Page 26 of Make Them Pay

Render pulls back just enough for our foreheads to rest together. His breath is warm against my lips. His eyes are dark and intense, filled with everything he’s been holding back.

“The channel,” I whisper.

“I know.”

We don’t move for three long seconds. The laptop pings again. The world’s still turning. The team’s still in danger. The kiss didn’t stop the clock.

He steps back. His hand slips from my hair and the loss of contact feels like falling. I turn to the laptop with shaking hands that have nothing to do with fear.

The message loads. Orchid has new information. The timeline has moved up. We now have forty-eight hours instead of seventy-two.

I tell Render. He stands a couple steps away, one hand braced on the shelf, rebuilding his walls brick by brick even as I watch.

“Contact Knight,” he says. His voice is almost steady again. “Tell him the timeline changed. He needs to meet us sooner.”

I nod and send the message.

The work continues. The plan adjusts. The clock ticks louder.

We don’t talk about the kiss. Not yet. There’s no time. But I can still feel it. His mouth on mine. His hand in my hair. The way he looked at me like I was the only thing in the room.

The wall is going back up. I can see him doing it. But I know what’s behind it now. And he knows that I know.

Forty-eight hours.

The clock sounds different. Faster. And underneath it, steady and impossible to ignore, beats something new between us. Something we’ll have to face when this is over.

Soon.

11

Render

Knight arrives at two in the afternoon looking exactly like he always does when the job is serious. Calm. Focused. Ready.

He slips through the gap in the fence the same way I brought Enley through earlier. He’s known these kinds of places for as long as I have. We grew up in the same world, learned the same hard lessons, and have been watching each other’s backs since we were kids.

Enley’s asleep on the cot. She finally crashed two hours ago after we spent the rest of the night and into the morning tightening the plan for the shorter timeline. She didn’t bring up the kiss. Neither did I. We worked side by side with the same careful two-inch space between us, but that space now feels different. Warmer. Heavier. Like something alive is sitting in it.

Knight’s eyes land on her, then shift to me. He’s been watching me watch her across rooms for years. Seeing her asleep in my hoodie in my safehouse needs no explanation.

He doesn’t comment. Knight only speaks on personal matters when they become operational problems. Instead he drops his pack on the table, pulls out a folded map, and says, “Show me.”

I open the laptop and walk him through everything we know. The two buildings above ground. The underground levels. The second holding area where Poe’s being kept alone. The guard rotation. The six-minute window. The way into the locked corridor that Enley figured out.

Knight takes it all in the way he always has. Completely silent. His eyes move over the maps like he’s already walking those halls in his head, counting steps and finding cover.

“The stairwell is the only way down,” he says. “That’s a problem if they lock it.”

“I know. There’s a maintenance shaft on the east side as a backup. Narrow, but it works for one person.”

“One person isn’t six hostages.”

“The shaft is the backup. The stairwell is the main way. If we hold it, we hold the exit.”

He nods once. “The other hostages are on the first underground level. Standard locks. Once I have Poe, I can get to them.”

“While keeping the stairwell open.”