We lie face to face in the bed, and Callum’s eyes grow wider as he listens to my idea. “Maci, that’s…ambitious.” I’m not sure he believes I can do it. But he believes I’m going to try, with or without him.

“I know. And it all hinges on them not figuring out what I’m doing in time to lock me out of the system. Or them not being able to lock me out.”

“How would that work?”

“I’d have to gain administrative access.”

He runs one finger from my collarbone over the curve of my right breast, through my shirt, slowly cresting at my nipple as it grows hard beneath his touch. And suddenly it’s difficult to think about my plan. About anything other than where his hand is, and where I’d like his mouth to be. And I’m pretty sure that’s intentional. “Can you do that?”

“In theory. But that’s not my forte. I’m more of a ‘punch a hole through the firewall’ kind of girl than an intricate details hacker.” His finger slowly circles my nipple, and despite my effort to concentrate, I find myself breathing more heavily. “That would take me some time, and that’s time we can’t afford, because the minute I access the system, they’ll know where we are.”

“So then, what’s the plan, if we can’t get admin level access?”

I fight the urge to arch into his touch. To wordlessly demand more. “I didn’t say we couldn’t get it. I said we can’t afford the time it would take to hack my way in. But if I do it like I did with Dalton’s wrist com…”

Callum scowls. “You want to kill someone on the administrative level just to get access to his permissions?”

“Or her permissions.” I roll toward him and slide my bare leg over his hip. “The commander is a female guard named Harris. She’s the one the warden dealt with. Which means she’s our best bet. But I’m not sure I can actually kill her.”

“That’s where I come in?”

I shrug against the pillow. “You, or Lucky.”

Callum pulls me closer, until my stomach is pressed against the erection straining his shorts, my leg tucked around his hip. “How are you going to get her out here? If she’s in charge, chances of her coming into the enclosure are slim.”

I blink at him, surprised he hasn’t figured this part out yet. “She’s not going to come to us, Callum. We’re going to have to go to her.”

“No.” His hand goes still against my back. His voice is made of steel. “Maci, we are not going back to the Resort.”

“We have to. That’s the only way this plan will work.”

“No. The object is to get out of here, not backtrack to where they had us locked up. We might as well turn ourselves in!” I start to argue, but he cuts me off. “Even if we could sneak in, it won’t work. We’ll never be able to get to Harris.”

“Yes, we will,” I insist. “She won’t be expecting us to march into the Resort. Into her office. And you can’t defend against what you don’t expect.”

“They’re already defended.”

“Callum.” I lay one hand on the side of his face, staring across the pillow at him. “We’ll figure this out, because we have to. I can’t leave here knowing what will continue to happen to the rest of the women. And even if most of the men on death row have earned an execution, they haven’t earned this kind of execution. No one deserves to be hunted for someone else’s entertainment.”

“I don’t care about them,” Callum growls, leaning over me so that I have to roll onto my back.

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do.” The wrist com whispers a translation as he tugs my shirt up and over my head, his voice gravelly and filled with a yearning that seems to reach well beyond simple lust. “There aren’t any saints on death row, Maci. Including me. I would let them all die horrible deaths if that were what it took to keep you safe.” He tugs my shorts off and pushes his own down, then settles himself between my thighs. His eyes hold a quiet desperation. Something between an anguished fear and a powerful hunger. “There’s an entire planet beyond those gates.” He slides one hand up my thigh, tucking my leg around his hip. “If we make it out of zone two, they’ll never find us. We can leave all this shit behind. We could have a life out there.”

I groan as he slides into me in one stroke, filling me. Leaving me speechless. Breathless.

“That’s what I want for us.” He pulls out slowly, then pushes in again, his pubic bone brushing my clit with an exquisite pressure that is somehow both too much and nowhere near enough. “That’s what I’m going to take for us.” Again, and he’s found a breathtaking rhythm now. And I’m so ready that I can already feel that spiral building. “I’m not going to let you put your head in the lion’s mouth, Maci. You’re mine. And I’m damn well going to keep you.”

What begins with a languid intensity I can feel all the way into my soul becomes an urgent drive. A frenzied race run not to win, but to experience. This is different than before. This isn’t just sex. This is a claiming, as much about our souls as about our bodies.

Callum thrusts hard, and I cling to him, riding the desperate ferocity of his need like a shuttle flying out of control. The reckless pace feels intoxicating. Electrifying. My pleasure builds until I’m panting with each motion, arching into him, almost as eager for release as I am for this to never end.

He comes with a groan and a series of hard, fast strokes, and I’m right behind him. Clutching him. Trying to make this last because, though I understand that for him this was a demonstration—a statement of what I mean to him, even after only a few days of life-and-death struggle—for me, this is a goodbye. At least for now.

I need to protect the other women just as badly as he needs to protect me.

We collapse in a tangle of sweaty limbs, and his breathing grows slow, his heavy arm draped over my stomach, as if he can’t stand to let go of me, even in his sleep. As if he knows what I’m thinking…

I set an alarm on the wrist com, then I let myself drift into sleep, trusting Lucky to wake us up if anyone gets close.

When the alarm goes off a few hours later, a soft buzz from the wrist tucked beneath my head, I can’t tell that Callum has even moved. I carefully lift his arm, then crawl off the bed the long way to keep from waking him. As I pull my clothes back on, I stare out the window to make sure Lucky’s still there. That the administration hasn’t somehow revoked my access and undone all my hard work.

