Page 82 of The Final Cut

“Do it anyway.”

Anger flares, hot and automatic, and beneath it something else opens. A channel my body knows too well now. Nash giving an order. Me wanting to resist because resistance feels like freedom. Me obeying because, with him, obedience gives the panic somewhere to go.

I breathe in.

“Again,” he says.

I do.

His hand slides from my waist to my hip. Heat unfurls where his fingers press, slow and unwelcome and exactly where my body needs it.

“You have a job,” he says.

“Fuck you, Nash.”

The words come out low and tired, with no real heat behind them.

He kisses my forehead. “You’ll stay with Ever. You’ll monitor Cal updates. You’ll keep Homer contained, if such a thing is possible.”

Under the table, Homer chirps like he understands slander.

“And,” Nash continues, “you will not become Isabel’s second hostage because you are too stubborn to let the first one be rescued properly.”

The words cut.

I try to step back again.

His grip becomes iron.

“No.”

Every nerve in my body wakes.

Deacon turns his head away, granting privacy in the only way he knows how. Ever stays at the console, but his attention returns to the screens with pointed intensity. They know this part of Nash and me. They know the shape of it. Control as care. Command as a hand around the part of me that wants to come apart.

Nash leans closer. “You can be angry. You can hate every second. You can curse my name while I am gone if that helps. What you cannot do is confuse staying behind with doing nothing.”

My throat works.

“When?” I ask.

“Within forty-eight hours,” Deacon says from the table. “Sabine confirms the morning of the luncheon. Until then, we prepare.”

Forty-eight hours.

Two days where Delia stays in that house. Two days where Isabel breathes near her. Two days where every clock in the world gets a little crueler.

I close my eyes.

Nash’s hand presses once at my hip. “Tell me the plan.”

I groan, and then I dutifully tell him the plan.

“You and Deacon use the luncheon movement,” I say. “Public place. Witnesses. Route already mapped.”

“Good.”

“Sabine gets you access before Delia is presented.”