Chapter 10
Fuck.
He’d felt it the second he’d met her gaze in the dark glass of the monitor—too still, eyes locked on the parts of him he kept buried under layers of uniform and distance.
It hadn’t been desire that hit, but recognition—and that made everything inside him lock down hard.
He didn’t want to be seen like that. Not by her.
Whatever flicker had passed between them—heat or connection—he’d already filed it where he put everything dangerous.
Off-limits.
A woman like Jen deserved clean edges and daylight. He was what happened when things went wrong.
“Who’s Caro?” he asked, forcing his thinking back to the here and now.
“Caro Sparks. My junior engineer.” Jen couldn’t look away from the screen.
“She’s twenty-six. I hired her myself eight months ago.
” Her voice thinned. “She wears a pink t-shirt under her coveralls every single day. I looked at her efficiency proposal this morning and told her it was good work. Her whole face lit up as if nobody had ever said that to her before.”
She pushed back from the counter and pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers. “She reminds me of myself when I was that age—shit. She was running coolant checks on the missile tubes when this started. Must have gotten trapped when the lockdown engaged.”
On screen, Caro paced, arms wrapped around her middle. Three steps one way. Three steps back, the confined space of the missile bay visible around her.
Jen toggled controls. “Caro. This is Jen in Engineering. Copy?” She waited, flicked switches. “Caro. Can you hear me?”
She blew out an explosive breath.
“Comms are dead. I can’t get through.” She rocked back in her seat and pressed the heels of her hands to the sides of her head. “This is insane. I keep Seven running. I don’t—” She gestured at Caro’s image on screen. “—run around playing action hero.”
The crack in her composure hit him sideways. Not panic—frustration. When you were good at your job and then your job turned into something you never signed up for.
He’d lived that feeling too.
“You’re doing better than you think,” he said quietly, leaning one hip against the counter. His knuckles were tender and swollen from fighting, the skin split across two of them. He didn’t straighten them. Didn’t look.
Her eyes flashed. “That’s not the point!” Her voice rose, sharp with frustration. “The point is, I shouldn’t have to. I should be—” She broke off with a rough exhale. “Fuck it. Doesn’t matter what I should be doing.”
She buried her face in her hands for a long moment.
Wyatt pushed off the counter.
“Hey.”
When she didn’t move, he stepped in front of her chair and gently caught her wrists, easing her hands away from her face. Her skin was cold despite the dry coveralls.
“Look at me.”
Her eyes lifted, stormy and tired.
“You’re keeping a missile platform from falling into terrorist hands. While injured. Freezing. And half the station’s trying to kill us.”
He tightened his grip on her fingers, gave them a gentle squeeze. “That’s not failing, Jen. That’s doing the job.”
For a moment she just stared at him, breathing uneven.
Her head tipped in a tiny nod, and the tension in her shoulders loosened a fraction.
He released her hands and nodded toward the monitors.
“Now let’s lock down those missiles. One step at a time. Right?”
She blinked once. “Right.”
Her chair rolled forward as she turned back to the console. “First things first,” she muttered, fingers moving again. “We lock in the missiles. Then we figure out how we help Caro.”
Her shoulders squared, jaw set. The same expression he’d seen on men about to step into fire.
“Okay,” she murmured. “Clamp lockdown should engage in—”
The console flickered once.
Then the status line updated.
CLAMP LOCKDOWN —PENDING
REMOTE COMMAND QUEUED
SYSTEM ACCESS CONFLICT DETECTED
Wyatt’s stomach dropped. He didn’t need to be an engineer to know that conflict meant someone else was in the system. Someone who wanted those clamps open.
“That’s not good, is it?”
“No.” Her voice was way too calm—the calm that came right before things went catastrophically wrong. Her fingers hovered motionless over the keyboard. “That shouldn’t exist.”
He turned to her. “Talk to me.”
“They’re in the system. Not fully. But enough to trigger a conflict.” Her eyes flicked to a diagnostic tree. “Which means we’re not the only ones talking to the clamps.”
The picture locked into place, and he didn’t like the shape of it. “They’re cracking it.”
“Yes.” She exhaled slowly. “Halfway through. They don’t have full authorization, but they’ve got access somewhere—legacy credentials, a compromised node maybe, physical access at the bay level. Something.”
An enemy halfway through a door didn’t stop. They doubled down.
“What happens if you force it?”
Jen met his gaze. “If I push a hard override remotely, the system could interpret it as a release command instead of a lock.” Her mouth flattened. “The clamps fail open in certain scenarios. Fire. Structural stress. Rapid depressurization.”
