readied her knife. The moment the soles of her boots touched the concrete, she cut the line, and the proximate end retracted automatically into the housing embedded in her harness.
The stale air tasted bitter and musty, so Nina tossed out an oxygenation canister. It rolled across the floor, hissing as it began to disperse its contents, just as Knox touched down behind her.
He unslung the huge solar battery backup from his shoulder and lowered it to the floor. Instead of his usual pistol, the holster at his hip held a clever little gun loaded with putty-like pellets. Each one he discharged hit the wall and spread into a three-inch disc that began to glow brightly as it reacted with the air, slowly bringing the room into illuminated focus.
They were in a large, bare room filled with rack after rack, each one loaded with dozens of hard drives. Everything had been wired together, the cables hastily gathered and secured to each rack, with a single terminal in the middle of it all.
Nina swept up the bag Knox had deposited and started toward the terminal. “I’ll hook up the battery, and we can see if any of this stuff works.”
“I’ll clear the rest of the place.” He stopped next to her, leaning in until his mouth hovered teasingly close to hers. A smile curved his lips as he dipped a hand into her bag and pulled out another oxygenation canister. “I’ll be right back.”
The power supply for the terminal was meant to plug into an outlet, not interface with a solar battery, so Nina pulled out her knife again and got to work stripping the cord so she could hook up an inverter. She’d nearly finished separating out the necessary wires when Knox called her name from the next room over.
She abandoned her task and followed the sound of his voice. He was standing in a room stacked high with boxes and shelves, holding a book in his hand.
“Look at this.” He tilted the book into the spill of light from a lamp he’d affixed to the wall. It was a children’s book, the cover illustration bright and colorful, though the dings and dents along the edges suggested it had passed through plenty of hands. He flipped it over and showed her the bar code on the back, affixed with a sticker that said PROPERTY OF KIRKWOOD BRANCH LIBRARY.
“They’re all like this,” he said, passing her the book and pulling out another. “The room goes back forever. There must be thousands of boxes in here. Maybe tens of thousands.”
Nina reached out, her finger trembling as she traced one bright red sweep of color on the cover. “They saved more than the files.”
“I think it’s a whole library.” He nudged one massive shelf with his foot. It didn’t even budge under the weight of hundreds of boxes. “Maybe more than one.”
Her heart started to pound. “We’ll have to expand.”
“You can.” Knox smiled at her. “We can.”
Giddy joy flooded her as she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him once, twice. “We can.” The third time, the kiss went on and on, her absolute, utter focus on Knox.
Until their comms crackled again. “It got quiet,” Dani observed. “Are you guys dead or making out?”
Knox broke away with a noise that was half laughter, half groan, and activated his communication device. “It would serve you right if I didn’t answer.”
“I mean, anything’s better than the Great Dirty Talk Fiasco of last week,” came Conall’s voice. “You and Maya should be glad you don’t have these things in your heads. We all got a show until I cut the feed and changed his activation protocols. Do you know how weird it is to get porn inside your head?”
Nina’s entire face was flaming. “That’s it. The subdural comms have got to go.”
Maya’s voice cut through Knox’s laughter. “Put your pants back on. Dani’s on her way down, and Gray’s fixing up the ladder.”
Nina replaced the book in the box and stole one last kiss. “Why do we keep them around?”
“Because we love them.” Knox caught her and pulled her against him. “And because we’re about to be really, really rich.”
As if he gave a damn about the money. “They’re family,” she agreed.
And if the last month had taught her anything, it had taught her that family was as ever-evolving as it was eternal. It went deeper than blood or DNA. It was a promise that, no matter what you did, there would always be someone