Page 146 of Override

Thermal monocular.

Encrypted receiver.

A thermos of coffee that stopped being hot around three this afternoon.

The folding chair Wheels shoved into my SUV yesterday after informing me that squatting in the dirt was “murder on the knees after thirty.”

He is thirty-two.

Apparently, he has accepted our decline more gracefully than I have.

I carry everything beyond the vehicle and set up beneath a cluster of pines where the ground is dry and the branches provide enough cover to hide the light from my screens.

The chair sinks slightly into the soil when I sit.

My back immediately thanks Wheels.

I will never tell him.

The laptop comes to life beneath my hands, and I begin loading the same collection of programs I’ve opened every evening since the feeds disappeared. A map of the Gallagher estate fills one side of the screen while Declan’s mirrored security application opens on the other.

The connection remains clean.

He still hasn’t discovered the vulnerability.

That should make me feel something resembling satisfaction. Instead, I stare at another list of movements that tells me everything about the estate except the one thing I need to know.

Whether Maeve is okay.

I haven’t seen her in three days.

Not through a camera.

Not through a reflection.

Not even as a shadow passing one of the exterior windows.

The last time I heard her voice, she was whispering goodbye into a microphone she believed no longer worked.

I wish we’d met.

I close my eyes as the memory moves through me with the same precision as a blade.

She had thanked me.

As though a few songs and ridiculous conversations were enough to deserve gratitude.

As though I hadn’t violated every boundary she had by entering her life without permission.

As though I hadn’t listened while she cried because hearing her pain felt better than knowing she was enduring it alone.

My fingers press into the edge of the laptop.

She thinks I let her go.

That may be the only thing keeping me here.

A notification appears before the monitoring software finishes loading.