Chapter 9
Engineering control was a climb two levels up through the maintenance shafts using inch deep toe and finger holds. By the time they reached the vent above it, Jen’s fingertips felt blunt and distant and her toes burned inside her boots.
A quick scan of the room below confirmed control was empty, still sealed for now behind a heavy door—designed to hold against fire, pressure, and the night currently unraveling around them.
For a short time at least, they had some breathing space.
Wyatt dropped first, after confirming the room was clear to his satisfaction. She followed, his hands steady at her waist as he guided her down and set her carefully on her feet.
The moment her boots hit solid ground, the shaking started in earnest. Her teeth chattered hard enough that she bit her tongue, copper blooming sharp and sudden in her mouth. Cold had sunk its claws deep, burrowing into muscle and bone. She recognized it with the detached clarity of training.
Hypothermia.
The signs lined up neatly in her head even as her body unraveled—violent shivering, sluggish fingers, the creeping heaviness behind her eyes that whispered how easy it would be to sit down. Just for a minute. Just to breathe.
Dangerous thoughts.
She planted her feet wide until the floor stopped tilting.
Wyatt inspected the room with clipped strides, cataloging angles, the distance to the door.
His lips had a faint bluish tinge, but otherwise he looked infuriatingly unaffected, as if cold were just another environmental variable to be accounted for and ignored.
He checked the security feed mounted above the main workstation.
His gaze tracked fast—corridors, deck access points, the canteen feed now clouded with drifting white.
“They’ll be looking for us. The Halon will have bought us some time while they get control back, but not much.” His intense gaze switched back to her. “We both need to warm up. You’re borderline hypothermic.”
Jen jerked her head in agreement, forcing words past her chattering teeth. “Lockers.” She pointed past the bank of computer workstations toward the door at the far wall. “Clean clothes. Fire safety protocol. We have to change if there’s fuel or oil contamination.”
Wyatt stepped ahead of her, pulling open the door to the locker room.
The space was narrow and functional. Six dented metal lockers, a tired-looking shower stall, a changing area half-concealed by a threadbare privacy curtain. Along one wall, shelves held neatly folded stacks of coveralls, the orange fabric bright against gray steel.
Jen lifted a stack of coveralls off the shelf, checking the labels. Men’s medium. Large. Extra-large.
She glanced back at Wyatt, trying to assess him through the wet flight suit clinging to his frame, and immediately regretted the exercise when her brain stalled on details that were absolutely not mission-critical.
“Um. I don’t know what size you need.”
Amusement flashed across his face, and he stepped past her and reached for a folded set without hesitation. “These’ll work.”
She grabbed a small for herself, her fingers clumsy.
“You take the locker room.” He was already turning back toward the control space. “I’ll change out there.”
She nodded quickly. Grateful, absurdly, for the distance. Her head was still fuzzy from the cold and the memory of his hands at her waist. She needed separation to get her feet under her again. The locker door shut behind him, a strip of fluorescent light cutting under it.
Jen blew out a breath and shook her head once.
Get a grip. Get dry. Get warm. Think later.
Without Wyatt, the small space felt suddenly too quiet. The hum of the station vibrated faintly through the walls, a familiar presence she usually took comfort in. Right now, it just reminded her how thin the barrier was between them and everything hunting them.
Her hands shook as she reached for the zipper of her sodden coveralls. The metal teeth resisted at first, and she had to pause—press her forehead briefly to the wall and breathe until her fingers remembered how to work.
After shrugging off the arms, the coveralls peeled away reluctantly, heavy with water, clinging like they didn’t want to let her go.
When she finally kicked free of them, the relief was immediate and almost dizzying, even as the chill bit at her skin.
She shivered in her underwear, the air prickling across exposed flesh as she unzipped the dry coveralls.
This morning she’d dressed without thinking. A normal day on Seven.
It felt like a different lifetime.
The coverall fabric was slightly stiff from being folded, but warm, so blessedly warm, against her skin. She zipped up with hands that were already steadier, her body’s violent shaking subsiding to occasional tremors as her core temperature finally edged back toward normal.
Sounds carried through the thin wall—muted, indistinct. The dull thud of boots hitting the floor. The clink of a belt buckle.
Wyatt.
Awareness hit her sideways, her brain latching onto it despite everything, screaming that this was not the time. They were being hunted. Seven was compromised. People she cared about were on their knees with guns pointed at them.
And yet her body noticed.
Jen dragged her hands through her damp, tangled hair. Hypothermia. Nothing else.
She tugged on dry socks, boots, then squared her shoulders.
Get back to work.
When she opened the door, she meant to apologize—some automatic politeness for taking longer than she should have.
The words died in her throat.
Wyatt stood six feet away, his back half-turned as he reached for a clean t-shirt laid across the console.
Too close.
