Chapter 11
The familiar weight of her tool belt settled around Jen’s hips—multi-tool, work knife, electrical tape, wire cutters.
Things she understood. Things that made sense.
Not like the sidearm she picked up next—cold and unfamiliar, it demanded a different confidence.
She’d qualified with it during onboarding.
But shooting paper targets wasn’t the same as stepping into a corridor where men with automatic weapons were actively hunting her.
She set the weapon down, then turned back to the console.
Her fingers flew across the power grid toggles and environmental overrides. She’d run these sequences a thousand times in drills, never imagining she’d use them to cover an escape from armed terrorists.
The warmth of the engineering control room pressed in around her. Wyatt stood three feet away, checking his weapons, and she was acutely aware of the space between them—had been for the last twenty minutes while they planned this insane exterior approach.
He was all hard lines and economy of movement, nothing wasted.
The way he handled the gun as if it was an extension of him, his body as much a weapon as the steel in his hands.
The back of her neck prickled with the memory of how he’d looked at her in the dark glass of the monitor earlier.
Like he was cataloging her. Filing her away under some mental heading she couldn’t read.
Not now.
She forced her attention back to the screen.
“Cutting power to Decks 2 and 3 now.” She executed the command. “Steam vents opening in the primary corridors.”
The fire suppression pre-charge engaged. On the security feeds, lights died across two decks as steam flooded the corridors—a failsafe designed to clear residual halon. Emergency lighting kicked in, dim red strips glowing along the baseboards.
She waited, too tense to blink, the way she used to during system reboots when one wrong flag meant catastrophic failure. Figures that had been stationary on the camera feed scattered. Flashlight beams slashed through the darkness and rolling white fog.
“That’ll hold them for five minutes. We go now.” She grabbed a second flashlight from beneath the counter and handed it to Wyatt.
He clicked his on. “After you.”
“Ladies first?”
“I was going to say, you know where we’re going.” The corners of his eyes crinkled. “But sure. That too.”
Fair point.
She stepped toward the door—and his hand settled on her shoulder, warm and steady, holding her back for half a second.
He leaned past her, eyes sweeping the corridor.
“Okay. We’re good.” His stubble scraped lightly against her ear, his breath warm at her skin. “I’m right here.”
She exhaled.
Right.
She opened the door.
The corridor closed in on her. So dark. The emergency lighting barely cut through the gloom.
Steam poured from overhead vents in thick white clouds, settling damp against her skin and clothes. And she’d just gotten dry. Suck it up, Jen. The air tasted metallic and wet, condensation already gathering in rivulets along the bulkheads as her plan unfolded.
Shouts echoed somewhere ahead.
Wyatt squeezed her arm. “Move. Fast.”
On it.
She hurried along the corridor, Wyatt’s hand firm on her shoulder, his body close behind her, angled just enough to shield her without slowing her down.
His hand on her shoulder kept her moving when her nerves wanted her to stop.
The service stairwell was twenty feet ahead. Then three levels down to maintenance where they could gain exterior access.
Simple.
If we don’t run into anyone.
If the distraction holds.
If—
Voices ahead.
Flashlight beams cut through the haze.
Wyatt’s grip shifted to her arm, and he hauled her sideways into a recessed stairwell alcove, pulling her in hard—her back to the bulkhead, his body between her and the corridor.
She held her breath.
The patrol advanced toward them. Two men. Maybe three. Flashlights slashed white through the fog as they cursed in Russian, one of them coughing hard. The steam was doing its job—blinding, disorienting, forcing them to duck around the still-venting pipes.
Ten feet.
Five.
Wyatt shifted his stance, broad shoulders blocking her completely from view. His hand rested on his sidearm—not drawing, but ready.
The patrol passed.
Footsteps faded, and their voices thinned into the distance.
She stayed pressed against the bulkhead, Wyatt solid and unmoving in front of her, frozen for a slow five-count.
“Too close,” Jen whispered.
“Yeah.”
She rolled her shoulders to shake loose the place where fear had glued her coveralls to her spine. “This way.”
She took the stairs fast, her flashlight beam bouncing wildly off the metal treads. Three levels felt like thirty. Her legs burned by the third landing.
Wyatt tracked behind her like a shadow. Six flights of metal stairs and she could barely hear him. Every corner they reached, he was already checking it before she’d finished the last step—weapon up, eyes sweeping, then a curt nod that meant clear.
Bottom floor.
