23. Max
Max
I’m home by nine thirty the next morning.
The house is empty. Finn and Ethan are already at Synthera, maintaining the routine, keeping the day running like nothing happened.
I drop my bag in the hallway, go straight to the security room, and sit down at the console.
I’d wiped the exterior feeds last night from the hotel in New York the moment Ethan texted—isolated the relevant files first, then purged the originals so the logs showed nothing but a routine system cleanup. But the copy is still here, sitting in a partition nobody else knows about.
The monitors flicker to life. I pull up the partition and find the files—three camera angles covering the west exterior. I drag them into a split-screen view and press play.
At first, there’s nothing. Just the grounds, dark and still, the loading dock a gray rectangle under the security light, the building’s west wall a pale slab against the night sky.
Then she appears.
Top right corner of the frame. A figure moving along the perimeter path at a steady run, ponytail swinging. She’s in leggings and a dark hoodie.
Then, suddenly, she stops.
I watch her head turn and her body go still. She must’ve just seen the intruder. Her hand goes to her hood, pulling it up and tucking her hair inside.
I lean forward, my hands gripping the edge of the desk.
The second camera picks her up as she rounds the corner. She stops at the edge of the frame, right where the coverage ends, and plants herself. Feet shoulder-width apart, hands at her sides. She’s facing something I can’t see.
For a long moment, nothing moves. She’s just standing there, staring into the gap in coverage, and I have no idea what she’s looking at.
Then a figure steps out of the blind spot. Full black, ski mask, taller than her by at least half a foot. And he’s pointing a gun directly at her chest.
My stomach drops.
She raises her hands. Slowly. Palms out.
Run. For the love of God, run.
She doesn’t run.
Instead, she moves toward the intruder. One moment she’s standing with her hands up, the next she’s on him, her hand striking his wrist, and the gun flies from his grip, spinning into the darkness.
It hits the building and the alarm triggers. Red light floods the frame, strobing, and they fight.
Sophie is fighting him, in workout clothes, a man who outweighs her by at least fifty pounds, and she’s not just standing her ground but she’s actually winning.
Then the knife appears.
I don’t see where it comes from. One frame his hand is empty, the next there’s a blade catching the strobe light, and I’m gripping the desk so hard the edge bites into my palms.
It catches her arm. My whole body jerks forward as if I could reach through the screen and pull her out. Why aren’t you running?
But she doesn’t run or stop. She grabs his knife hand and twists until his wrist bends at an angle wrists don’t bend.
Fuck, Sophie.
I watch him run and she starts after him, then stops, pressing her hand against the wound on her arm.
I rewind the footage and watch it again.
And again.
And again.
Each time, the same thought hammers through my skull with the force of a pulse.
Why the fuck didn’t you run?
She had every opportunity. She could have retreated the moment she spotted him, or pulled back when he drew the gun. And once he was disarmed, there was nothing stopping her from sprinting for the building and letting the alarm bring the security team. Instead, she took him on alone in the dark.
But she didn’t. She never even considered it. I can see it in her body language, in the way she plants her feet and throws herself at a man with a gun like her own life is an acceptable cost of doing business.
Do you have a death wish, Sophie? Is that what this is?
I close the footage and sit there for a long moment, staring at the dark monitors. My coat is still on. My bag is still in the hallway. I haven’t eaten since the airport, and I can feel the lack of sleep pulling at the edges of my vision like a slow fog.
I go upstairs and stand under the shower longer than I need to. By the time I step out, the fog is gone. What’s left is a combination of things, but mostly anger and the feeling of watching someone you’re responsible for almost die on a screen and not being able to do a single thing about it.
I get dressed, straighten my tie, and drive to Synthera.
I switch my screen to the hallway camera outside my office.
There she is.
Sitting in the waiting area, one leg crossed neatly over the other, scrolling through something on her phone, looking perfectly content to wait.
She’s wearing a pale blue blouse today, long sleeves that fall past her wrists, and those ridiculous ballet flats she seems to own in every color.
Her hair is down, falling in soft waves around her face.
The picture of a young professional waiting for a routine meeting with her boss.
But I know what’s under that sleeve. Eight stitches she put in herself, according to Finn.
