Chapter 22 · The Soles of Truth

Chapter 22: The Soles of Truth

"Hands off the panel, now." Dante's voice cracks through the smoke before the dust even settles, and his glove closes around my wrist like a cuff.

I don't fight it. Not yet. My pulse is still slamming from the breach, my ears ringing, and the second copy of the master code is folded tight in my fist, pressed flat against my palm where nobody can see it.

"She's not cleared for cabinet contact," Dante says, looking past me at Luca like I'm furniture. "Full sweep. Everything she touched gets logged and burned."

"Everything?" I say, and I make my voice bored, bored like I don't have a scrap of paper sweating against my own skin. "I touched the wall. You going to burn the wall too?"

Luca doesn't answer right away. He's crouched at the open cabinet door, flashlight between his teeth, running a gloved thumb along a seam in the back plate that shouldn't be there. When he does look up, it's not at Dante. It's at me, and it lasts a half second too long.

"Give me the room," Luca says.

Dante's jaw works. "Boss, protocol says—