Chapter 42
Jen snicked the lock. The sound was so small and final, her breath snagged in her throat. She lifted her hand and pressed it flat against the door. She stayed there a moment, her forehead tipped toward the wood, breathing in the dark.
Wyatt’s footsteps moved down the hall. Fast and purposeful. Already someone else.
She dropped her hand and stepped back.
The lights died. The room went black.
Her pulse exploded.
What the hell?
She tightened her hold on the Glock, the metal still warm where his fingers had guided hers. She was holding it wrong—one-handed and awkward, like something passed to her she didn’t know how to refuse.
Two hands. Always two hands.
She adjusted. Left hand firm on the grip, right hand bracing beneath the trigger guard the way he’d shown her.
She waited for her eyes to adjust, taking comfort from a thin line of moonlight where the shutter met the wall.
She inhaled the faint smell of his soap.
The edge of the bathtub pressed behind her calves, the sink to her right.
Glass bottles gleamed softly on the shelf—aftershave, something medicinal.
Her breathing echoed off the walls.
Slow down. Slow it down.
She tried. Drew the air in through her nose, held it, let it out through her mouth the way she’d been taught in a stress management course she’d taken in another lifetime. A lifetime where stress meant reports and failing components, not standing in the dark holding a loaded weapon.
It didn’t work. Her breath stuttered out of rhythm, and her heart thudded so hard she could feel it in her teeth.
She counted the beats. Because it was something to count. Because her brain needed a task, or it was going to eat itself alive.
One. Two. Three. Four.
The house was silent.
Five. Six. Seven.
She strained to hear past her own pulse. Past the blood rushing in her ears. There was nothing. Just the deep, thick quiet of a building holding its breath.
Eight. Nine.
A crash. Distant.
Muffled but unmistakable. Something heavy hitting something solid. Then a man’s yell, short and sharp and cut off.
Wyatt.
Her hands jerked on the Glock.
She didn’t know whose voice that was or what had broken. She didn’t know who was still standing on the other side of the walls that separated her from the man she—
She couldn’t finish the thought. Not now. Not when finishing it meant admitting what losing him would cost.
Silence.
It rushed back in, thick and total. Worse than the crash, because at least that meant someone was alive and fighting.
Her nose itched. She rubbed it against her sleeve without loosening her grip on the gun because letting go of it felt like letting go of the last solid thing in the world. The quiet stretched and pressed against her eardrums, making the room close in around her.
Nothing.
Except.
A shift of weight outside the door. Air displacing. The faintest scrape against the floorboards, so quiet it could easily be her imagination.
She raised the Glock. Both hands. The way Wyatt had shown her.
Wyatt.
She squeezed her eyes shut to stop the stupid tears.
Her arms shook so badly the barrel trembled in small circles. “Wyatt?”
A soft shuffling noise. “Chief Engineer James.”
She knew the voice. Knew it the way you know a sound stitched into your nightmares.
Akilov.
Her stomach dropped and kept falling.
“I know you’re in there.”
She clamped her tongue between her teeth until she tasted blood.
“You’re alone now.” His weight settled against the doorframe as if he had all the time in the world. “He can’t hear you.”
She didn’t know if that was true—that was the worst part.
She couldn’t speak. Her jaw locked, every muscle in her body pulled so tight her bones might snap.
“Open the door. Your man is in the kitchen.” His accented English was gentle. Almost kind. “He’s losing blood.”
No raised voice. No urgency.
“If you don’t, I’ll go finish him.”
No.
The word detonated inside her, but she didn’t say it because believing it meant the world she’d just begun to imagine was already gone.
But she couldn’t be sure. And the uncertainty was worse than knowing.
“You shouldn’t have come back.” Her voice came out as a raw whisper. But it came out, and that was something.
A soft sound on the other side of the door. A breath. Maybe a laugh. “You knew I would.”
Her hands were slick. Sweat ran down the grip and pooled against her palms. The gun was trying to slide free of her fingers. She licked her lip. Salt. “No.”
Silence.
One second. Two.
A sigh?
A metallic snap.
Instinct screamed.
Move—
The world exploded. Pressure slammed her ears.
The lock blew apart—metal shrieking, wood splintering inward in a spray of fragments that stung her cheek.
Every cell in her body screamed run. Her hands said otherwise.
She fired.
The Glock kicked, and the shot went wide, punching into the doorframe in a burst of dust. Recoil jolted up her arms, and she stumbled backward, her heel catching the edge of the bathtub.
The door caved inward.
Akilov filled the frame.
White gauze stretched across the left side of his face, stained yellow where fluid had seeped through. The edges had peeled back, revealing skin pulled tight in angry ridges beneath—melted and reset wrong.
She’d done that.
On the rig. The flare. His scream.
She thought it ended there.
His one good eye locked on her.
No rage.
No pain.
Just calculation.
She fired again.
The shot cracked past his shoulder, splintering tiles.
Akilov was already moving. He’d expected it.
He closed the gap, boots crunching on debris, and hit her wrist. The Glock spun free and skittered into the dark.
She reached for the shelf, fingers closing around a heavy glass bottle. She swung, aiming for his head—
The bottle glanced off his shoulder and shattered against the doorframe. Glass exploded. Cedar and alcohol burst into the air.
He caught her wrist and wrenched hard. Pain shot in hot needles up her arm. His other hand fisted in her hair, close to the scalp. He dragged her forward. Her knees hit the floor, and tile shards bit through her jeans.
She gasped, pushing up to her feet, and drove her elbow back, blind and vicious.
It caught his ribs. Not enough.
His grip tightened, and he shifted his weight, pulling her off balance like he’d done it a hundred times before.
She grabbed for the doorframe as he hauled her through it. Splintered wood gouged her palms. She locked her fingers and held on.
For one second she thought she might anchor herself.
Akilov didn’t yank.
He stepped sideways.
The torque ripped her free.
Her nails tore down the wood, skin splitting. She hit the floor, slid, breath punched from her lungs.
She twisted, kicked, caught his knee. He grunted but didn’t release her.
Akilov dragged her into the dark.