Lucian's POV
She looked up at me. "Viktor—"
"Viktor is regrouping. He can't move again tonight, not after the losses he took." I touched her face carefully, the cheek where the cut had been. "We are allowed to stop. Occasionally. For brief periods."
Something in her expression shifted, the hardness of the past several hours softening just slightly.
"A few hours," she said.
"That's all I'm asking."
She reached up and covered my hand with hers where it rested against her cheek. "Okay."
The briefing took two hours.
Derek had found the delivery chain in Callum's records, cross-referenced against the USB drive. A series of dead drop locations across the northern territory, a rotating schedule, a code system that looked random until it wasn't. By the end he had four specific locations that were consistent with a facility hub and one that stood out as primary.
