20. Novak
TWENTY
Novak
Caleb disappeared into the screens the way he always did, fingers moving in a blur, code and data rolling past faster than most people could read, and I let him, because this was his domain and my role in it was simple: keep him safe, keep him functioning, keep everything around him contained.
I walked the perimeter twice. Checked exits again, although I already knew them. Found a set of bolt cutters in the outbuilding and added them to my pack, checked my ammo, and stripped and cleaned my gun. Twice.
Every so often, I stepped back inside to check on him, not because he needed it, but because I did, because knowing exactly where he was and that he was still breathing mattered more than anything else in the room.
At one point, he glanced up when I came in, eyes unfocused from whatever system he was buried in, and he smiled at me—easy, distracted and something dropped in my chest that I couldn’t understand.
I tried to return it, adjusting muscles I don’t use.
I’m sure it didn’t land right because he raised an eyebrow before he went back to work.
I filed my smile away as something to correct later, something to learn how to do properly, because if I freaked him out, then it mattered.
I made coffee. Fresh every time it cooled. Set it within reach without interrupting his flow. Fed him sandwiches, chips, reheated chili, and the rest of the cookies.
When supplies ran low, I drove forty miles to the nearest generic non-small town store, bought ground beef, noodles, rice—everything required to keep him fueled—and came back to cook in bulk: bolognese, lasagna, more chili, portioned, stored, cookies and his preferred Hershey’s lined up within reach of his left hand where he would find them without looking.
Efficiency mattered. Disruption slowed him down. Slowing him down meant risk.
When he started sending me guard rotation data and images pulled from feeds, I spread paper across the table in the far corner of the panic room and mapped routes by hand, marking patterns, timing gaps, and noting inconsistencies, building a structure I could work with.
One detail stood out.
To me it looked as if Noah was hunting for a way out.
Was he planning to try to escape? That wouldn’t end well if he was still wearing that collar; he wouldn’t get far.
From a humane perspective, would he leave his pregnant sister there?
If the plan was to run and get help, who would you run to?
Caleb was adamant that no one could be trusted, and Noah might run straight to local law enforcement and never make it past first contact.
All this discovery ran in parallel to the rhythm of Caleb’s typing, syncing with the lines I drew, the quiet of the room broken only by keys and the occasional shift when I adjusted something for him.
This was how it worked: him inside the system, me outside it, with both of us locked on the same objective.
I’d already built a plan for infiltration, mapped entry points and fallback routes, identified where I would extract, but the blind spot sat wrong in my head, and I needed Caleb to see it.
Noah was inside, and that meant he had access to information neither of us could reach from here, and if that gap was intentional, then it wasn’t just an opportunity; it was something I couldn’t ignore.
I waited until his hands slowed enough to register me. “There’s an irregularity in Noah’s guard rotation,” I said.
He didn’t turn his attention from the screen immediately. “There are a lot of irregularities in everything.” He sounded tired.
“This one repeats,” I replied. “Every third cycle. Same blind spot.”
That got his attention. He turned, eyes sharpening as he tracked what I was saying. “Repeats how?”
“Too clean,” I said. “He’s looking for a way out.”
Caleb leaned back slightly, processing, fingers flexing as if he wanted to get back to the keyboard but couldn’t yet. “You don’t know that.”
“I know patterns,” I said.
“Okay.”
“I’m going to head over there and talk to him.”
“You’re what now?”
“He could give us valuable intel.”
Caleb dragged a hand through his hair, tension threading through him now. “If you’re wrong, then walking in there exposes us to them.”
“I won’t be wrong.”
“That’s not good enough,” he shot back, quieter but sharper. “Not with this.”
I held his gaze. “If he’s creating an opening, we use it. If he isn’t, I adapt.”
“‘Adapt’ how? You’re not killing him, Novak!”
I stared at Caleb. “I don’t kill everyone I meet,” I offered.
Caleb exhaled hard, looking back at the screen for a second before returning to me. “He wouldn’t get far,” he said. “Not with the collar. Not without help.”
“Exactly. If he’s leaving his sister to go for help and encounters one of the cops on the list who takes him out, then we can stop this.”
