“Ethan,” Maisie cut in gently. The way she said his name made Lennon’s chest squeeze in a pleasant way. He already knew what she was going to say, and he adored her for it. “I was going to say that we should try to stop Declan from killing Jonathan.”

He blinked. “Oh.”

“I’m not on board with that,” Beto said. “It’s Jonathan Spencer! He’s a murderer and psychopath, by all accounts.”

“He’s not a psychopath,” Ethan grumbled.

“You really want to start comparing fathers here, Beto?” Maisie asked. “Neither of us has much room to judge.”

Beto glared at her. “I’m still not helping.”

“I was going to suggest that you and Anna stay with the shipment anyway. We can’t just leave it. Lennon will go with me.” She glanced at him. “I’d ask if you were cool with it, but I can already tell you are, from that look on your face.”

“You know my looks so well,” he said affectionately. She smiled at him.

“I can stay with the shipment, but I do not need you running around trying to save Spencers when the smart thing to do is to just get out of here as fast as we can,” Beto said. “You’ve just told a Spencer; he can go warn them. You’ve done enough.”

“I could, but…” Ethan put both hands in his hair and released a giant breath.

“Then you’ll have to tell them how you know,” Maisie finished.

“Make something up,” Lennon said. “Tell them you heard us talking or something.”

“It would take work even getting any of them to listen to me long enough to explain it,” Ethan said. “I could warn my dad, I guess. He might murder me after, but…”

Lennon wondered if Ethan meant “murder” literally. He was worried that he did.

“Do you want me to punch you? Make it look like you had to get away from us?” Beto asked.

Ethan took a step back. “No. Thank you. Just…give me a minute to think.”

“We don’t really have a minute,” Maisie said. “Lennon needs to get to the gate in…” She looked at her watch. “Like ninety minutes. Which means we are cutting it incredibly close.”

“He’s the one who insisted on saving you before going to the gate,” Anna grumbled.

Maisie met his eyes, her lips twitching up. “Thanks for that.”

“Anytime.”

“But seriously, we don’t have time to go around anymore. We have to go through the Spencer compound to the gate if we’re going to make it before the deadline. And it sounds like you have access to it?” she asked Ethan.

“Yeah,” he said hesitantly.

“We can get to the gate from there, right?”

“Yeah. There’s a main road that runs through it for trucks. Once you exit the other side, you won’t have any trouble at the gate. We have a strict no-violence policy in that area, because it’s monitored by the US government.”

“Trust me when I say that the US government is monitoring a lot more than you think in here,” Lennon said.