Cole pointed down at Derek, who was still moaning on the floor:
“And your boy Derek wasn’t choking my sister because of her ego.”
“He choked her because twenty minutes ago, Sarah went into the women’s locker room to change.”
“She accidentally dropped her water bottle behind the bench.”
“And when she reached under the baseboard, she found the digital acoustic listening transceiver your team installed to monitor the military convoys running along Route 28.”
CHAPTER 4: THE PERIMETER COLLAPSES
My breath hitched in my chest.
My hand flew to the pocket of my gym bag sitting beside the wall.
Inside, wrapped in an old pair of hand-wraps, was the small, black, rectangular device I had picked up off the concrete floor behind the lockers ten minutes before class started.
I had thought it was a dropped vape pen or a car remote.
I had slipped it into my bag intending to ask the front desk if someone had lost it.
Derek had seen me pick it up.
He had watched me slide it into my bag through the locker room mirror.
And three minutes later, he had walked across the mat, slapped his heavy hand onto my shoulder, and called me out for a “sparring round.”
