.
“Okay,” she murmured. “Clamp lockdown should engage in?—”
The console flickered once.
Then the status line updated.
CLAMP LOCKDOWN —PENDING
REMOTE COMMAND QUEUED
SYSTEM ACCESS CONFLICT DETECTED
Wyatt’s stomach dropped. He didn’t need to be an engineer to know thatconflictmeant someone else was in the system. Someone who wanted those clamps open.
“That’s not good, is it?”
“No.” Her voice was way too calm—the calm that came right before things went catastrophically wrong. Her fingers hovered motionless over the keyboard. “That shouldn’t exist.”
