Chapter 12 · Someone Else's Clock

"You've got until the third door chime, Rhea." Marcus's voice came out of a speaker I couldn't see, low and amused, like he was watching us through the steel. "Tell my son to open this vault, or I start telling your ATF friends what's really in that tray."

Knox's jaw locked so hard I heard his teeth grind. He didn't look at the speaker. He looked at me.

"Don't," he said. Just that. Flat, quiet, aimed through six inches of drywall at his own father.

"Forty-eight hours, Knox." Marcus laughed, gravel in it. "That's what the override buys you. I built that lock. You think I don't have a way around my own toy?"

My stomach dropped out. I grabbed the sleeve of the jacket Knox had put on me, cold water still dripping off the hem, and his smell came off the wool — cedar, gun oil, something underneath that was just him, invading every breath I took in a room with no other air to give me. I hated that I noticed. I hated more that noticing steadied me.

"He's bluffing," I said, low, only for Knox. "Nobody rewrites a fire-code override from a hallway."

"He's not bluffing."