Chapter 21 · The Switch Changes Hands

"Ninety seconds, Hale." Cole's voice chewed through the wall speaker like static grinding on glass. "Open the door or I open it for you."

Knox's hand stayed locked around my wrist. Thumb pressed dead into my pulse point, like he could feel me deciding something before I did.

"Don't," he said. Not to Cole. To me.

"Don't what?" My voice came out steadier than I felt, which was its own small miracle, because my heart was doing something stupid against my ribs and the cold off the vault steel had crawled all the way up my spine. "Don't watch you fall apart? Little late for that, Knox."

His jaw ticked. Sweat at his hairline, even in a room the sprinkler override had chilled down to a meat locker. "He'll cut the seal manually if I don't answer. There's a bypass in the loft. Cole knows it. I taught him."

"Then he's had it this whole time." I twisted my wrist, testing the grip, and he didn't let go, he just loosened enough that it stopped hurting and started feeling like something else, something I didn't have a clean word for.