She spread her hands against her thighs, knuckles white. She was scared. Not of the terrorists or the danger—scared of making the wrong call and handing those missiles over herself. The same fear in combat when the decision was yours and every option led to someone dying.
“And that would hand them the missiles.”
“Yes.” A beat. “Or brick the system entirely. Either way, once the clamps disengage, they don’t need me or any of the crew anymore.”
Wyatt’s eyes slid back to the missile bay feed. Caro paced in tight, frantic lines. “So, remote’s off the table.”
“The only safe way now is a manual lockdown. Local interface. Physical access.” Her voice fell. “From inside the missile bay.”
Wyatt processed the shift. One objective had just split clean down the middle into two—secure the missiles, get Caro out. And they’d have to do both under fire. And judging by how fast the terrorists were burrowing into the system, they were running out of time to do either.
He glanced around the room, instinctively checking the door and the vents before refocusing on the screen. “Of course it is. Would’ve been suspicious if this stayed easy.” He drained the last of his coffee and set the mug down. “Looks like we’re going downstairs.”
Wyatt unhooked the radio from his hip, already knowing he wouldn’t like what he heard. He turned it on before lifting it to his ear.
Voices spoke Russian. Clipped and urgent. He caught fragments—enough to know it was operational coordination, the tone of men moving into the final phase.
“…bay teams moving… be ready…”
He gritted his teeth. They were confident. Talking about when, not if.
Another voice cut in, sharper, with authority. A longer sentence he couldn’t fully parse.
He lowered the volume. “Something about a vessel. Four hours.”
Jen stilled. “Cargo vessel.”
She caught his look and gave a tight shrug. “My Russian’s terrible, but I know some technical vocabulary. They’ve got a ship coming for the missiles.”
“Four hours?” He checked his watch. “The ship’s arrival will push them to breach the bay so they can get the missiles prepped.” The extraction was planned, coordinated, and ready for execution.
“Then we don’t have much time.” Lines grooved down from the corner of her mouth.
“No. Show me the schematics.”
Her head bent. “Hang on. The missile bay is here.” She tapped her screen with a pencil.
Wyatt scanned the routes, already discarding corridors that would get them killed. “That’s three levels down and across the station. Through corridors they’re actively patrolling.” He pointed at the security feed. “We’d be walking straight into them.”
“Yeah.”
“So, what do you suggest?” She gave a heavy sigh, her hands flat on the console. “We can’t stay here. We can’t leave Caro. And if they get those missiles—”
“I’m not saying we don’t go.” His eyes met hers. “I’m saying we need a plan that doesn’t get us all killed.”
“Okay.” She took a breath. “What’s the smart way?”
“Tell me what you can do from here. Before we move.”
Jen studied the rig schematics. The power grid. The environmental systems. Her domain.
“I can cut power to sections they’re patrolling. Force them to operate in the dark.”
“They’ll have flashlights.”
She shot him a side-eye that said she didn’t appreciate his skepticism. It reminded him of Sarah. His sister had the same look when someone questioned her judgment. Usually, right before she proved them wrong.
“But I know this rig in the dark. They don’t. And I can make it uncomfortable. Steam vents. Environmental controls. Nothing lethal, but enough to slow them down.”
Wyatt studied the layout, rolling one shoulder where the M4’s strap had been digging in. “How long does that buy us?”
“Five minutes of clear movement. Maybe ten if we’re lucky.”
“And the route?”
She traced a path with her finger. “The missile bay is on a separate ventilation system. We’ll need to use the service corridors.
” She looked up at him briefly. “Fifteen minutes to reach the missile bay if we’re not interrupted.
” She was already pulling up environmental controls, typing with the desperate speed of someone racing against a clock.
“And when we get there? How do we get inside if they’re already at the door cutting through?”
She chewed on her lower lip as the last of her hope for a simple solution died. “There’s an auxiliary access—an engineering maintenance hatch on Seven’s exterior. We’d have to go outside again. In the rain. On exposed catwalks.”
With nowhere to hide and no margin for error.
“It’s that or wait for them to breach the main door.” Wyatt rechecked the security feed again. At the teams sweeping closer and the feed showing Caro trapped and waiting.
Three levels down. Through hostile territory. Out onto an exterior catwalk in freezing rain to save one engineer and lock down missiles that could end everything.
Every tactical instinct he had said this was a bad idea. That the smart play was to let Caro go, secure this position, wait for reinforcements.
But Jen wouldn’t do that. It was there in the set of her jaw. The way her hands had stopped shaking and gone steady with purpose.
She was going. With him or without him.
Which meant his responsibility now was keeping her alive through whatever came next. He holstered his radio.
His eyes met hers. “Let’s go get your engineer.”