Page 45 of Final Drive
Eli steps forward. “The filing and the claiming are two different things.”
“You just said we need to accelerate.”
“The filing. Not you.”
That hits me harder than it should.
“We’ve wanted this from the beginning,” Cameron says. “The only thing that changed is that we can’t pretend we’ve got unlimited time anymore.”
I look around at them. Gray with his phone already in his hand. Tyler watching me instead of the screen for once. Bo standing close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him. Cameron still and unreadable except for the fact that he’s here. Eli calm in that way that means he’s already thinking six moves ahead.
“We don’t have to do this because of her,” I say. “Because of the story. I don’t want anybody claiming me because we’re scared.”
“Nobody is,” Bo says.
“What if it changes the timing?”
“It probably does,” Eli says. “That doesn’t make the choice fake.”
I don’t know what to do with that.
Gray finally lowers his phone. “Nobody does anything tonight because we’re panicking. We figure out the filing. We figure out the media response. And anything that happens between you and any of us happens because you want it to.”
I look at him.
“That’s the line,” he says. “We don’t cross it.”
For all the things Gray gets wrong, I believe him when he says that.
“Okay.”
He nods once and turns back toward the others. “Tyler, start the expedited filing. Eli, find every option for getting in front of this before the video drops. Cameron, track where the image started. Beckett, call Bennett.”
“And us?” Zane asks.
Gray looks around at the rest of them, then at me. “We stay close.”
That I can handle.
Everybody starts moving. Tyler and Eli take over one of the workbenches. Cameron is already tracing usernames and timestamps. Beckett has Bennett on the phone before Gray finishes asking. Bo stays near me without touching me, and Jackson disappears long enough to come back with water.
There’s a plan now. Jobs. Something to do with our hands.
I look at the five who haven’t claimed me. Bo, Gray, Tyler, Eli, Cameron.
Five more bites. Five more bonds that were supposed to happen because one of them couldn’t wait another second, not because a reporter put us on a deadline.
Jackson and Beckett and Zane chose me when nobody was making them. When there was no clock and no story and nothing riding on it but whether they wanted to. They wanted me, not a legal position.
I know that’s what the others are telling me too. I know it.
It doesn’t stop the next five from lining up in my head like an assembly line. Claim the Omega. File the form. Close the problem.
Everybody is moving with purpose, and I’m standing in the middle of it wondering whether I’ll ever know which parts would have happened without the clock.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Bo
