Every instinct screamed to follow her and keep her safe, but he forced himself still.
“She’ll be okay,” Caro said in a hushed voice. “She’s brilliant, yeah?”
“Yeah.” His voice sounded like gravel.
Caro shifted the thermal blanket off her shoulders. She folded it with shaking hands and set it on the seat. “Let’s go clear those guards, then. Sooner we finish, sooner she’s back.”
Wyatt pulled himself together. “Stay close. Stay quiet. If shooting starts?—”
“Get flat and stay flat.” She smiled. “Not arguing with that.”
He opened the hatch.
Sleet hit his face—cold needles that cleared his head. He scanned the deck. Visibility was low, and the storm still raged.
Clear.
For now.
He climbed out first, then reached back and caught Caro lightly by the sleeve, guiding her to the shadow of the pipe run before she could step fully onto the deck.
They moved quickly, hunched low, using the storage tanks and pipe runs for cover.
Twenty minutes. Jen had twenty minutes to get those charges and get back.
He couldn’t stop her.
But if she didn’t make the rendezvous point, he’d tear Seven apart bolt by bolt until he found her.
20
Oh my god,I just kissed Wyatt.
Jen was halfway down the service stairs, two decks below the lifeboat and three minutes into her fifteen-minute window.
What the hell was I thinking?
I kissed him and then walked away as if I do that sort of thing every day.
She pressed her palm against the cold bulkhead and listened. No voices or footsteps. Just the low thrum of machinery and the distant groan of Seven in the storm.
Clear.
She hurried down, taking careful steps to keep her boots quiet on the deck plating. At the bottom stairwell, she paused and peered through the reinforced glass observation window. The corridor was narrow here—bare metal walls, exposed piping overhead, emergency lighting strips turning the metal walls a jaundiced yellow. The closet she’d hidden in previously was about a hundred feet down the corridor, and from there she could re-enter the vents and make her way to the armory.
The skin on her waist still tingled. The pressure of his fingers through her coveralls. The way his thumb had pressed into her hip. The kiss had been?—
Not now.
He’s counting on you. Don’t make him regret letting you go.
Catalog the route. Listen for threats. Move fast.
She swung the access door open and stepped into the corridor. The sound changed immediately—the heavy, rhythmic thud of hydraulic pumps and the hiss of pressure valves. The air warmed with the smell of oil and ozone, but Wyatt’s mouth had been cold from the wind?—
Why am I thinking about his lips right now? Terrible timing, brain.
The closet door was visible ahead. Almost there.
