THE BOX
Selene's POV
Four wolves. Thirty seconds.
The math was simple and ugly.
"Get it," Cade said. Not a question. He was already moving back toward the door, Soren beside him, the two of them repositioning with the wordless efficiency of wolves who had trained for exactly this kind of compression — the moment when the plan ended and the situation began.
I turned back to the panel.
Two centimeters wasn't enough. I pressed my fingers into the gap and pulled — the panel swung inward on hinges that moved more smoothly than anything in this building had a right to, my mother's engineering holding across fifteen years of disuse.
Inside: a shelf. Small, deep, set into the wall cavity behind the false panel. And on the shelf — a metal box, the size of a document case, dark with age, a simple clasp on the front that was not locked.
She hadn't locked it.
