She watches me, searching for something behind the words.
“And if this is bigger than we think?” she asks.
“Then we find out how big,” I reply.
“And if we’re not supposed to?”
I grin slightly.
“Since when has that stopped you?”
That earns a faint reaction, something close to acknowledgment.
“You’re insufferable,” she says.
“I get that a lot.”
She exhales again, slower this time.
“This stays controlled,” she says. “We don’t act without verifying.”
“Agreed.”
“We don’t trust each other.”
“Obviously.”
“We don’t get sloppy.”
“Never do.”
She holds my gaze for another moment, then nods once.
“Fine,” she says.
That’s not a refusal.
That’s enough.
I shift my stance slightly.
“Then we start digging,” I say.
Her expression hardens into something focused, deliberate.
“Yeah,” she says quietly.
And this time, when the tension settles between us, it doesn’t feel like opposition.
It feels like alignment.
That’s going to complicate things.
I don’t mind.
CHAPTER 7
JOLIE
