Chapter 12

The chair legs scraped softly against the floor.No one rushed her.No one grabbed her arm.

She stood.

The man’s shoulders loosened by a fraction, relief flashing across his face before he buried it.He turned his head slightly.“Rafael.”

“I’ve got her,” the broad-shouldered man replied, positioning himself between her and the hallway.

“Mateo,” he said next.

“Exit’s still clear,” came the answer.“But we’re out of time.”

The man looked back at her.“Stay close to me.That’s all you have to do.”

She took one step toward him.

Then another.

She did not speak.

And he did not ask her to.

Somewhere deeper in the building, a door slammed hard enough to rattle the walls.

Rafael moved first, clearing the way.

Mateo was already talking, already adjusting, already buying them seconds they desperately needed.

The moment fractured.

Sound rushed back in all at once—the hum of the lights rising to a whine, the distant echo of shouting, the sharp crack of a command barked too late to matter.Eliza’s senses narrowed, focusing on the space immediately around her, on the man in front of her who had placed himself just slightly ahead, just slightly to the side.

A shield without touching her.

Rafael moved with lethal efficiency, clearing the corridor in controlled bursts of motion, his presence a wall between her and whatever came next.Mateo stayed half a step behind, voice low and rapid as he fed directions, times, warnings—words meant for the men, not for her.

She followed because there was nothing else to do but follow.

Each step felt unreal, her body lagging half a beat behind her intent, muscles protesting as if reminding her how long she’d been made to sit, to wait, to endure.The man—Kol, though she did not yet know his name—matched his pace to hers without comment, adjusting instinctively whenever she faltered.

They turned a corner.Another door.A rush of warmer air that smelled of dust and oil and the outside world.

Hope flickered again, unwanted and dangerous.

She swallowed it down and kept moving.

Behind them, something shattered—glass, maybe, or metal—followed by a curse and the sharp report of a weapon.Rafael answered it without hesitation, pushing them forward.

Eliza did not look back.

She focused instead on the solid presence ahead of her, on the simple instruction she had been given.

Stay close.

She did.

And for the first time in three weeks, she moved toward something instead of waiting for what would come for her next.