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)
I kick my boots up on the edge of the table, watching him pace. He’s all coiled precision, black t-shirt clinging to his shoulders. His hair’s slightly messed from running his fingers through it, and he smells like soap and coffee and just the tiniest hint of gasoline.
Focus, Lark.
“This is a first-time target,” Knight continues. “We don’t know all the players, and we don’t know how deeply this ties into Cathedral yet. So we move careful. Controlled. Clean.”
“Like a colonic,” I say.
“Like a scalpel,” he counters.
“Boring.”
He pins me with a stare. “We’re not playing tonight, Lark.”
“Who says I’m playing?”
His silence says you, loud and clear.
Arrow is across the room at a secondary station, scanning through city cams and traffic feeds. Ozzy’s on the couch with a laptop and a bag of Skittles, monitoring the dark web chatter. Gage’s scanning his own laptop. Render’s looking through his camera footage. Everyone’s in mission mode.
Except my heart, which is in Knight mode.
He gestures toward me with his chin. “You get the rules?”
“Uh-huh,” I say.
“Say them.”
I sigh. “Stay in the car.”
“Good.”
“Don’t touch anything.”
“Also good.”
“Don’t wander off, don’t improvise, don’t swing my bat at anyone’s head, blah blah blah,” I sing-song. “You know micromanaging gives you wrinkles, right?”
He narrows his eyes. “If something goes sideways, there’s one exit point. One. We don’t improvise with people’s lives.”
The serious note in his voice snags me.
For a second, all the sarcasm drains out. I see it—the weight on his shoulders, the ghosts he doesn’t talk about.
I hold his gaze. “I got it, Knight.”
His jaw flexes. He nods once, like he believes me.
Which is cute.
And wrong.
Because I’m absolutely going to improvise if I have to.
But I’m not going to tell him that.
Arrow swivels his chair toward us. “You two done couples-therapy-ing, or can we go stop some human trash?”
Knight gives him a look. “We’re not a couple.”
Arrow grins. “Sure you’re not.”
Gage rolls his chair away from his desk. “Can you not call Knight and my little sister a couple please?”
I laugh, grab my jacket and my bat, and head toward the door. “I’m not your little sister. I’m a grown ass woman.”
“Lark,” Knight says, eyes crashing into mine. “Lose the bat.”
I blink at him. “You lose your personality.”
“Bat stays in the trunk.”
“Knight, have you met me?”
We stare each other down for a solid five seconds.
He sighs. “Fine. Bat in the back seat. Under a blanket.”
“Compromise. I like this for us.”
He mutters something like, “Dear God,” and follows me out.
The warehouse district is an ocean of corrugated metal and bad lighting.
Knight parks two blocks away in an alley that smells like old rain and motor oil. It’s technically a stakeout spot, but it looks more like somewhere people come to get stabbed or make poor romantic choices.
The warehouse we’re targeting squats at the end of the street like a rusting beast—big, boxy, fenced, with a roll-up dock and a smaller side entrance. A couple of semi-trailers are parked nearby. There’s a security camera on each corner, one above the side door, and a cheap motion floodlight.
Knight kills the engine and looks at me. “Remember the rules?”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, Dad.”
“Stay. In. The. Car.”
I salute lazily. “Woof.”
He glares, pulls his hoodie up, and adjusts the small, almost invisible camera at his collar.
Arrow’s voice crackles in my ear. “Knight, you’ve got three guards in rotation outside. Two at the dock, one smoking near the side door. No cops in a five-block radius. You’re clear.”
Knight gives me one last hard look that says seriously, stay, then slips out of the car, closing the door quietly behind him.
I watch him move.
He’s so good. He’s so sexy.
Silent, precise, a shadow in a darker shadow. He skirts the line of parked vehicles, pauses near a stack of pallets, checks sightlines, then slides around toward the blind spot of the nearest camera. Arrow’s been looping the feed, but Knight never trusts tech alone.
He trusts his eyes.
He trusts his instincts.
He doesn’t trust me.
I wait.
Thirty seconds.
Sixty.
Ninety.
“Knight has entered the west side,” Arrow murmurs over comms. “Approaching side door. Guard’s distracted on his phone. I’m looping cam three…”
Ozzy adds, “Chatter in the Silk channels say the buyer’s running late. You’ve got maybe twenty minutes before extra assholes show.”
My fingers drum on my knee.
I shift.
I look out the window.
I glance at my bat under the blanket in the back seat.
Knight slips inside the warehouse, and the door swings shut behind him.
It takes me exactly twelve seconds to decide I have absolutely no intention of sitting here like some obedient golden retriever.
I pop the glove box, pull out my burner tablet, and tap it awake. My favorite stolen network-mapping overlay flickers to life, picks up the warehouse’s basic wireless footprint, and overlays it on the city grid.
“Arrow,” I say sweetly, “you still got that feed loop going on cam three?”
A pause. “Yeah. Why?”