Page 10 of Make Them Pay

“No.” She holds my gaze a beat longer than necessary. “You’re not.”

The air between us feels warmer. Thicker. The space between her elbow and mine is only a couple of inches, and it would be so easy to close it. I want to. But I know better.

I look back at the screen. “Let’s keep going. Next I’ll show you how we can listen in on Serafina’s communications without her knowing.”

“Show me.”

I do. And the afternoon stretches out in front of us, full of work and soft touches and this growing pull I don’t know how to ignore much longer.

4

Enley

Day two at the cabin starts with my hands.

I’m sitting at the table running the check Render showed me yesterday when I notice my fingers aren’t cooperating. My right hand’s steady and accurate. My left hand trembles with a fine shake that starts at the fingertips and travels up my wrist. It’s not bad enough to mess up my typing, but I can see it. If I hold my hand up to the window light, the tremor is obvious.

I tuck my left hand into my lap and keep going with my right. The check on my systems finishes clean. Everything works the way it should. I should feel proud. I do, in a distant sort of way, but most of my brain is busy trying to keep the rest of me from falling apart.

Render’s outside doing his morning walk around the cabin. I can hear his boots on the gravel when the wind shifts. He takes the same route every morning, a wide circle that lasts exactly eleven minutes. I’ve timed it. Not because I’m watching him, but because my mind counts and tracks everything right now, and I can’t make it stop.

It started in that container. The counting. The cataloging. My brain turned into an inventory system when my body couldn’t move. I counted rivets in the ceiling. I counted the guards’ footsteps. I counted my own heartbeats when the fear got too loud.

The counting kept me sane.

Now it’s a habit I can’t shake. I know how many steps it takes to cross the cabin. Fifteen. I know how many breaths Render takes per minute when he’s focused. Twelve to fourteen. I know the rhythm of the generator. I know all these things, and the knowing crowds out everything else I need space for.

The door opens. Render steps inside with cold air clinging to his jacket and a few pine needles stuck to one boot. He crosses to the table and sets down a small bunch of wild mint he must’ve picked along the way.

“For the water,” he says. “Better than nothing.”

It’s such a small thing. Thoughtful in a way that surprises me. Poe would’ve been too focused on the plan to notice something like mint. But Render noticed. He stopped and picked it for me.

“Thanks,” I say. My left hand still trembles in my lap.

He sits across from me and pulls the laptop closer. His morning routine. Check for messages from Knight, scan the emergency lines, look for any changes in Serafina’s visible network. I watch him work the way I’ve been for two days now. He’s harder to read than anyone I’ve ever met. Not because he hides things, but because he’s so still. Everything he does comes out calm and precise.

It makes him incredibly good at what he does.

It also makes him frustratingly hard to get close to.

Almost.

Because there are moments. The way his hand lingered when he cleaned the cut on my lip. The way he said “I’ve got you” like those words carried real weight. The way he looks at me sometimes when he thinks I’m not paying attention.

He’s in there. Under all that control. I’m just not sure what he looks like when he lets himself out.

We work through the morning. He shows me how to listen in on hidden messages today. His tools let us watch patterns in the way people communicate without them knowing. It’s not new to me, but his versions are cleaner and smarter than anything I’ve ever seen before.

“This one watches how big the messages are and when they get sent,” he explains, pointing at the screen. “Even when the actual words are hidden, the patterns tell a story. How often they talk. How much they say. If we watch long enough, we can guess when the next important message will come.”

“Pattern analysis,” I say.

“Exactly.”

I lean in to see the graph he pulls up. Clusters of activity spread across time. I spot one group that looks different. Smaller messages. Irregular timing. More careful.

“There,” I say, pointing. “That cluster doesn’t match the others. It feels deliberate. Like someone trying to stay hidden.”