16. Max #2
Inside, the room is a nest of monitors and servers, blinking lights and humming fans.
Sophie sets her backpack on the central console and starts unpacking.
The first thing she does is set a small black box on the table and flip the switch.
The faint hiss of the audio jammer fills the room.
She unpacks the rest without a word—detector, cables, a spectrum analyzer, and a handful of tools I don’t recognize.
“I can take it from here,” she says, without looking up.
It’s automatic, the way she says it. A reflex. Like she thinks I’ll just be in the way.
I fold my arms across my chest. “I’m sure you can. But I’d like for this to be over as soon as possible.”
She studies me, her eyes assessing. I don’t look away.
“Fine,” she says finally. “Help me move that desk. I need to check the wiring behind it.”
I move the desk like she asked. She works the detector across the wall in steady sweeps, her eyes on a small glowing readout, pausing each time the pitch of the tone shifts.
I try my best to keep my eyes on the equipment. But I can’t help but notice the way her hands move over the detector. The line of her shoulders. The strip of skin that shows every time she reaches above her head.
I swallow and force my attention back to the detector.
“How is the investigation going?” I ask. “Your impressions, now that you’ve had some time with the marketing team.”
She doesn’t look up from the circuit board she’s examining. “It’s only been a couple of days.”
“I know. But surely you’ve made some progress.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “I’ve been watching people. Getting a feel for who they are before I start looking for anything specific.”
“And?” I say, somewhat impatiently.
She sets down the circuit board and moves to the next section of wall. “Most of them are exactly what they appear to be. Loyal, invested, genuinely happy to be here.”
“Why do I have a feeling there’s a but coming.”
“But there are a few who warrant closer attention.” She glances at me over her shoulder.
“Ms. Dysart, catching the culprit is of the essence here. I’m not sure what Griffin has shared with you about the stakes, but it’s very important that we identify this mole as quickly as possible.”
“Griffin shared enough.” Her voice is flat. “I understand what’s at risk.”
“Do you?” The word comes out sharper than I meant it.
She turns to face me fully, and there’s an edge to her expression that wasn’t there a moment ago.
“With all due respect,” she says, and her tone suggests she means very little respect at all, “someone disabled your climate control for fourteen minutes. It’s serious, yes. But you’re treating this like a national security crisis.”
Because it fucking is.
But I don’t say that. I can feel the anger rising in me, and I take slow, deep breaths to keep it down.
“There are things you do not know,” I say finally, my voice quiet. “You’ll have to trust me that this is more serious than it appears.”
She just looks at me. The expression on her face tells me exactly what she thinks of being told to trust me.
She turns back to her detector and resumes the sweep, and I go back to watching her.
Forty minutes in, she stops in front of a steel cabinet against the far wall and frowns at it. She crouches down, gets her hands under one corner, and starts to lift.
I’m across the room before I think about it.
“Move.”
She doesn’t move. She looks up at me like I’ve just offered to cut up her food for her.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ll lift it. Move.”
“I’ve got it.”
“It weighs more than you do.”
Sophie’s eyes flash and her jaw tightens.
“Max.” She doesn’t use my name like a courtesy. She uses it like a warning. “I have taken down more alphas than you can imagine.” She straightens slowly. “I am strong enough to lift a fucking cabinet.”
She holds my gaze, daring me to argue.
What the hell is her problem?
I offered to help, and she’s acting like I reached for her throat, not the cabinet.
I look at her. At the tremor in the hand she keeps pressed to the cabinet. At the way she’s breathing, too steady, too controlled.
I know that feeling. I’ve been doing the same thing all fucking day.
Fine. She can lift the goddamn cabinet herself.
“I’ll go get some coffee.”
I leave the door open behind me and make my way down the corridor to the small kitchen at the end of the floor. Moonlight comes through the window over the sink, enough to see by. I start the coffee machine and stand at the counter, watching it drip.
I roll my shoulders as I wait for the machine to finish. They are knotted into something past tension at this point, hard and tight under my shirt, and I make a mental note to hit the bag for an hour when I get home tonight.
The coffee machine finishes. I pour a cup and carry it to the window, where the Synthera grounds stretch out into the dark below. Everything looks so quiet and calm, the opposite of everything inside my chest right now.
I have taken down more alphas than you can imagine.
Yes, Sophie. I absolutely fucking can.
I’ve watched her play the cute little assistant, and I have no doubt she could walk into a room full of alphas twice her size and draw every one of them to their demise.
Is that what you do, Sophie? Lure them in with that sweet smile and the cute little body you hide under those prim blouses?
I always understood Griffin to run a security company. It never occurred to me that his people might do the opposite of protecting alphas. But if anyone were capable of it, it would be her.
What kind of life does she live? Does she go from one assignment to the next, taking down men who never see it coming? What kind of alphas end up on her list, and what is she, exactly, some kind of assassin?
The cup is halfway to my mouth when the crash comes.
It rolls down the corridor like a thunderclap, the sound of something large hitting a hard floor.
I tear down the corridor at a run, the only thought in my head that I shouldn’t have left her alone in there. By the time I shove through the door of the surveillance room, my heart is hammering so hard I can hear it in my throat.
A server rack is wedged at an angle, one end on the ground, the other leaning against the wall. Sophie is pinned underneath it, pressed flat against the wall in the narrow space where the rack used to stand, the steel frame angled across her chest like a cage.
“Jesus Christ.”
She’s not hurt. That’s the first thing I register. She looks furious as she pushes uselessly against the rack, her dark eyes blazing, like she should be able to move it herself and her body has failed her.
“Don’t,” she says, before I can speak. “Don’t say a fucking word.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I said no.” Her eyes flash. “Are you going to ask a third time?”
I move toward her immediately. The rack is heavy, and I can see now why she couldn’t push it off. She has no leverage from where she is. Whoever installed this thing didn’t bolt it to the floor the way they should have.
The only thing that saved her was the angle. The frame caught against the wall as it fell instead of coming down flat on top of her. A few inches the other way and it would have crushed her.
Thank God.