“So am I,” I answer, letting my tone remain even while the meaning sharpens underneath it.
She exhales slowly and sets the tablet down with more care than necessary, aligning it against the crate as though precision might give her control over the conversation.
“That usually means trouble,” she says.
“It depends how honest you feel like being,” I reply.
The words land, and I see it in the tightening of her jaw, in the way her shoulders draw in just slightly as if bracing for something she already expects.
“I don’t like where this is going,” she says.
“Then help me steer it,” I answer.
She studies me, her eyes narrowing as something defensive settles behind them, and for a moment I can see the calculation happening in real time.
“This about the fence?” she asks.
“This is about Tury,” I say.
The name hits her harder than anything else I could have said, and she cannot quite hide it. Her shoulders tense, her breath catches just slightly before she smooths it out, and the controlled composure she tries to hold fractures at the edges.
“I don’t know anything about that,” she says quickly.
I step closer, lowering my voice so it does not carry beyond the immediate space, forcing the conversation into something more private and harder to escape.
“I didn’t ask what you know,” I say. “I asked what you saw.”
Her gaze drops for a fraction of a second, then snaps back up, sharper now.
“I didn’t see anything,” she insists.
“That’s not true,” I reply.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” I say, holding her gaze steady. “Because you reacted before I said his name.”
The silence that follows stretches long enough to become uncomfortable, and she does not fill it right away. Her fingers curl slightly against the edge of the crate beside her, the motion small but telling, and her breathing changes just enough to give her away.
“Shasha,” I say, quieter now, but more direct. “Whatever happened to him didn’t start at the fence. It started here, in places like this, where things move without being recorded.”
Her lips part like she is about to respond, but the words catch, and she looks away instead, her focus drifting toward the far end of the bay as if she could find an answer there.
“He wasn’t supposed to—” she begins, then cuts herself off, shaking her head.
I don’t interrupt her this time. I let the silence stretch again, let it press in until it forces her to either hold it or break it.
“He wasn’t acting right,” she says finally, her voice lower now, the resistance cracking.
“How?” I ask.
She exhales slowly, her shoulders dropping just slightly as if the act of speaking costs her something.
“He wasn’t careless,” she says. “He wasn’t slipping or missing things. He was just… off. Like he was thinking about something else even when he was standing right in front of you.”
“That’s not enough to get someone flagged,” I say.
“No,” she agrees. “But asking the wrong questions is.”
