Page 17 of Rio (Redcars #3)

THIRTEEN

Lyric

Rio didn’t come back in. He hovered outside the door for a while—his boots making the boards creak, his weight shifting—and then, he vanished, footsteps receding. I waited longer than I should’ve, listening for him. Hoping maybe he’d say something. But he didn’t.

Jamie and Caleb, though? They were in the zone, bouncing ideas and acronyms like a game of Pong . It was my language. Literally.

“So you came to me because of some connection way back over gaming that you think Kessler’s AI won’t link?” Jamie asked, glancing at Caleb, who appeared less convinced.

I nodded, burrowing deeper under the blanket as if it could shield me from everything else. “I’ve thrown out shadows. Discarded tags, old usernames, buried packets of misdirection to slow anyone down. Right now, they think I’m dead. The car—burned out and trashed—will buy us time.”

Jamie’s eyes flicked up. “So, what now?”

“I need your help,” I said. My voice sounded stronger than I felt. “It’s gonna take two of us. I want to destroy the system.”

Jamie raised an eyebrow. “Two?”

I gave him a pointed stare. He already knew why. “You on the outside,” I said. “Me on the inside.

If I expected him to argue, he didn’t. “Why destroy?”

“Because the system is an autonomous digital monster, and Kessler’s control of it is slipping.

I’m the only one who can get close enough to dismantle what he’s built.

You hand me over, and he wins. This AI—it’s rewriting itself.

Learning. Choosing targets. And I’m the failsafe.

I designed the spine of the thing. I think I know where to break it. ”

“You think?”

“I can’t be one hundred percent, but I’m the only one who can do this.”

“We want Kessler broken; we want everything he’s done uncovered. ”

“If I can get inside, I can find everything you need.”

“Then, we want to kill him,” Jamie said flatly, the flick of his lighter sharp in the quiet. He stared right at me, expression serious, and Caleb didn’t even try to mask his discomfort.

“Kill Kessler,” I repeated, half-expecting it to be some kind of twisted metaphor. But Jamie didn’t crack a smile. His jaw was set, his eyes steady.

“Yeah,” he said. And the weight behind it hit me harder than I expected.

It wasn’t a plan, but it was a line drawn, and they’d already stepped over it. “That’s nothing to do with me,” I murmured.

“Okay then,” Jamie said and picked up the phone, turning it to him. “Caleb?”

“We’ll work it together,” Caleb said. “I’ll brief the team.”

Jamie ended the call, then pulled the chair near me and sat down. “Tell me what you need from us.”

Jamie listened while I rattled off everything I needed—a temporary digital ghost shell I could use to work without setting off the alarms built into Kessler’s AI.

He nodded with each demand, not asking questions, but absorbing it all.

Then, he stood, already pulling his phone from his pocket, and left the room with a quiet, “I’ll sort it. ”

With him off sourcing that, no sign of Robbie and everyone else working, I lasted about an hour before I got antsy and shifted restlessly.

I managed to get out of bed and brace myself against the back of the chair.

My legs trembled, dizziness swam behind my eyes, and every part of me felt used up—tired to the bone.

Still, I needed to take stock. If I was going to make it out of here on my own steam, I had to know what I was working with.

I tested my range, flexing muscles cautiously.

My right arm screamed in protest, but it moved.

My ribs ached, a deep, pulling pain with every breath, but nothing cracked.

I bent my knees slowly, trying not to let the tremor in my thighs knock me off balance.

A shallow squat. A careful change of weight.

Every movement mapped another limit in my body.

Ankles stiff, abdomen bruised, spine rigid, but I could stretch a little.

That was something.

I tried to loosen everything up. A slow twist at the waist sent a ripple of discomfort across my stomach, but I held it. Rolled my shoulders, neck cracking like old branches. Every piece of effort pulled a different thread of pain, but I kept going—testing range, breathing through the burn.

I pushed my arm over my head, winced, and brought it down again. Rotated the joint. Repeated on the other side. Hips tight. Back sore. Knees shaky. But it was better than being numb. Better than lying still and wondering if I was broken.

Stillness meant helplessness, and I’d had enough of that.

But I wasn’t alone.

I felt him before I heard him—Rio, standing behind me. His silence was a weight, and I didn’t turn around. Didn’t want to see his expression, didn’t want to invite whatever lecture was brewing.

“You should be resting,” he said, low and calm, but with that razor edge beneath it.

