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Elias glanced up at me, the humor fading slightly as he studied my face. “You’re not sleeping.”
I shrugged. “Neither are you.”
“Yeah, but I’m not in love with someone currently storming a bad guy stronghold,” he said, then added, “Though, I’m not exactly sleeping easy either. Those guys drive me crazy half the time, but they’re my blood. If one of them doesn’t come home tonight …” He trailed off, fingers still moving across the keys.
I looked down.
That word—love—landed differently when someone else said it.
“I don’t know what I was hoping to find,” I said quietly, stepping further into the room. “I just … I needed to know he’s okay.”
Elias hesitated.
Then he reached over and flipped a small switch onone of the radios. Static popped, then softened into a low hum of voices—coded words, military brevity, nothing I could fully track.
Elias turned a knob, adjusting the volume. “I’m not supposed to let anyone listen in. But …” He sighed. “Noah would probably want you to hear this.”
My chest cracked open.
“Thank you.”
He waved a hand. “Don’t mention it. Literally. Ryker would have my ass.”
I hovered beside him, eyes scanning the screens. I didn’t understand most of what I was seeing—drone feeds, heat signatures, data overlays—but I understood the tone in those voices. I understood what was at stake.
Elias’s hands never stopped moving. “We’ve got eyes from above, radio chatter, sat ping, local surveillance. It’s a goddamn orchestra and I’m the guy holding the baton.”
“You’re the hacker.”
He flashed a grin. “And proud of it. I may not clear a room with a twelve-gauge as quick as Marcus, but I can shut down a power grid and hijack a drone from two continents away.”
I smiled, but it didn’t quite reach my eyes. “You don’t ever wish you were out there with them?”
He didn’t look away from the screen. “Not even a little. I’ve done my time in the field. But now that I’m older and wiser, I know where I’m most useful. In here I can save lots of lives. And out there?” His voice dipped. “Out there’s a meat grinder.”
We stood in silence for a few moments, the radio chatter filling the air between us.
Then Elias spoke again, softer this time. “He’s good,you know. Noah. If anyone can come out of this in one piece, it’s him. We Danes are made of sturdy stock.”
I swallowed hard. “He promised me he’d be back in time.”
Elias glanced at me, brow furrowing. “In time for what?”
“My daddy’s funeral.”
His fingers stilled on the keyboard.
Then, gently, he said, “Then we’ll make damn sure he is.”
He said it like it was fact. Like there was no room for doubt.
Maybe I needed to believe it the way he said it—quiet but sure. Like a thread holding me together.
The comms crackled again, drawing both our gazes back to the wall of screens. I heard Ryker’s voice—tight, breathless.
“Contact—four down, more coming.”
Elias leaned in, fingers flying as he typed a command into the keyboard. On the main monitor, one of the drone feeds zoomed in, tiling open to show an infrared view of what I recognized—barely—as the Kiawah River. Three boats moved up a narrow inlet, and then a sprawl of property bloomed onto the screen—dark structures, movement like fireflies scattering in the heat.