“And if you see him and he panics, or if he thinks you’re part of it?”
“I control the approach.”
He stared at me, torn between logic and instinct, between the risk and the possibility, and I watched the moment he started to lean toward it, even as he resisted. “You could blow everything,” he said.
“Or we get more useful intel.”
Silence stretched, tight and weighted.
“You’ve already decided,” Caleb said.
“Yes.”
He shook his head once. “You’re asking me to trust a kid in a collar over every instinct I’ve got to wait this out until we have more intel.”
“I’m asking you to trust my assessment that the kid is about to run for help, and when he does that, he’s likely dead.”
I could see the calculation running, the same way it did when Caleb worked a system, weighing risk against outcome.
“He won’t get far,” Caleb said, quieter now.
“No.” Another pause. “He has a three a.m. shift, he’s alone for exactly five minutes and fifteen seconds, I’ll go now.”
“Fuck,” Caleb muttered and pushed himself away from the keyboard. “I’ll back you up?—”
“No. This is best done alone.”
“Novak—”
“We can’t chance giving him anything to communicate with us, but I’ll wear a body cam, and if he has any useful intel, you’ll have it directly.”
He stood and yanked me close, stealing a kiss that made all the blood in my body run south. “Don’t get dead,” he ordered.
“I won’t.”
Every step of my approach was silent, following the path through the trees and fencing charted from the patterns I’d drawn, the blind spot opening exactly when expected.
Noah moved into position on schedule, posture tense, scanning without conviction, the kind a person gives when they’re thinking about something else entirely.
I closed the distance, one hand over his mouth, the other locking his wrist before he could react, pulling him back into the shadows and pinning him hard enough to control without breaking him.
“Don’t fight,” I said low against his ear.
He froze.
Good.
I disarmed him cleanly, weapon out of reach before he could process the loss, and kept my grip firm as he struggled once, instinct more than intent before going still again.
“Ezra and Seth are safe.” I gave him only what mattered.
Everything in him changed in that instant.
The tension dropped out of his body so quickly it was almost structural, as though something holding him upright had been cut loose, and he went slack against my hold for a second before catching himself.
“They’re safe?”
“I said that.”
“Where are they?”
“Safe.” Why did people always need me to repeat things.
“Who are you?”
“We don’t have time for that?—”
“You need to get help. My sister?—”
“Can I let you go? I asked, tightening my grip to reinforce control.
A beat.
Then he nodded.
I released him and stepped in front of him, keeping the distance between us small enough to react, but not enough to escalate, the darkness between us thick, neither of us able to see more than shape and movement, but the body cam would capture any conversation that mattered.
“You have three minutes,” I said. “Tell me what I need to know.”
“What do you want to?—”
“People, places, extraction.”
He dragged in a breath, eyes flicking once toward the perimeter before locking back on me, and when he spoke, it came fast.
“There’s an event in two days.”
“Time?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay, we have eleven guards on our feeds plus you, agreed?”
“There’s a secondary team that comes in from the east side on transport day.”
“How many are collared like you?”
“Three of us. All kids who aged out.”
I filed it, already adjusting routes in my head. “And your sister?”
He swallowed. “She’s inside, lower level, locked down with the other girls. She’s—” He cut himself off. “People are coming for her in two days. Please help me get her out before they take her. Don’t worry about me, but you need to get to her. I couldn’t help my brothers and?—”
“If I can.”
His head snapped up. “You have to get her away?—”
I channeled my inner-Caleb because that was what he would say, then I stepped closer. “She’ll be my priority, but I don’t make promises I can’t execute.”
He gripped my arm. “There’s a door on the west side, service access, it sticks unless you lift it when you open it. No one uses it because it jams, and they cut the power to the alarm there.”
“Stay on your pattern,” I told him. “Don’t change anything. Don’t say anything. Don’t trust any cops.”
“And Eden?”
I held his gaze. “We’re coming for you both.”
It was enough.
I stepped back into the shadows, gone before he could say anything else, leaving him exactly where I’d found him, the blind spot closing behind me as if I’d never been there at all.