Another corridor. Darker and quieter. Farther from the chaos she’d unleashed above.
“It’s at the end,” she whispered.
They ran. The exterior hatch waited at the far wall—a heavy circular door with a manual wheel lock. She’d never used it, wasn’t sure anyone had in the last year. She grabbed the wheel with both hands and pulled.
Nothing. Not even a quarter turn. “It’s stuck.”
Wyatt stepped in beside her. “Rust or pressure?”
“Both, probably.”
He wrapped his hands around the wheel. “On three. One. Two—”
They pulled together.
Metal groaned. The wheel broke free with a shriek that made her flinch at its loudness. Unlocked, the hatch swung inward. Freezing air whipped through the gap, reeking of salt and fuel, driving icy rain into her face.
Beyond the hatch—nothing but whistling wind.
Her stomach dropped.
Sunset had been over an hour ago. There was no ambient light.
No moon behind the cloud cover. Just black water and a blacker sky, the distant running lights of the rig’s superstructure barely visible through the rain.
Not seeing the ocean was worse. Her imagination filled in the drop with brutal enthusiasm.
Hell.
“Jen?”
She cleared her throat. “I’m fine.”
She wasn’t fine at all. But this was the only way.
A maintenance locker was bolted into the bulkhead beside the hatch. She yanked it open, wincing as the hinges screamed in protest. Inside she found two safety harnesses.
She pulled one free and tossed it to Wyatt. “This time, we both get to be safety nerds.”
She stepped into her own harness, cinched the straps tight with shaking fingers, and clipped in before he moved in front of her.
“I’ve already checked all my straps,” she said.
He looked down at her. “Humor me. You’re my responsibility.
” He tugged the final D-ring across her chest, testing the connections.
The motion pulled her up onto her toes, her body barely an inch from his.
Close enough to feel the heat of him and remember—unhelpfully—what he looked like without a shirt.
Then he stepped back and shrugged into his own harness. He was done in thirty seconds flat.
Jen turned back to the hatch.
The ladder ran straight down the exterior of the rig—vertical steel rungs bolted into the superstructure. A safety cable tracked alongside it, waiting for their carabiners. Emergency lighting strips glowed every ten feet, the orange light swallowed almost immediately by rain and dark.
Way below.
“You first,” Wyatt said.
She eyeballed him. “Again?”
He lifted one eyebrow. “If anyone spots us, it’s easier to shoot them without you in the way.”
Okay. She sucked in a breath. “I can work with that.”
The wind tried to shove her back through the hatch, rain needling her face and stealing what little breath she had. She grabbed the first rung and clipped her harness to the safety cable with a reassuringly loud click, then rattled it anyway.
Just to be sure.
The metal rung was slippery beneath her palm.
She wiped her hand on her coveralls and grabbed the rung again.
Don’t look down. Just climb.
Hand over hand. One rung. Then another.
The wind pulled at her, impatient and relentless. The entire rig swayed—not much, just enough of a sway to remind her this was a structure moored in open water, not solid ground.
Wyatt climbed onto the ladder above her. His carabiner locked into the safety cable with a sharp click.
“You okay?” he called over the howl of the night.
“Define okay.”
“Not falling.”
Her jaw locked, teeth aching from the pressure. She stared at her knuckles. Breathe. “Yes. Barely.”
Do not look down, Jen.
Her arms burned, muscles trembling as she hauled herself lower. Rain blurred her vision, but she didn’t dare loosen her grip to wipe it away. The missile bay exterior hatch came into clear view—ten feet below, maybe less. A rectangle of orange emergency light glowing through the rain.
Almost there.
Her foot slipped.
Fuck.
The harness snapped tight, jerking the breath out of her. For one suspended, breathless second she swung, rain lashing her exposed skin, the ocean baying for blood somewhere beneath.
Wyatt’s hand locked on the safety cable, bracing the line automatically, taking her full weight, swinging her back to the ladder.
She grabbed the nearest rung with a shaky arm and hung on, pressing her forehead to freezing steel.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
The ladder jerked beneath her.
“Jen?”
She didn’t look up—too busy trying not to die. “I’m good.”
She wasn’t. But she was ten feet from the hatch, and that was close enough to keep going.
Then voices—above them, on the gantry they’d just left.
“Shit.” Wyatt’s voice. “Hurry.”
A flashlight beam cut through the rain, sweeping across the superstructure.
Across the ladder.
Across her.