Page 2 of The Knight

“How about a drink to celebrate our last night and a job well done?” Tinna tucked the paperwork Einar had signed into a drawer and kneed it shut before tugging off her lab coat.

Freya shook her head. “I want to run over the numbers. Make sure everything is in order.”

“Freya, you’ve run them countless times.” Tinna’s voice rose. “Anyone else might think you have a secret lover stashed away here. But I know you better than that. You’ll be glued to your screen, crunching numbers. Again.”

“Someone has to keep a vigilant eye on the files.” The mere thought of a man disrupting her meticulously ordered life—her carefully constructed world free of messy emotions and complicated entanglements—sent a shiver through her. She’d abandoned that idea long ago.

Tinna’s eyebrows rose in a silent challenge.

Freya sighed. “According to a study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, single people report higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction than their married counterparts. Single individuals scored an average of 7.6 out of 10 on the life satisfaction scale, compared to a 7.2 for married people. That’s a statistically significant 5.56% difference.”

“Of course you’d know that, Freya.” Tinna’s lips twitched, not quite a smile.

“The data is clear, Tinna. My life isn’t just a personal preference. It’s statistically optimized for happiness and personal growth.”

Tinna reached out, gently squeezing Freya’s shoulder. “Numbers don’t lie, do they?” There was a hint of something Freya couldn’t quite quantify in her voice.

“No,” Freya replied, turning back to her computer screen, seeking refuge in the orderly rows of data. “They don’t.”

Freya wasn’t totally unaware. She knew some men found her attractive. She’d slept with a few, but had found the relations physically messy and inconvenient.

Although as her mid-thirties loomed, a nagging question had surfaced. What if there were variables she hadn’t accounted for? She pushed the uncomfortable thought away. She’d seen what relationship variables had done for her mother—clinical depression followed by suicide and she’d sworn from an early age—that would never be her life.

Tinna pulled on her coat. “Goodnight. I’ll see you tomorrow, Freya.”

Her footsteps receded into silence. Glad to be alone with only hard facts for company, Freya turned her attention to her laptop, her mind already moving onto the next task.

Her fingers tapped across the keyboard, the rhythm of checking and rechecking oddly comforting and distracting her from the plane ticket sitting in her desk drawer and all that it represented—the delays, the chaos of unfamiliar airports, the sense of surrender to forces beyond her control.

When she finally glanced at her watch, it was late, after ten. She’d been working for four hours. Her stomach grumbled. She should eat.

A muffled thud came from outside the lab.The access hallway.

She paused, tilting her head.Probably nothing. But a prickle of unease crawled up her spine. She shook it off as she collected her purse. There was no reason for concern. Security at Hellisheidi was watertight. She’d ensured that herself. Time to hit the nearest vending machine for dinner.

Thud.

Freya froze.That was closer.

Something crashed, followed by raised voices.

Her pulse jumped as she hurried to the lab entrance. Through the small window in the door, she glimpsed movement in the hallway. Moving shadows.

She fumbled for her phone, fingers trembling as she pulled up the security app. The feed from the hallway camera showed four men in dark clothing, faces obscured by masks.

The thud of their boots made her skin go clammy. They were checking each door methodically on an inevitable approach to her lab. She glanced over her shoulder to the vulnerable heart of her research—boxes of compiled data, the laptop holding the core formulae. All of it exposed.

Her hands trembled as she engaged the door lock, the soft click impossibly loud in the silent lab. She retreated from the glass, pressing her back against the wall until the chill seeped through her thin lab coat.

Please, just go.

2

Low,urgent voices filtered through the door, their words indistinct, but their intent was clear—accessing her lab.

The handle turned once, then stilled.

Freya held her breath. Her vision swam, the edges of the room blurring as her heart thundered in her ears.They’ll leave now. The door is secure.

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