2. Enley
Enley
I don’t sleep.
I close my eyes because he’s watching and I don’t want him to see the storm inside my head.
If I look calm and rational, maybe I can buy myself enough time to actually process everything that’s happened.
But behind my eyelids my brain races the way it always does when I feel cornered.
I’m not thinking about the room or the man in it.
I know this place is safe. I know Render is safe.
I have known Render James for years. I’ve watched him at crew dinners and in crowded lofts, noticing the way he moves through spaces with confidence, seeing everything while disturbing nothing.
He’s Poe’s best friend. He’s the person my brother trusts with secrets he won’t name. He would never hurt me.
That’s not the problem.
The problem is that I’m lying in a bed in a cabin in the woods while my brother sits in a cell somewhere, and the reason he’s there is because of me.
Render doesn’t know this yet. Nobody does, except Poe, who figured it out six months ago and buried the evidence instead of confronting me.
That’s what Poe does. He protects. He absorbs the weight of everyone else’s mistakes and carries it because his love is stubborn and his instinct to shield the people he cares about runs bone-deep.
The truth is simple and ugly. I’ve been running my own secret operations against Goldenbell for months.
Not approved. Not authorized. Just me, from my apartment in the middle of the night, digging into places I was never supposed to touch.
I started because Poe wouldn’t let me in.
Years of hearing it’s too dangerous and you don’t need to be involved.
Years of watching my brother and his friends do work that mattered while I stayed on the other side of the wall he built out of love.
So I stopped asking. I taught myself. When I was good enough, I began using what I knew.
I found weaknesses in Serafina’s world. I gathered information that confirmed everything the crew already suspected.
I was careful at first. Then I got reckless.
Effective and reckless are not mutually exclusive, and I crossed that line months ago.
Serafina noticed the disturbances. She traced them back to Poe’s network because my work carried traces that connected to the Maddox systems. My fingerprints led her to Poe. Poe led her to the crew. And now everyone’s in cells because I was too skilled to stop and too stubborn to ask for help.
Poe found out six months ago. He didn’t yell. He didn’t shut me down. He quietly built contingency plans around the possibility that my actions would blow up in all our faces. One of those plans included Render. The failsafe. The person he trusted to come get me when everything went wrong.
And now here I am, in a bed in a cabin, while Render lies on the floor and my brother sits chained somewhere, protecting the secret that I’m the reason everything fell apart.
The mattress smells like clean laundry and faint dust. The sheets are fresh, which means Render prepared this place in advance. Poe planned for this. My brother spent months expecting the disaster I created and chose to build an exit strategy instead of telling me to stop.
I can’t lie here anymore.
The thought hits me with sharp clarity. Poe’s in a cell because of me. The crew is locked up because of me. And Render, for all his loyalty and careful planning, still thinks I’m just the innocent sister who got taken as leverage. He’s got no idea I’m the cause.
He thinks I’m a victim. A package he carried out of that warehouse. If I stay here and let him protect me the way Poe’s been protecting me, I’ll only make the same mistake again. Someone else carrying the weight of my choices.
I need to go. Not away from Render. Toward Poe.
I’ve got knowledge of Goldenbell’s world that nobody else does.
I can find where they’re holding the crew faster on my own.
I won’t have to explain how I know what I know.
I won’t have to watch Render’s face when he realizes the woman he rescued is the reason his best friends are in chains.
I watch him through my lashes for several minutes. His breathing is steady and controlled. His hand rests near the gun beside him. He’s not sleeping. I can tell by the rhythm. He’s pretending, just like I am.
Slowly I sit up. The mattress springs creak softly. I freeze. Render doesn’t move.
I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and set my bare feet on the hard floor. I stand carefully, trying to make as little noise as possible, and take two steps toward the table where the go-bag sits. My fingers reach for it.
“The keys are in my left pocket.”
His voice comes from the floor, quiet and calm, and my whole body locks up. My heart slams once, hard, then races against my ribs.
I look down. He lies flat on his back with his eyes open now, staring at the ceiling like he’s giving me the dignity of not being caught.
“If you want to leave, I’ll give them to you,” he says in that same steady voice.
No anger. No accusation. “The sedan’s got a full tank.
Take a left out of the driveway, follow the gravel for half a mile, and you’ll hit a county road.
Go south and you’ll reach a town with a gas station in about twenty minutes.
There’s cash in the side pocket of the bag. Two hundred dollars.”
I stand there with my hand still extended and guilt heavy in my chest. I don’t know what to do with a man who responds to me trying to sneak away by offering directions and money.
“You’d… uh, let me leave,” I whisper.
“You’re not a prisoner, Enley.” He says it to the ceiling, still not looking at me. “You were a prisoner four hours ago. You’re not one now. If you want to leave, leave. I won’t stop you. I won’t follow you.”
“It isn’t about leaving. It’s about going after Poe.”
