Her expression sharpens.
“For what?”
“Unauthorized contact,” I reply.
Her eyes narrow.
“With who?”
“Didn’t say,” I answer. “But it was enough to pull him off rotation without a record.”
“That doesn’t happen,” she says.
“It does now.”
She exhales slowly, her gaze drifting for a second before snapping back to me.
“That lines up,” she mutters.
“With what?” I ask.
She hesitates again.
I don’t push it this time.
“Patrols are avoiding certain sectors,” I add instead. “Not random. Consistent. Like they’ve been told not to look.”
Her attention locks back in.
“Where?” she asks.
I give her the general area, watching the way she processes it, the way her stance lists slightly as she maps it against what she already knows.
“That overlaps with the blind spots,” she says.
“Yeah,” I reply. “Thought you’d say that.”
Silence settles between us, heavier now.
“You think he found something,” she says.
“I think he got too close to something,” I reply.
“And now they’re burying it.”
“Looks that way.”
She runs a hand along the edge of the fence, her fingers brushing the metal without touching it directly.
“This isn’t just Coalition,” she says. “We’ve got restricted zones too.”
“I figured.”
Her gaze lifts to mine again.
“You didn’t tell me everything earlier,” she says.
“Neither did you,” I reply.
