9. Render
Render
The video arrives at six fourteen in the morning on a channel Serafina shouldn’t know about.
That’s the first problem. Not the content, though the content is devastating.
The first problem is that nobody outside our tight circle should be able to send anything through this hidden channel.
I built it with multiple layers of protection.
The fact she got through means either she’s smarter than we thought or someone gave her the way in.
It could be the same people that led those men to the cabin safehouse.
I don’t share this with Enley yet. She’s still asleep three feet away on the concrete floor, curled up in my hoodie inside the sleeping bag I gave her. She needs the rest. I need a minute to think before I add more weight to what she’s already carrying.
I open the video.
The camera looks down into a plain cement room with a drain in the floor.
The lighting is harsh and flat. Poe sits in a chair, handcuffed to a bolt in the floor.
His face is badly beaten. One eye swollen shut.
Lip split. Blood dried along his hairline and jaw.
Someone worked on him with professional precision.
The kind of damage meant to hurt without killing.
Serafina walks into the frame. She looks polished and calm. She puts a hand on Poe’s shoulder like she owns him.
“This is a courtesy,” she says to the camera. “I want the network Poe built. He’s refused to give it to me so far. I respect stubbornness. But it has limits.”
She steps aside so the camera catches Poe clearly.
“In seventy-two hours I’ll start taking your team apart. One piece at a time. Starting with the person who matters most to the man I’m sending this to.”
She smiles, cold and knowing.
“Enley. That’s her name, correct? Poe’s little sister. The one your failsafe took from me. Impressive work. But you took something of mine, and I always collect on my debts.”
The camera pulls back to show searchers going through our old cabin on a live feed. They found it. They found the car too.
The video ends.
I watch it again. Then a third time. Looking for any detail that might help us. On the fourth viewing I notice the shadows in the room don’t match the cell Orchid described in her messages. Something’s off about the layout.
Behind me Enley stirs in the sleeping bag. I’ve got maybe thirty seconds before she wakes up fully. I decide to show her now. She told me she’s not cargo. She wants full honesty. I’m not going to be the one who keeps things from her. I respect her too much.
“Enley.”
She sits up quickly, scanning the room out of habit. Her eyes find me at the table and she reads the tension on my face immediately.
“What happened?” she asks.
“Video came through the hidden channel. From Serafina.”
She’s on her feet and at the table in seconds. She pulls the laptop closer and hits play without hesitation.
I watch her watch it.
The first few seconds she stays steady. Then she sees Poe.
Her face changes. The color drains away.
Her expression goes blank for a moment, like her mind is trying to protect her from what she’s seeing.
When Serafina says her name, a visible tremor runs through her body.
She presses her hands flat against the table, fingertips turning white.
The video ends. She doesn’t move.
“Play it again,” she says.
“Enley.”
“Play it again.”
I hit play. She watches it twice more, pausing and rewinding, studying every detail even though it’s clearly tearing her apart inside.
“The shadows are wrong,” she says finally. “The cell Orchid described would have different lighting. Either they moved him or the map is off.”
She caught it. The same thing I noticed. While watching her own brother bleeding on screen.
“I saw the same thing,” I tell her.
“So we check with Orchid. Update the map. Find out if there’s another holding area.” Her voice is fast but steady. She’s turned the pain into fuel. “And the hidden channel. Serafina shouldn’t have been able to send that. Either she broke through or someone helped her.”
“Yes.”
She takes a deep breath and taps out a message to Orchid, asking her. We wait.
After a few more minutes a message comes through: Ross has been pulling me for one-on-ones.
Three sessions in the last five days. Takes me out through the east corridor, past the monitoring station, sometimes down to the sub-level two access point before circling back.
Different route each time, like he wants me to see the layout without it looking deliberate.
Here's what's interesting. He doesn't ask about Maddox.
Not once. No questions about the crew, the operations, who's connected to whom.
Everything he asks is about Goldenbell. Financial structure.
Where the money routes. How the corporate side connects to the operational side.
He takes notes on a personal device, not the facility system.
He's building a file and the file isn't for Serafina. He knows I’m contracted with the FBI, and I think he thinks he can use this in his favor.
My read: Ross is a contractor who can smell a collapsing operation.
He's positioning himself for the aftermath.
Keeping me mobile and cooperative because a Goldenbell corporate insider who can testify about the financial layouts is worth more to him alive and talking than locked in a cell.
He doesn't know my real affiliation. He thinks I'm his leverage. I'm letting him think that.
Side benefit: every corridor he walks me through is another piece of the map.
“So Ross is building a case against Serafina,” I say, stretching my arms over my head. “This can definitely help us. What now?”
Enley’s eyes meet mine. “We work,” she says. “Right now. Everything else waits.”
We work.
The next twelve hours are some of the most intense we’ve had.
The storage unit turns into a command center.
I talk with Knight through our backup connection while Enley works the secret channel to Orchid.
We trade information in the short, efficient way we’ve developed.
Half sentences that carry full meaning because we understand each other now.
Knight’s voice is steady as always, but when I describe the video and Poe’s condition, the line goes quiet for a long moment. I know he’s thinking about Lark.
We build a new plan. Surgical instead of direct. Three entry points. I’ll take the stairs. Knight will handle the outside. Enley will manage the digital side from a safe spot nearby.
I look across the room at her. She’s focused on the laptop, building a way to trick the security system using information Orchid sent.
The screen lights her face in the dim space, highlighting the curve of her cheek and the determination in her eyes.
The fading bruise on her jaw only makes her look stronger. More beautiful.
I’ve wanted her for years. That want has always been there. It’s been kept carefully locked away because she’s Poe’s sister. But watching her now, after everything she’s been through, after the way she keeps choosing to fight beside me instead of hiding, the lock is breaking.
She built a clever workaround in under two hours. Something I’ve never seen before. She’s brilliant. Resilient. And so damn beautiful it hurts to look at her sometimes.
She feels me watching and glances up. Our eyes lock. The air between us feels thick. Heavy with everything we’re not saying. I see the same pull in her eyes that I feel in my chest. The same awareness.
“Render,” she says softly. “What is it?”
I want to tell her everything. That I want her.
That waking up with her in my arms changed something.
That watching her fight for her brother while dealing with her own trauma makes me admire her more than I thought possible.
That the careful distance I’ve kept is crumbling and I’m not sure I want to rebuild it.
Instead I say, “Nothing. Get some rest. Knight will meet us in sixteen hours and we need to be ready.” I nod toward the cot. “Take the cot,” I tell her.
“But your left side.”
“It’s all better now.” Lies. But her comfort means more to me than my own pain.
She holds my gaze a moment longer. Then she closes the laptop and lies down on the cot. I turn back to the screen, pretending to work while the pull between us grows stronger with every passing hour.
Sixteen hours.
I can hold the line for sixteen more hours.
I hope.