Page 98 of Operation: Defiance

“I’m going to be generous with both your money and my information,” I say, glancing back at the bed to make sure Raine’s still sleeping. “One of the companies that shares space with Northbridge is sloppy. If you don’t want that mess to stain your organization, you might want to avoid them in the future.”

“Send the logs,” he says. “And keep your deposit.”

The line goes dead.

I lower the phone and stare at it for a second, then slip it back into my pocket. On the laptop, it takes me less than five minutes to assemble a clean packet. The client gets screenshots with partial IDs, the cause-of-death circled, timestamps clearly visible.

Enough to prove what they paid for is gone.

Nothing about the woman they never knew existed.

Nothing about Coherent Path or their codes.

When I’m done, I wipe the working directory, eject the drive, and return everything to the safe.

Somewhere in those logs is the pattern of what they did to her. Somewhere in her, is the mind that can read it.

“Later,” I murmur, too softly to wake her. “We’ll start pulling threads.”

I sink back into the chair. My eyes burn. Thirty seconds. I can take thirty seconds.

Someone hired Coherent Path to reduce Raine to a set of codes and an outcome. They almost succeeded. But they underestimated her. That was their first mistake. They won’t get the chance to make a second.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Raine

I dreamed.

The fact lands so hard, my eyes sting. Dreaming means REM sleep. REM sleep means time. Unbroken time my body desperately needed.

I haven’t had that since they took me. I don’t know if I ever managed a shallow doze there before hands jerked me back to awareness for one of their corrections.

But moments ago, just before I surfaced, I was on my parents’ old couch, the cat they adopted when I was ten curled on my legs. Heavy. Warm. Like nothing bad had happened yet.

Before the wave of emotion can drown me, I start cataloging what I know.

A soft bed. Borrowed clothes. Socks.

No gusts of frigid air from an overactive ventilation system. No cold seeping into my skin. No hands causing me pain.

Soft music, steady and low. Present, but not demanding.

I open my eyes.

The room is brighter now. Light leaks around the edges of the blinds, enough that I can tell it’s later than it was, but still daylight.

Asher is sprawled in the chair, head tipped back, blanket over his legs, hands visible. Even in sleep, he’s determined to prove I can trust him.

He stayed between me and the door.

Always between me and the door.

“Nothing gets to you without going through me first. And I don’t go down easy.”

I check in with my body.

Ribs. Sharp, but not stabbing.