Chapter 25 · The Hold

"Don't." Dean's hand clamped around my wrist hard enough to grind bone against bone, hauling me back a full step before my knees even registered I'd stopped moving.

"That light's not sitting there for its health, Dean—"

"That light means Voss was never the one holding the gun."

I stared at the amber glow ticking on the wall panel, steady, patient, like it had all the time in the world and we didn't. "Then who is?"

"Reyes." He said it flat. No hesitation, no guess in it. "That's his rig. Off-grid, battery-fed, no line running through Voss's desk or your board. He's been running this whole play solo the entire time."

My stomach dropped somewhere around my boots. "You're telling me the ninety-second countdown was never real. The commissioner's threat was theater."

"The commissioner's threat was a distraction." Dean's grip didn't loosen. His thumb pressed into the soft part of my wrist, right over the pulse, like he needed to feel it jump to believe what he was saying. "Reyes let Voss run his mouth so we'd spend everything we had killing that channel. Meanwhile his own line's been live the whole time. Nobody watching it. Nobody but him."

"So watch it now." I twisted, tried to pull free, and he didn't let me get an inch.

"Ellis.