Chapter 44 The Singapore Sweat
The flight to Singapore was even shorter on sleep and longer on torment than the leg to Zurich. We arrived at Changi International Airport just before dawn. The air was thick, heavy, and smelled of salt and diesel—a visceral, immediate assault on the senses that mirrored the chaotic escalation of the threat. It was a physical manifestation of my unraveling control.
Rhys’s efficiency remained absolute. We were driven not to a five-star suite, but directly to a dense, industrial district near the port. The local logistics firm that had processed Finch’s charter was housed in a low, concrete building. The exterior was unremarkable, but the security was not; two silent, efficient men met us, their postures communicating a lethal competence that bypassed language.
The team was already inside, having used a corporate pretext to gain access before sunrise. The room was small, fluorescent-lit, and stifling. The ancient air conditioning unit struggled, coating the inside of my turtleneck with a thin, uncomfortable film of sweat. This was not the environment for pristine analysis. This was fieldwork, dirty and immediate.
The desk where the documents lay scattered was barely large enough for one person. Yet, Rhys immediately positioned himself behind me, leaning over my shoulder to scan the documents I was sorting.
"Find the manifest," he instructed, his voice low but sharp.
I tried to lean away, but the confined space made retreat impossible. His body was a wall of heat directly behind me, generating an inferno that had nothing to do with the external climate. I could feel the subtle movement of his breathing, the rise and fall of his chest against my shoulder blade. The cotton of my blouse was damp against my skin, a clammy, shameful barrier that did nothing to stop the heat of his presence from seeping into my every nerve ending.
"I need space, Vance. I can't read this if I'm fighting for air," I muttered, my voice tight.
"You're fighting against something, Dr. Winslow, but it isn't air," he countered, his tone laced with a dangerous amusement that made my neck prickle. He knew the precise toll his proximity took, and he wielded it like a tool of interrogation. "Work, Ellie. You told me you could dominate the data; prove it."
The use of my name in that tense, breathy environment was a physical hit. I pressed my hips into the hard edge of the desk, focusing entirely on the logistics papers. My clothes were already sticking to my skin. The humid air, which had started as an external discomfort, now felt like a second skin, clinging to the agonizing awareness of the man behind me.
Rhys reached forward, his large hand spreading flat on the desk just above my left shoulder, flattening a sheaf of papers. The move pinned me further, caging me in. His forearm was inches from my cheek, the hard, corded muscle visible under the sleeve of his shirt. It was an involuntary gesture of control, and it was the trigger.
Control.
I stared at the faded ink on the document, but my mind was yanked back to the past. The sheer physical presence of a dominant man near my left side—the side where the scar still faintly resided—was a jolt.
My whole life had been spent constructing an edifice of intellect, precision, and distance—a necessary fortress built on the night my biological father, Dale, tried to kill me. I was thirteen. My mother and three older brothers were momentarily absent, and Dale, in a final, deranged act, came at me with a kitchen knife. I remember the cold, paralyzing fear, and the blinding fluorescent light of the kitchen reflecting off the blade. My brothers and mother arrived back just as the climax occurred, but they were too late. Dale plunged the knife into my left abdomen. I felt the initial, shocking coldness of the steel tearing through the skin, followed by a burning, searing pressure as it lodged deep. I didn't scream; the pain was too immediate, too immense.
It was immediately after the stabbing that everything dissolved. Rhys, who was inexplicably there, was a blur—a roaring force of violence and protection tackling Dale to the ground. I was already retreating, my consciousness locking down behind a heavy iron door. That night was erased, replaced by a wall of white numbness. I don't remember Rhys's heroic actions, only the dizzying, copper taste of blood and the sensation of being lifted. Yet, the memory of a dark shadow and a desperate, low voice—a voice begging me not to leave him—occasionally surfaces in my most vulnerable moments.
He was nothing like my brothers, who were all brute strength and obvious loyalty. Rhys was not selfless; he was selfish, arrogant, and terrifyingly efficient. Yet, when his arm pinned me now, the old, visceral memory of being small and trapped surfaced, followed instantly by the electric, humiliating rush of submitting to his dominance. This involuntary need to submit to his control, the exact opposite of the strength my brothers had instilled, was the most terrifying realization of all.
I forced my attention back to the documents, using my anger as a whetstone. The paper trail was intentionally messy. The charter wasn't for the drilling vessel itself, but for a smaller, specialized support tug necessary to transport the deep-sea cable cutter. The key lay in the supplemental permits.
"He's running this through a defunct subsidiary of the logistics company," I announced, finding a single, faded document among a stack of maintenance requests. "They're using the tug's existing long-haul permit to bypass international waters protocols."
Rhys gripped my shoulder again, this time harder, his fingers digging in momentarily before he checked himself. The brief, punishing pressure was the only acknowledgment he allowed himself, but it felt like a flash of heat against my bone. "Good. Where is the tug leaving from, and when?"
I located the current location coordinates. The vessel, the Triton, was moored near the western side of the Singapore port, preparing for departure. The planned route was a direct, aggressive vector toward the South China Sea.
"It's set to depart in ninety minutes," I said, a wave of cold dread finally cutting through the oppressive heat. "Finch is moving faster than we calculated. Julian needs to confirm the exact cable location now—we're too late to stop the ship from leaving."
Rhys moved. The two feet of professional space shattered as he placed both hands flat on the desk, caging me between his arms and the monitor. His face was inches from mine, his eyes fierce with the singular focus of the hunt.
"Julian is already working on the satellite data, but we can't wait for confirmation," Rhys said, his breath hot against my ear. "We take the charter company records, and we move to the port. We intercept the Triton before it leaves the breakwater. We are going to stop him physically."
The air was thick with sweat, fear, and the powerful, intoxicating adrenaline radiating from Rhys. The chaotic heat of Singapore was closing in, and I was trapped in the most dangerous intimacy of all: a life-and-death mission with the man who had claimed my surrender.