Chapter 15 · Someone Else's Key

"Move." Knox's hand closes around my wrist and hauls me back from the panel before I've even finished processing the second beep.

The red light isn't blinking anymore. It's steady. That's worse.

"That's not chain-of-custody red," I say, twisting against his grip, feeling his thumb dig in hard enough to print a bruise into my skin. "What is that."

"That's purge red." His voice has gone flat, the way it does right before he stops pretending he's calm. "Box two just armed a wash cycle."

"A what."

"Chemical flood. Old-school fire suppression override, the kind they outlawed in evidence rooms twenty years ago. It doesn't put out flames. It clears them." He drags me two steps back like the box might reach out and grab me too. "Anything in that tray gets soaked in solvent in eleven minutes. Your match stem. Gone. My father's little photograph. Gone."

Eleven minutes. I can feel my own pulse jumping in my throat.

"Then stop it," I say. "You're the one with the door code."

"My door code is dead. You watched it die."

The vent above us rattles, and Marcus's voice slides through it, warm as a man pouring himself a drink.