If they have, I can’t tell from Lucky’s stand-guard pose or from anything showing on the wrist com without accessing the system.

I feel guilty about what I’m about to do, but Callum has left me no other choice. I can’t leave zone two without at least trying to free Danna and the other women. There are enough of us that we could be our own community. We could act as a unit to protect each other. We could carve out a settlement for ourselves, like the women’s settlement in zone four.

I really want Callum to do this with me. To stay with me afterward, in the open population. But I can’t make that choice for him.

Despite my determination, my heart breaks as I tap out a short message to him on the wrist com and select the option to translate it into his language. Then I use his knife to prick my finger and write the translated words on the door, where he’ll have to see them.

I clip the sheathed hunting knife he took from Hansen onto my belt, leaving him with the rifle and Nellis’s folding knife, then I shove several protein bars, several water purification tablets, and a bottle of water into my pockets, to supplement what’s left in my canteen.

Heart heavy, I quietly open the cabin door and step outside. As I close the door behind me, Lucky stands, automatically relieved of stand-guard mode by the proximity of my wrist com. With the compass app open on the screen I head south, with the robo-dog at my side.

I walk for hours, using everything Callum’s taught me over the past few days, and I’m relieved to realize that most of the time, my feet are silent.

Or, I would be relieved, if Lucky’s every step didn’t completely nullify my efforts. But he was built for power and speed, not for stealth. Still, I’m safer with a noisy robo-dog at my side than on my own, armed with a knife and a wrist com I dare not use beyond apps that don’t require linking to the Resort’s security system.

By the time I reach the stream where Lucky got waterlogged, I’ve drained the canteen and the sun has started to sink below the western horizon. There are only a couple of hours of daylight left. I refill the canteen and drop a tablet into it, then I take a short break to eat a protein bar and relieve myself.

Lucky makes it across the stream with no problem—it was lingering in the water that shorted him out earlier—and I continue toward the south, on the lookout for any familiar landmarks. I really want to access the system. I feel like a blind man wandering through a mine field, without knowing whether or not the Resort staff has figured out that Dalton and Nellis are dead. Whether or not they’ve sent more guards into the enclosure. Whether or not the shuttle passed over us in our sleep, while we were shielded from its infrared scanner by the roof of the cabin.

But I can’t risk it.

I push through exhaustion and hike well into the night, grateful for the stolen clothes when the temperature begins to drop. Thoughts of what my crime might have cost Danna and the other women keep my eyes open and my legs moving, even when my feet feel like they could fall off. When my fingers begin to go numb from the cold.

But eventually, fatigue takes its toll. I don’t realize I’ve been stumbling along in a daze until I hear the snap of a dead twig, much too close for comfort.

“…going to kill them both as soon as I see them.”

Shit. I flatten myself against the north side of a trunk, listening. Scouting the trees around me for a branch low enough for me to climb onto.

“Stun, or shoot to wound,” a second voice says, accompanied by more footsteps, growing closer. “That’s the order.”

“Yeah, that’s the order that got Dalton killed. The little bitch just got lucky with a broken glass, but Callum Fischer is a stone-cold butcher.”

To my left, there’s a branch low enough for me to reach. But if the guards are close enough for me to hear, they’re probably close enough to see me if I move.

“You’ll lose your job,” the second voice warns.

“Fuck this job. It’s not worth dying over. I’m a fucking shuttle pilot. I’m not trained for traipsing around in the woods with a rifle. The warden’s ‘all hands on deck’ order is a union violation.”

My pulse races and my palms sweat. Even if they don’t see me climb a tree, the robo-dog sitting at the base of the trunk will be a giveaway. Not that that’ll matter. Lucky will attack the second he detects their chips. But I have no hope that he’ll get them both. Now that they know a hound killed Nellis, they’ll know to shoot the second they see Lucky.

“Then why don’t you just quit?”

“Will you shut up?” the first voice snaps. “I’d like for us to hear them before they hear us.”

Holding my breath, I lean slowly around the tree trunk, and I freeze when I see them. They’re way too close. And they’re not alone. Movement between the trunks to the east and the west of the bickering guards tells me there’s a long line of them marching within sight of one another, probably trying to cover the entire enclosure. To flush us out.

If I run, they’ll see me. If I don’t move, they’ll find me in a matter of minutes.

Fear nips at me like a hound on my trail, anxiety coiling tighter around me with every breath I take. With every beat of my heart. I’m fighting dueling urges to flee and to stand as still as possible, knowing that either one will get me caught.

Lucky sits at my feet, his muzzle pointed in the guards’ direction, his ears rotating back and forth, making minor adjustments as he listens. He hasn’t gone to investigate the noise they’re making because of his order to follow me, but any second, he’ll detect their chips, and the imperative to kill his enemies will override all other orders.

I turn back around and press my skull against the tree trunk. I can hear lots of footsteps now, tromping closer and closer. There’s no way out.

This was a mistake. And it’s far too late to take it back.

Movement catches my focus, and I look up to find Callum staring at me from behind a tree just to the northeast of my position. He presses one finger to his lips, warning me to stay quiet.

Then he steps out into the open.