In our kitchen, on our marble counter, while he watched.
A wound that should have sent her to a hospital but instead got treated like a minor inconvenience, because apparently that’s what knife wounds are to Sophie.
She’s sitting there like she didn’t nearly get herself killed on our lawn last night. Like she didn’t fight off an armed intruder twice her size while he pointed a gun at her chest. Like she didn’t break a man’s wrist with her bare hands and then stitched herself up on our kitchen counter.
At two o’clock exactly, there’s a knock on my door.
I straighten in my chair and fix my gaze on the door.
“Come in.”
The door opens, and she walks in the way Sophie Dysart always does—posture softened, shoulders curved inward, steps small and careful in those flat little shoes.
Then the door shuts behind her, and she drops the act. Just like that. Her shoulders straighten, her chin lifts, and Sophie the operative is back.
Our eyes meet.
Her face gives me nothing. Her dark eyes are emotionless, that emptiness I noticed the very first day settling over her features like a visor snapping into place. She looks faintly bored, like being summoned to the CEO’s office is about as eventful as checking her email.
“You wanted to see me.”
“Sit down.” I gesture to the chair across from my desk.
“I’d rather stand,” she says, folding her arms across her chest.
Of course she would.
I hold her gaze for a long moment, then rise from my chair and walk to the door. I lock it, slowly, deliberately, the click of the latch loud in the quiet of the office. Then I turn to face her.
She hasn’t moved. Her weight hasn’t shifted, her arms remain crossed, and nothing in her posture suggests she finds this situation remotely intimidating.
“I watched the footage,” I say.
The corner of her mouth tightens almost imperceptibly and there’s a fractional narrowing of her eyes.
“I thought you deleted it,” she says.
“I deleted it from the main system. I kept a copy on an isolated partition that only I can access.” I lean against the edge of my desk, folding my arms across my chest. “Seemed prudent, given the circumstances.”
She doesn’t respond. Just watches me, waiting for whatever’s coming next.
“You engaged an armed intruder,” I say. “You were alone, unarmed, and without backup or body armor or any means of communication. You took on a man holding a loaded weapon, disarmed him with your bare hands, fought him through a knife wound, and broke his wrist.” I pause.
“And at no point did you consider retreating.”
Her chin lifts almost defiantly. “I had the situation under control.”
“Under control?” The words come out too sharp, and I try to rein myself in. “He had a gun, Sophie. Pointed at your chest. At that range—”
“I know what a gun looks like at that range, Max.” Her voice is hard now.
The mask is thinning, the real Sophie surfacing like something rising from deep water.
“And I know what happens when you let an armed intruder walk into a building uncontested. So yes, I engaged. Because that is what I was trained to do, and that is what you hired me to do.”
“I hired you to find a mole.” I push off the desk and take a step toward her. “Not to get yourself killed.”
“I’m doing my job.”
“Your job does not require you to die for it!” The volume of my own voice surprises me.
I never raise my voice. It’s a point of pride, a line I drew years ago to separate myself from my father’s rages.
But the words are out before I can stop them, hanging in the air between us, and Sophie’s eyes widen fractionally before she locks it down again.
“That’s not your call to make,” she says. “How I do my job is not your call. It never has been. You hired Sentinel. Sentinel sent me. And either you trust me to handle the work the way I’ve been handling it for a decade, or I leave. Those are your options.”
“You’re not leaving.” My hand closes around the edge of the desk behind me.
“Then stop trying to control me.” She steps closer this time, her eyes blazing.
Her voice is rising now, the careful professionalism cracking.
“You don’t get to sit in your office watching footage and second-guess every decision I make in the field.
You weren’t there. You don’t know what it’s like to be standing in front of someone with a weapon, making calculations in fractions of seconds, deciding whether to move or wait or fight or run.
You have no idea what that takes, Max. None. ”
“You’re right. I don’t.” My voice is barely controlled. “But I don’t need field experience to know what it looks like when someone doesn’t care whether they live or die. Do you have a death wish? Is that what this is?”
Her chin lifts and her whole face hardens, her eyes locked on mine with a fury that makes the air between us feel thin.
“You have no idea.” Her voice shakes with the effort of staying level. “No idea what I’m capable of.”