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Still, the surprise on Knox’s face was worth it, as was the petty thrill of taking that woman down a notch or two for touching him.
So, I could be rather jealous. I was just learning new things about myself right and left.
* * * *
Spending time together with Knox, Brax and Wade never got any less awkward. I almost thought if it did, I might miss this heavy feeling, the way everyone seemed at least slightly uncomfortable.
We were in my place, as always. We met here because the men’s places caused territorial issues, but somehow they all felt like they had a right to mine. At the moment, Wade and Brax bickered like children over the last of a bag of cookies I had in the kitchen.
“I could rip your heart from your body,” Brax all but snarled.
“After I leave you as a heap on the floor because I’ve stolen all that fancy power from you?” Wade asked back, his usual smirk on his lips.
All this for a few cookies?
“They’re like children,” Knox said from his spot beside me, his arms crossed as he watched.
I nodded, because it was true.“Then again, Brax fights with everyone like this.”
“And Wade acts like a child even if he isn’t fighting. I guess they’ll never be best friends.”
I tried to picture Brax and Wade suddenly getting along. They’d hang out together, watching bad movies, annoying or beating up every other person around. The thought of Wade’s sarcastic smirk and Brax’s glare had me breaking into a smile.
Yeah, that’s never going to happen.
“Still, we’ll never get anything done if they keep this up…”
Knox had a point, so I held up one finger to tell him to wait a moment. I went into my bedroom—it didn’t so much as faze the other two—and got my secret weapon. On my way back, I tossed each man a new pack of the cookies I’d hidden in my closet.
They easily caught the bags, breaking their little stand-off and both appearing sheepish, as if they’d just realized they were fighting in front of me over desserts.
Still, while neither apologized, they sat down with their cookies like good boys.
At that, I stood in front of them. A nod from Knox said he’d translate for me so Brax understood as well.
“I think I have an idea.”
Everyone settled at that. Then again, I hadn’t said why I’d wanted them to come over. They probably expected a random check-in, but that wasn’t it. I’d spent time hashing out our options about how to proceed, and the longer I sat in Larkwood, the more I knew we had to get moving. We couldn’t keep waiting around for some perfect idea to fall into our laps.
I took the large piece of posterboard I’d gotten from Kit a few days prior and set it on the coffee table between the men, then kneeled beside it, pen in hand. Writing things down made me feel better, like I had everything organized and under control even when I obviously didn’t.
I wrote on the board between signing, making a list on the side.“Escaping is going to need a few things. We’re going to need to take the security system down.”
Wade nodded. “If we don’t take out the alarms and door locks, getting out will be all but impossible.”
“Right. So that’s one thing. We also need to plan the best exit.”
“Options there are roof exit or front door in the main building,” Brax said.
“We also need to break off their communications,” Knox added in. “If each guard is on their own, if they can’t work together, it’ll limit what they can to do. Regular staff and guards aren’t allowed to bring cell phones with them when working, to limit the risk of a shade getting it, so without their radios or tablets, they can’t talk to each other. It would work best if we could throw up a false alarm first, to draw guards there.”
I added the points they made onto the board, the steps feeling overwhelming yet somehow better than not having any plan at all.
“We need to knock out the power,” Wade said. At my look, he went on. “Security systems are all run by computers and use generators out back. If we sabotage the security features to open doors and locks, that’s great, but they have enough back doors in the system to reverse it. Taking down the power will give us time to get out before they can gain control of it all again. It will basically lock all the systems open.”
I nodded and added that to the list. We’d spent the last month trying to come up with ideas, with plans, observing everything. Now we needed to get serious.
Brax gestured toward the board. “Let’s separate these tasks and assign them. No one can do everything, and it’ll take us all to figure it out. We’ll each focus ona part of it and come up with a plan, then we’ll work the plan out together with all the steps.”
