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“I’ve seen operators freeze. I’ve seen command fuck it all sideways. But you? You didn’t run. You didn’t hide. Youtried. You flagged the threat. You acted. You survived.”
A long silence. Then, finally, her voice, quiet, but real. “I remember their faces. Every night. Every line of code.”
“Then we make it count,” he said. “We finish this. We end it.”
She nodded once. A sharp tilt of chin.
Nash started the car. He cleared his voice. “Thank you…for last night, and for coming back. I know it wasn’t easy.”
They crossed over a bridge, the water below dark and menacing. Grace shivered.
“You okay?”
“Bridges remind me that I can’t swim, and yes, I see the irony. You’re a SEAL. I might need some lessons.”
He grinned. “I’m the man to teach you.” Was she talking about a future here…between them?Ya, Allah, that made him hope.
They drove the last few miles in silence. But it didn’t feel empty anymore. It felt like the first step back.
As they passed the first checkpoint, Nash felt it. Not with his eyes. Not with his ears.
With the part of him that had survived too many bad corridors in too many risky countries. The security drone above them tracked left, then stuttered. Paused.
It didn’t break patrol pattern. Not enough for anyone untrained to notice. But it hovered a second too long over Grace’s shoulder. Watching. Marking. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t twitch. Just filed it away like a live round in a chamber.
Machines didn’t hesitate. Not unless someone, orsomething, told them to.
When they shed their coats, Grace headed right to the console desk, opened her laptop, and started typing away.
He cleared his throat. She didn’t miss a beat. “Yes?” she said, her voice just a tad warmer than yesterday.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your flow, but can I just get a rundown of what you’re doing so I’m not standing here like leftover coffee?”
She almost laughed, and his chest warmed. “Ineverhave leftover coffee. Bite your tongue. Caffeine’s my ride-or-die.”
He chuckled at her validating and clever compliment. She shifted her shoulders as if his laugh had touched her.Dammit, careful, buddy. Don’t spook her again.
“Sorry. I’m so not used to people,” she added. “I’ve initiated a data trace. Hang on for the results.”
Grace narrowed it down in fifteen minutes, ten of them spent cross-referencing a string of internal project codes against black-budget allocations that didn’t exist on paper.
Nash watched her work, hands in his pockets, his body loose but alert. There was something strangely calming about her precision. She didn’t ask for help. Didn’t explain what she was doing. She just moved through the system like it was hers and the rest of the world was intruding.
But when she found something, he knew.
Her spine straightened. The silence between them shifted.
“There’s a physical terminal inside that annex,” she said, closing the laptop with a soft click. “Local-only access. Which means they don’t want it connecting to the wider system. Someone’s hiding something.”
Inside the elevator, Grace looked like she was preparing for another jump. Her stiff body with those locked shoulders, wide eyes on the LED panel above the door, pissed him off.
His whole body tensed in response her.
He reached out. Then paused. Didn’t grab her. Just set his hand gently at the small of her back, the lightest pressure possible.
“I’ve got you,” he said, voice low.
She didn’t move. Didn’t flinch either. Just stood there breathing like she’d forgotten how. She turned slightly, just enough to glance at him from the side. Her eyes didn’t thank him, not exactly. But they held something warmer. Something soft. Like a door nudged open without a sound.