Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 60921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
She smirks at me, then sloooowly lowers them. The boots hit the floor with a thud. “Better?”
“Barely.”
The music changes tracks. Something even more bubblegum.
I gesture at the speakers. “Turn that off.”
She jabs a few keys. “Rude. You know, Mozart isn’t the only playlist option in the world.”
“I don’t listen to Mozart.”
“You feel like a Mozart person.”
“I feel,” I say flatly, “like changing every password we have.”
She laughs, leaning back, totally at home in a place she should not be anywhere near.
Ozzy shuffles in from the kitchenette, hair messy, t-shirt crooked, holding a mug of coffee that may not technically contain coffee. He blinks at us.
“Oh,” he says. “You told him.”
I turn slowly. “Told me what?”
Lark wiggles her fingers. “That you’re getting a promotion. I’m your new nightmare.”
Ozzy sips, winces, and mutters, “To be fair, she’s been our nightmare for a while now.”
“Ozzy,” I say through my teeth, “why is she inside our secure operations space?”
He shrugs, dropping into his rolling chair. “Because she knows where all our digital bodies are buried and she’ll happily dig them up and parade them across the internet if we say no?”
Lark lifts her bag of cheese curls. “Also, I brought snacks.”
“This is not a democracy,” I growl. “This is a very illegal paramoral operation that requires discipline and trust and—”
“Big words,” she says. “Very inspiring. Ten out of ten, would ignore again.”
I step closer, lowering my voice. “Lark. You are not going on missions with us.”
She cocks her head. “You mean like I didn’t go on the last three?”
I freeze. “You what?”
Arrow stirs on the couch, scratches his chest, mumbles something about “idiots cleared to channel four” and then goes back to sleep.
Ozzy looks up from his screen briefly. “You didn’t know she was following you?”
“No,” I snap.
“I did,” Ozzy says. “She brought donuts once. Good ones.”
I stare at him.
He shrugs. “What? It’s hard to find a decent maple bar in this city.”
My head feels like it’s going to explode.
“I am surrounded,” I mutter, “by traitors.”
Lark swirls the office chair so she’s facing the main monitor wall. Her gaze flicks over live feeds, scripts, lines of code.
She doesn’t look lost.
She looks like she belongs.
And that might be the most dangerous thing of all.
“Look,” she says, pointing at one of the inactive feeds. “Your outer ring cameras on the west stairwell have a thirty-second blind spot every looping cycle. If someone with half a brain and no morals found it, they could get in without tripping half your alerts.”
I move to the console, and she’s… right.
“I patched that weeks ago,” I argue.
“You patched it badly,” she replies. “Your fix made a different hole two directories over.”
I pull up the routing.
…Shit.
She did find it.
She did fix it.
I feel a cold weight settle in my chest.
I don’t like being outplayed.
I especially don’t like being outplayed by Gage’s little sister.
She must read something in my face because her smile softens. Just a little.
“Relax, Hayes. I’m not trying to ruin you. If I wanted to, you’d already be trending online with a really unfortunate filter.”
“That’s… not helping.”
She shrugs. “I’m not the enemy.”
“That’s exactly what someone untrained would say before getting themselves killed.”
She leans back, and for a split second, I see her how she used to be—Lark at fifteen, hair in braids, oversized hoodie hanging off one shoulder, giggling on Gage’s couch while she stole fries off my plate and asked invasive questions like why don’t you ever smile?
Back when she was just Gage’s kid sister.
Back when she was off-limits in a way that was easy.
She’s not a kid now.
Nothing about the way she looks is easy.
Her eyes drag over my face. “Why do you act like I’m breakable?”
“Because,” I say tightly, “I remember when you were fourteen and cried for an hour because some senior boy canceled a date. And I told Gage I’d break his legs if he came near you again.”
She snorts. “You’re talking about Tommy Howard. He cried more than I did.”
“Doesn’t matter. You were young.”
“I was annoying,” she corrects. “I’m still annoying. I’m also twenty-four, trained in Krav Maga, and capable of reciting every password you’ve changed in the past eighteen months.”
That last part is not comforting.
“At the end of the day,” I say, “you’re still Gage’s little sister.”
“Newsflash,” she says, standing, the bag of cheese curls now abandoned. She steps into my space like boundaries are a suggestion. “I’m not a ‘little’ anything anymore.”
She’s close.
Too close.
I catch the glint of a silver chain at her throat, the edge of a tattoo curling up the inside of her wrist. Her lashes are clumped with mascara, and there’s a tiny smudge of orange cheese dust on her lip.
I want to swipe it off with my thumb.
Or my mouth.
An electric pulse ticks under my skin.
I break eye contact first.
Because if I don’t, I’m going to do something incredibly stupid.