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She closed her eyes, not expecting to sleep, but exhaustion pulled her under.

And she dreamed of stone corridors and running water and a girl with defiant eyes waiting to be saved.

When she woke, the light through the window had shifted from gold to amber. She checked her phone—eighteen thirty hours. Six thirty. Two and a half hours until the infiltration.

A soft knock at the door. “Elena? It’s me.”

She unlocked it to find Brock holding two covered plates. “Figured you’d be hungry. Can’t remember the last time either of us ate.”

The smell hit her—roasted chicken, rice, beans, fresh tortillas. Her stomach growled in response.

They ate sitting cross-legged on the bed, the food simple but good. Elena realized she was ravenous, and the act of eating something warm and real helped ground her in the present moment.

“How was the planning session?” she asked.

“Thorough. Atticus has contingencies for the contingencies.” Brock set aside his empty plate. “We’ve got comms protocols established, extraction routes mapped, emergency fallbacks planned. Everything’s locked down tight.”

“Good.” Elena set her own plate aside and looked at him. “You know, we do have a couple of hours.”

She kissed him first. No preamble, no asking, just her hands in his hair and her mouth on his, and he kissed her back slower than she'd started it. Deeper.

The ceiling fan turned overhead and she stopped noticing it.

He wasn't as careful this time. Not careless—never careless—but the constant checking, the pauses to read her face, the held-back quality she'd felt in Cancun were gone. She'd shown him she didn't break and he'd believed her, and that belief was in his hands now, in the way he pulled her closer without waiting for permission, in the weight of him settling against her like he had every right to be there.

He did.

She pulled him closer.

Afterward she lay with her cheek against his chest, his heartbeat slowing under her ear. Outside, someone's radio played something with brass and a woman's voice. A dog barked twice and went quiet.

"We should get ready," she said.

His arm tightened. "Five more minutes."

"Five more minutes," she agreed.

Chapter Twelve

Twenty-one hundred hours.

Elena stood in front of the mirror in their small hotel room, watching her hands as she strapped the knife to her ankle. The blade was four inches of folded steel—a weapon that didn’t show up on a casual pat-down if you knew how to carry it. She’d learned how. Her training had taught her to think in layers—visible threats and hidden ones, what you showed and what you kept back.

The pistol went into her purse. Small, obvious, easy to find. They’d take it at the door. That was fine. The pistol was a decoy.

“This was not part of the plan,” Brock said with frustration. “I don’t know what Atticus is thinking. You don’t have to do this.”

She met his eyes in the mirror. “Yes, I do.”

“The team can⁠—”

“The team is getting Marguerite out.” She turned to face him, and her voice was steady. Certain. “You’re already stretched thin. But Toro demanded I deliver the flash drive in person. There’s no one else who can go and pretend to be me. If I don’t show, he’ll know something’s wrong. He’ll move her, or worse. This is the play, Brock. We both know it. Sometimes plans have to be changed on the fly. You and I both know that better than anyone.”

His mouth tightened, but he nodded. He understood tactics, even when he hated them. “You’ve got Cal in your ear. The second things go wrong⁠—”

“I signal, you come in, we end this.” She crossed to him, rising on her toes to kiss him once. Hard. “I’m not the girl I was before. I can handle this.”

“I know you can.” His hands framed her face, and what she saw in his hazel-green eyes made her overcome with emotion. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”