My throat went dry. “Not even satellite?”
“Not unless Kane reroutes through private intel channels,” he said without looking up, snapping the slide back on a sidearm like he’d done it a thousand times. “And that takes time. Time, he doesn’t know we don’t have. Whoever this is…”
He glanced at me, eyes dark, steady. “They planned this.”
He didn’t say Erin’s name.
He didn’t have to.
I swallowed hard, forcing words past the knot in my chest. “So, what do we do?”
He handed me a smaller radio, lighter than his but heavier than I wanted it to be. “Backup comm. When Kane reboots the network, ping one signal, one pulse. Just enough to mark the location.”
He moved fast, sweeping through the cabin with the kind of precision you only get when you’ve planned for this exact moment and prayed it would never come. Curtains drawn. Doors locked. Windows checked and checked again.
Then, like a ritual, he knelt by the weapons bag and pulled out a cloth-wrapped bundle.
A handgun.
He checked the chamber, loaded it, and handed it to me.
“Aim for center mass. Don’t wait. If someone gets through me, you do not hesitate.”
My fingers trembled as I took it, metal cold and heavy against my palm.
I hated the way it fit, as if it belonged.
Gray stood and scanned the space again, his mind clearly running two steps ahead of mine. And then, like flipping a switch, he started cleaning up.
The dishes.
The files.
The notes and flash drives.
Everything that screamed we’d been here.
“Finish uploading everything,” he said, nodding at my laptop without looking. “Once backup’s complete, send it to every secure outlet you’ve got. If something happens to me, don’t wait, hit send. IA, FBI, press, legal boards, all of it. That’ll slow down Erin’s PR sweep and force people to pay attention.”
I wanted to tell him not to talk like that, as if there was an “if something happens to me” sitting between us, like an inevitability.
But my voice wouldn’t come.
He opened a storage cabinet near the fireplace and slid his weapon bag inside, locking it with a code I didn’t recognize. Gone. Invisible. Like we’d never been here.
“This is your fallback,” he said, pulling a USB drive from around his neck and pressing it into my hand. “Final copy. Worst-case scenario.”
I clutched it so tight it bit into my palm.
Gray paused at the door, his shoulders rigid, a quiet storm brewing under his skin. He was scared, but ready.
“I’ll try to clear as many as I can before they get close,” he said, voice level. “Keep them outside. Keep them away from you. If all elsefails, there’s a hatch in the main room that drops to a crawl space; it’ll get you out into the open.”
The world had narrowed to the sound of my heartbeat.
Fast. Too fast.
He drew a steadying breath, then looked back over his shoulder, his gaze pinning me in place.
