Chapter Twenty-Two
Knox
Liam and I don’t stop working.
The circuit board sits between us on the floor by the hearth, guts exposed. We’ve been at it for an hour, maybe more, hunched
in the blind spot with our backs to the wall. Liam’s got the butter knife in one hand and a bent fork in the other, stripping
insulation off a wire with steady, careful strokes that make it hard to look anywhere else.
So I look at the board. At the wall. At my own hands.
“Hand me the corkscrew,” he says.
I pass it over. Our fingers brush in the hand off. I pull back too fast and he catches it, and we both let it go.
“The Wi-Fi module’s the key.” He turns the board so I can see. “If I reroute power from the camera feed, I can get it to broadcast
independently. Fifteen minutes, maybe, before the whole thing fries.”
“Who’s going to be listening all the way out here?”
“Honestly? Probably nobody.” He pries at a connector with the knife tip. “Without knowing what network she’s running, I have
no idea what’s in range. Could bounce off a cell tower if there’s one within fifty miles. Could get picked up by a passing
aircraft. Could go absolutely nowhere and we burn our one shot for nothing.”
“So we’re just screaming into the void and hoping.”
“That’s about the size of it, yeah.” He glances up. “Best case, it pings some tower and gets flagged as an anomaly. Maybe
somebody investigates, maybe they don’t. Worst case, Marlena’s network is completely isolated and the signal dies before it
clears the tree line.”
“And the realistic case?”
“The signal goes out, lands on some server nobody checks for weeks, and by then it doesn’t matter.” He shrugs. “But I’d rather send it than sit here doing nothing.”
His knee presses against my thigh. Has been pressing, actually, for a while now. The board is small and the blind spot is
smaller and there’s only so much room on this patch of floor, but he could shift over. Create space.
“Hold this.” He hands me the board and picks up a chip he freed earlier, no bigger than a fingernail. “I need to solder the
bypass, and by solder I mean hold two wires together and pray.”
“Inspiring confidence over here, Liam.”
“Just hold the board and let me work.”
I hold it. He leans in, lining up the connection. His breath is warm against my hands. I can see the individual lashes framing
his eyes, the faint scar bisecting his left eyebrow that I never got the story on. New. From the years between us. All that
time and not one phone call.
His hand covers mine to position the module, pressing my thumb down against the chip. The pad of his thumb settles on the
inside of my wrist. Right over the vein.
“Don’t let it slip,” he says.
I am not in any danger of letting it slip. I am in danger of forgetting what we’re doing entirely.
He bridges the wire. Holds it. His mouth is inches from my knuckles, and if he turned his head even slightly he’d be pressing
his lips to my fingers. The thought lands before I can block it.
A green light blinks on the module. Once. Twice.
“We’re live,” Liam says. “For whatever that’s worth.”
“You really know how to sell a plan.”
“I know how to be honest about our odds. That should count for more.”
We sit there, holding the assembly together, his hands on mine, the green light beating between us. Wind pushes against the
windows. From the bed, Hailey turns over and goes still again.
No response comes. No crackle, no ping. Just us and a tiny signal going out into the dark, and no way to know if it’s reaching anything at all.
“Even if it lands somewhere, there’s no telling how long before anyone acts on it,” I say. More to fill the air than because
it needs saying. “Could be hours. Could be days. Could be never.”
“I know. But every option we’ve got right now is a long shot. At least this one doesn’t involve fighting our way through a
blizzard in borrowed socks.”
He adjusts his grip on the wire and his forearm lines up against mine, wrist to elbow, skin on skin where his sleeve has ridden
up. Too much contact for two people just solving a technical problem.
Five minutes. Ten. The module heats under my thumb. Liam’s hand hasn’t moved. There’s no reason for it to still be there.
The contacts are holding fine. But his thumb rests on the inside of my wrist and I can feel my own heartbeat against the pad
of it, which means he can too.
I think about turning my hand over. Lacing my fingers through his. Letting whatever this is become the thing it keeps trying
to become.
My teeth ache from how hard I’m clenching them.
“You’re tense,” he says.
“I’m fine.”
“Your whole arm is locked up.” His thumb moves. A slow circle against my skin. Once. Deliberate. “Relax. I’ve got it.”
Every thought I have evaporates.
I breathe. Force my arm to soften. His thumb doesn’t move again, but it stays where it is, and the green light blinks between
us and the room shrinks and I am aware of every square inch where his body meets mine.
The light stutters. Blinks fast, three times, and dies.
“Module’s cooked.” Liam swallows. “That’s it for tonight.”
He lifts his hand. Cold air fills the gap.
I set the board down. Lean back against the wall. My wrist throbs where his thumb was, which is insane, because the touch barely qualified as anything. Barely anything, and I still feel it under my skin.
Liam leans back too. Space opens between us. He rolls his neck, cracks his knuckles one at a time. Easy, unhurried, like the
last ten minutes didn’t happen. Like his hands weren’t on mine while we both pretended to care about surveillance equipment.
“Other cameras tomorrow,” I say. “We pull another module, rig a longer broadcast. Maybe we can figure out enough about the
network to aim the signal instead of just throwing it blind.”
“That would help.” He tips his head back against the stone. Eyes on the ceiling. His throat is bare and the low light catches
the hollow at its base and I count to five before I make myself stop looking.
He’s going to say it. Whatever’s been building in this room all night. I can see it in his shoulders, in his hands gone still,
in his breathing slowed down to a rhythm too controlled to be casual.
“Knox.” Just my name. Nothing after it.
“We should get some sleep.” I’m on my feet before I’ve decided to stand. My knee pops. “Long day tomorrow.”
He looks up at me from the floor. I don’t let myself read what’s on his face. If I read it I’ll sit back down, and if I sit
back down I’m not getting up.
“Yeah,” he says. Takes his time with it. “You’re probably right.”
He wraps the dead board in a towel. Slides it behind the cushion. Stretches as he stands, his shirt riding up across his stomach,
and I find a very interesting knot in the wood paneling to stare at.
Hailey’s claimed the center of the bed, starfished under the blankets. Liam takes the right side, moving carefully. I take
the left. Her in the middle, the way it keeps ending up. A border made of a sleeping woman and everything we’re not saying.
I face the wall. Behind me, Liam settles. The mattress dips. Hailey murmurs and presses her back against my spine.
On the other side of her, Liam is awake. I don’t need to check. A hundred nights in the field teaches you what a man sounds like when he’s actually sleeping versus when he’s lying in the dark with his eyes open, counting the same minutes you are.
Tomorrow, we pull another module. Try again. Keep our hands on the equipment and our heads on the plan.
I lie between the wall and Hailey’s warmth and listen to Liam not sleeping.