The fluorescent lighting carved him into sharp relief.
Oh.
Broad shoulders tapered to a strong waist. A back built for pulling people from places they shouldn’t survive. Ink traced packed muscle. The SEAL trident on one arm.
So that was the answer he wouldn’t give her in the vent.
Crossed anchors of the Coast Guard on the other. A puckered bullet wound scarred his shoulder. A jagged line cut below his ribs. The faded ghosts of violence mapped across his skin, his past written in pain.
Heat flared low and sudden—completely at odds with the cold still clinging to her. This was the worst possible moment to feel this way.
Wyatt’s gaze met hers in the dark reflection of a security monitor. For a beat, he didn’t look away. Something flickered behind his eyes—there and gone before she could name it.
Then his shoulders tensed. He pulled the shirt over his head, and the moment sealed itself away as efficiently as everything else he did.
“We should warm up internally.” He zipped up the orange coveralls. “Hot drink. If you’ve got one.”
Right. Coffee. Reality.
“Sure.” She moved past him toward the kitchenette, deliberately increasing the distance between them. Her heart was misbehaving, thudding too hard against her ribs, but she forced her focus back to where it belonged.
Later—if there even was a later—she could unpack what the moment meant.
For now, there was work to do.
The setup was basic. An aging coffee maker, an electric kettle, shelves stocked with emergency rations that had likely outlived their intended shelf life.
She could do this. Make coffee. Execute a simple sequence of steps.
The instant coffee was terrible—bitter and metallic, an insult to real beans—but it was hot, and right now that was all that mattered. She filled two chipped mugs and crossed the room, handing one to Wyatt without ceremony.
“Careful,” she said. “It’s lethal.”
He wrapped his hands around it with a nod of thanks, his eyes trained on the security feed. His M4 leaned against the console within easy reach.
His hands weren’t quite steady on the mug. She almost missed it—would have, if she hadn’t spent the last few hours learning to read him. He caught her looking, and the tremor disappeared, his grip firming like it had never happened as he checked the monitors again.
“I’m sorry.”
He looked right at her, a frown on his face.
She plowed on before she chickened out. “For not trusting you. Earlier. In the armory.” The words came out rushed. She needed to say them before she lost her nerve. “I thought you might be—”
“One of them.” He didn’t sound offended. “I know.”
“You said you’re Coast Guard, but you moved like—”
“Someone who wasn’t.” He sipped his coffee, grimaced at the taste. “You were smart not to trust me on my word alone.”
“Still. You’ve saved my life multiple times tonight and I—”
“Made the right call.” His gaze held hers. “Trust should be earned, not given. Especially after the people you trusted most put guns in your face.”
She winced. “And for... biting you.”
He examined his hand where her teeth had broken skin. “I’ve had worse.” A beat. “Not usually from engineers.”
Her cheeks heated. “Still. That was—”
“Effective.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “Surprised the hell out of me.”
Something in her chest loosened at that. He understood.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
“For what?”
She hesitated. Then shook her head. “Nothing.”
“You’ve got good instincts, Jen. Don’t apologize for them.”
“We should start the lockdown sequence.” She carried her coffee to the main terminal and dropped into the chair, fingers already moving across the keyboard as the familiar interface bloomed to life.
Wyatt was behind her, close enough to watch the screen, but his body angled toward the door, as if he expected it to burst open any second. Heat radiated from him. “Talk me through it.”
“Missile loading systems,” Jen pulled up the central command protocols. “Overhead cranes. Launch tube mechanisms. Exterior access hatches. I’m locking down everything they’d need to physically move the missiles off the platform.”
She worked quickly and efficiently, the way she always had. This was her world, her domain. Seven had been her exile. The only place left after Clive made sure every door closed. Eighteen months of isolation. Of skill and expertise no one saw.
But this—this mattered.
Stopping these men. Protecting these systems. Protecting her people. She might never get her reputation back. Maybe Clive had made sure her name would always come with a footnote, if it appeared at all.
But she could do this.
She could stop the terrorists.
She pulled up the missile bay security feed, her jaw tightening as the familiar shapes appeared on the screen. Sixteen interceptor missiles. Silent and waiting.
And they’re going to stay that way.
Something caught her eye on the feed. A flicker on an edge where there shouldn’t be any. A shadow that didn’t match the static equipment.
She squinted at the screen, her heart rate kicking up. “Did you see that?”
“See what?” Wyatt turned.
“There.” She rewound the footage, slowed it, froze the frame. The image was grainy, but clear enough—a figure pressed against the far wall, partially hidden by equipment.
Orange coveralls.
A person.
Her breath caught as she zoomed in, enhancing the image as far as the system would allow. The figure shifted, just enough for the camera to catch a face.
“My God,” she whispered, ice flooding her veins. “It’s Caro.”