I ignored him.

Instead, I went into another round of stretches.

This time, I pushed harder. Deeper bend at the waist. A longer twist. Muscles pulled taut and flared with heat, my body warning me I was going too far.

I shifted my weight, and the floor tilted under me—no, my knees just gave a little—and for a heartbeat, I was going down.

But Rio was there.

A hand landed on my hip—warm, steady, sure— and the other hovered near my elbow as if he was ready to catch me if I swayed again.

“Enough,” he murmured, not unkindly, but with a note of warning I couldn’t ignore. “You’re gonna tear something, and I’m not dragging your stubborn ass back to bed.”

“I’m not lying there waiting for things to happen to me,” I said, more harshly than I meant.

Rio was quick to reassure me with a ready lie. “Nothing is going to happen to you.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he said with such conviction I almost let myself believe it.

I turned slowly, deliberately. He was right there, staring at me, this big man with his fiercely protective streak.

I was so close I could see the tension in his jaw, the lines etched deep around his eyes.

I inhaled and caught that same scent—oil and metal, the grounding weight of the garage, and underneath it, something distinctly him.

His dark eyes locked on mine, lashes thick enough to cast shadows. There was nothing soft in his gaze, but it wasn’t cruel either—just a quiet, stubborn kind of worry.

“I’m not weak,” I said firmly. “I have experience in digital counter-surveillance and evasion now. Self- taught, because I’m in a fucked-up game of hide and seek.

I know how to cover my tracks, how to disappear.

I’ve lived years with a target on my back and stayed ahead of every bastard who came for me. I’ve killed people.”

To prove it, I shifted again, rolled my shoulders, pushed into another stretch—but my balance faltered. Just a flicker. A wobble that betrayed the not-weak part and made me grit my teeth.

Rio didn’t say a word. But I felt his gaze sharpen, steady and cutting, seeing everything I didn’t want to admit.

“Nine contracts,” I continued, “but that doesn’t mean I only fought off nine people.

It was more—way more. Each contract brought dozens crawling out of the woodwork.

People who didn’t even know my name, just saw the zeros and got greedy.

Knives. Guns. Fists and desperation, and every one of them wanted to find me for a payday, and the contracts were only cancelled when the AI assumed I’d stopped trying to hack into LyricNight. ”

“You’re a victim?—”

“I was a target, and now I’m a survivor.”

Rio winced, barely perceptible, but it was there. His jaw clenched tighter, the muscle ticcing. His eyes darkened, flint-hard. “You have me now,” he said, and I couldn’t help but snort in disbelief.

“I don’t need anyone in my corner. I don’t need big, bad muscles or rage on my behalf.

I’m not looking for someone like you to throw punches for me—I’m strong enough to handle things myself.

This isn’t about brute force. This is about staying hidden, slipping past traps, using my brain to survive.

It’s a different kind of escaping, one that requires planning, nerve, and endurance. And I’ve got that. I’ve proved it.”

I wobbled again, gripping the chair, pain radiating from my side. His jaw tensed. I stepped close enough to feel the heat rolling off him.

“You’re vulnerable,” he warned.

It wasn’t a threat. Not exactly. More as if he was giving a name to something he’d just noticed, as if the word had caught in his throat before it made it out.

His eyes scanned me—my unsteady stance, the pale skin, the way I clutched the chair—and his expression shifted.

Calmer, yes. But harder too. As if he hated saying it out loud because it made it real.

I hated how true that was right now, and I straightened, even if my body protested.

“I could pin you here in an instant,” he continued, voice low—not a threat, but a statement.

His fingers settled around my neck, not squeezing, but resting there.

It wasn’t pain, not even pressure, but a warning all the same.

His expression was more controlled now. He wasn’t hurting me, but the knowledge of what he could do, said everything.

“But you won’t,” I murmured, not backing down.

I leaned into the space between us, into the cradle of his hand at my throat—not in defiance, but in something closer to trust. My voice dropped, steady despite the trembling in my legs.

“If you wanted to hurt me, you’d have done it by now.

But you know I’m one of the good guys now, so you can’t scare me. ”

Rio didn’t move. He was only a breath away, concern creasing his forehead, his lips pressed in a hard line. It seemed as if he wanted to argue—but knew I wasn’t wrong.

“I want you back in bed where you’re safe,” he said, the words firm, his tone wrapped in steel and something dangerously close to pleading.