Chapter 9 · Switch Nine

"That's not the elevator." Marco's hand was already on the panel, flat against the steel, feeling for the click that had come from somewhere above the cage.

"That's a bolt."

"I heard it." I didn't move off the wall. My shoulder was still wedged where his chest had been a second ago, and my sleeve was caught in the gate track, half-torn, cold air biting straight through the gap.

"Which bolt."

"Counting room door. Upstairs." He said it like a man reading a shipping manifest, no weight on it, but his jaw was tight enough that I could see the muscle jump under three days of stubble.

"Somebody just locked us out of the room we're supposed to be dying to get into."

"Or locked us in with each other." I said it before I could stop myself, and I hated how it landed — half accusation, half something else I wasn't going to name in a steel box that smelled like his coat and diesel and the ice house two floors down. The panel cover picked that second to give up.