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“Again,” he said.

Fourth run. He made it to step six and transposed two characters in the string. Again. His jaw was so tight his teeth ached.

“You’re doing the same thing,” she said. “Steps five through seven. You’re⁠—”

“I know what I’m doing wrong. You already told me.”

“Then slow down.”

“I am slowing down.”

He pushed back from the desk. The frustration had been building for the last half hour, and it was everywhere now. In his hands, in his shoulders, in the clench of his jaw. He was failing at something that mattered, in front of a woman who made him feel like an idiot without trying, in a building that made his skin crawl.

And this was just the start of what he needed to do.

“Is there a problem?” she asked.

“Yeah. There’s a problem.” He turned in his chair to face her. “I’ve been sitting here for two hours, and you’ve looked at me maybe four times. You’re building the cover that keeps me alive inside a room full of people who will put a bullet in my head if they see through it, and you can’t even be bothered to look at me while you do it. Just like the briefing yesterday.”

Her hands went still on the keyboard. She didn’t respond right away, and he could feel his own pulse in his ears. He knew he was being an asshole, and he didn’t care.

And he couldn’t fucking shut up. “So what is it? You don’t want to be here? You don’t think this matters? Because I need to know if the person responsible for whether I come back from this actually gives a shit.”

She was quiet long enough that the silence started to feel physical.

“I’ve been in this lab since eleven o’clock last night,” she said. “All damned night. I built your employment history. I built your client list. I set up a phone number routed through three states that will ring at a desk with a person sitting behind it who will confirm your cover story.”

Her voice was low and steady, and her eyes were on him now, bloodshot and exhausted and absolutely furious. “I haven’t slept. I haven’t eaten. I am here, and I give a shit, and if you ever question that again, you can find someone else to keep you alive.”

His mouth opened. Nothing came out.

She held his gaze, and the woman staring him down was the one from the video call. The one who’d talked about justice and shut him up cold. She’d been in there this whole time, and he’d just dragged that version of her out by being a complete asshole.

He had no idea what that meant.

“Okay,” he said. The word tasted like dirt, not because he couldn’t admit when he was wrong but because she was trying to fucking help, and the problem was his, not hers. “That was out of line. I was out of line. Thank you for the work you’ve done.”

She turned back to her screen. Her jaw was set and her hands were shaking slightly, which she probably didn’t want him to notice. He noticed anyway.

“I’m sending you practice files.” She pulled a drive from the desk and held it out. “Run through the sequences. They need to be automatic. You can’t be thinking about the steps when you’re sitting at a live terminal inside that operation.”

He took the drive.

“Don’t skip steps. If you’re tired, stop and start again fresh. Practicing wrong just trains the wrong muscle memory. Then we’ll go over what’s next tomorrow after we both have a break.”

“Okay. Tomorrow.”

He pocketed the drive and stood. He wanted to say something else. Something that acknowledged what he’d just done and the fact that she hadn’t deserved it. But her back was to him and her fingers were already on the keyboard and the moment was gone.

He left.

In the corridor, he stopped and leaned against the wall with his eyes closed. The drive was in his pocket. His cover identity was half built by a woman who’d been awake for twenty hours on his behalf.

And he’d accused her of not caring.

Ryder pushed off the wall and headed for his quarters. He had homework to do.

Chapter 7