Something in the air shifts. He sits up slowly. The blanket pools around his waist. He rests his forearms on his bent knees and looks at me for the first time since I got out of bed. His eyes catch the moonlight and my stomach does a little flip I have no right to feel right now.
“Going after Poe,” he repeats.
“I’ve got information. Things I know about Goldenbell that could help find where they’re holding everyone. I can move faster alone. No explanations. Just me and what I’ve learned over the past months.”
I stop before I say too much. But Render’s watching me with that careful look. He’s assembling pieces of a puzzle, and I realize he’s been working on it longer than I thought.
“Months of what?” he asks gently.
The silence stretches between us.
“You know,” I say.
“I suspected. For about six months.” His voice stays raw and steady. “There were signs in Poe’s network that didn’t match anything else. Poe told me to drop it. Said it was handled. He only says that when he’s protecting someone. He was protecting you.”
“From myself.”
“From the consequences.”
The admission hangs in the air. He knew enough. Not everything, but enough to see the shape of what I’d done.
“Serafina found my traces,” I confess. The words feel heavy but necessary. “My secret work against Goldenbell. I was effective, but I got sloppy. She followed it back to Poe’s network and then to the crew. The reason everyone’s locked up is because of me.”
I’ve never said it out loud before. The words land in the dim cabin like stones.
Render stays quiet for a long time. Long enough that the generator cycles and the owl calls again. Moonlight shifts across the floor.
“So your plan is to leave,” he says finally. “Take the laptop. Take the car. Drive into the night and fix everything alone.”
“Yes.”
“That’s the same plan that got us here,” he says softly.
“You worked alone because Poe wouldn’t let you in.
You kept going because you didn’t want to explain yourself.
You were good at it, but reckless, and now you want to do the same thing again.
Alone. Without help. Without anyone watching your back. ”
I open my mouth to argue, then close it. He’s right.
“What’s the alternative?” I ask.
“Stay. Work with me. Use what you know combined with what I have. Find them together. With backup. With someone watching your six while you work.”
“You want me to tell you everything.”
“I want you to stop carrying it alone.” He holds my gaze and something warm and steady moves through his eyes. It feels like more than surveillance now. It feels like safety wrapped in something deeper. “You don’t have to fix this by yourself. That’s not weakness. That’s how it’s supposed to work.”
I stand there in the dim light with the go-bag on the table and the weight of my mistakes pressing on my shoulders. I think about all the times I built walls because no one would let me in. Every time I worked alone, the work was good but the consequences were worse.
Render just named the pattern I’ve been refusing to see.
I sit down on the cold concrete, cross-legged, about five feet from him. Equal ground. Close enough to feel the warmth coming from him.
“I’ve decided to stay,” I say.
He nods, simple and steady, like my answer was always mine to give.
“But I have conditions.”
A small spark of interest lights his face. “Go ahead.”
“First, you don’t make decisions about my safety without talking to me. I’m not cargo. If there’s a plan, I’m part of it.”
He nods.
“Second, I tell you everything I know about Goldenbell. No hiding anything. And you do the same. Full honesty between us.”
“That’s fair.”
“Third.” I pause because this one feels hardest. “The guilt I carry about Poe and the crew is mine. Don’t try to take it from me or tiptoe around it. Let me carry it while we work. Just… stay with me through it.”
He looks at me for a long beat. The dim light makes his eyes difficult to read, but I catch something there that isn’t pity. It’s recognition. Warmth. Maybe even a little admiration.
“I can work with that,” he says.
“Good.”
The silence that follows feels different. Settled. Like two people who’ve just agreed to terms they can both live with.
“You should eat something,” he says after a minute, his voice gentler now. “There are protein bars in the bag. Water too.”
“In a minute.” I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around them. The concrete is hard against my tailbone, but I’m not ready to move back to the bed. “Tell me what you know about the crew first. Where they might be holding them.”
He shifts and begins explaining in that calm, reassuring way of his. I listen, hyper-aware of how close we are on the floor, of the way his voice wraps around me, of the strength in his presence.
I pull the laptop from the bag and set it on the floor between us. The screen lights up both our faces in the dark cabin. When our fingers brush as I turn it toward him, a spark jumps between us that’s got nothing to do with static electricity.
“Show me,” he says softly, leaning closer.
I start sharing everything I’ve got.
The first night ends with the two of us on the concrete floor, heads close, voices low, building something new out of the mess I made. The girl who always worked alone is sitting five feet from a partner she didn’t ask for, and the work already feels better for it.
Tomorrow we’ll start hunting for my brother.
Tonight I’ll stop carrying it all by myself.
It isn’t easy.
But with Render beside me, it feels like a beginning. And despite everything, my stupid heart notices how good he looks in the glow of the screen and how steady his shoulder is just inches from mine.
It’s definitely a beginning.