“Okay.” She took a breath. “What’s the smart way?”
“Tell me what you can do from here. Before we move.”
Jen studied the rig schematics. The power grid. The environmental systems. Her domain.
“I can cut power to sections they’re patrolling. Force them to operate in the dark.”
“They’ll have flashlights.”
She shot him a side-eye that said she didn’t appreciate his skepticism. It reminded him of Sarah. His sister had the same look when someone questioned her judgment. Usually, right before she proved them wrong.
“But I know this rig in the dark. They don’t. And I can make it uncomfortable. Steam vents. Environmental controls. Nothing lethal, but enough to slow them down.”
Wyatt studied the layout, rolling one shoulder where the M4’s strap had been digging in. “How long does that buy us?”
“Five minutes of clear movement. Maybe ten if we’re lucky.”
“And the route?”
She traced a path with her finger. “The missile bay is on a separate ventilation system. We’ll need to use the service corridors.” She looked up at him briefly. “Fifteen minutes to reach the missile bay if we’re not interrupted.” She was already pulling up environmental controls, typing with the desperate speed of someone racing against a clock.
“And when we get there? How do we get inside if they’re already at the door cutting through?”
She chewed on her lower lip as the last of her hope for a simple solution died. “There’s an auxiliary access—an engineering maintenance hatch on Seven’s exterior. We’d have to go outside again. In the rain. On exposed catwalks.”
With nowhere to hide and no margin for error.
“It’s that or wait for them to breach the main door.” Wyatt rechecked the security feed again. At the teams sweeping closer and the feed showing Caro trapped and waiting.
Three levels down. Through hostile territory. Out onto an exterior catwalk in freezing rain to save one engineer and lock down missiles that could end everything.
Every tactical instinct he had said this was a bad idea. That the smart play was to let Caro go, secure this position, wait for reinforcements.
But Jen wouldn’t do that. It was there in the set of her jaw. The way her hands had stopped shaking and gone steady with purpose.
She was going. With him or without him.
Which meant his responsibility now was keeping her alive through whatever came next. He holstered his radio.
His eyes met hers. “Let’s go get your engineer.”
11
The familiar weightof her tool belt settled around Jen’s hips—multi-tool, work knife, electrical tape, wire cutters. Things she understood. Things that made sense. Not like the sidearm she picked up next—cold and unfamiliar, it demanded a different confidence. She’d qualified with it during onboarding. But shooting paper targets wasn’t the same as stepping into a corridor where men with automatic weapons were actively hunting her.
She set the weapon down, then turned back to the console.
Her fingers flew across the power grid toggles and environmental overrides. She’d run these sequences a thousand times in drills, never imagining she’d use them to cover an escape from armed terrorists.
The warmth of the engineering control room pressed in around her. Wyatt stood three feet away, checking his weapons, and she was acutely aware of the space between them—had been for the last twenty minutes while they planned this insane exterior approach.
He was all hard lines and economy of movement, nothing wasted. The way he handled the gun as if it was an extension ofhim, his body as much a weapon as the steel in his hands. The back of her neck prickled with the memory of how he’d looked at her in the dark glass of the monitor earlier. Like he was cataloging her. Filing her away under some mental heading she couldn’t read.
Not now.
She forced her attention back to the screen.
“Cutting power to Decks 2 and 3 now.” She executed the command. “Steam vents opening in the primary corridors.”
