He doesn’t look up when Sage approaches.
He also doesn’t tell her to keep walking.
I take a slow pull of my warm beer and continue to watch.
She drops into the chair beside him uninvited, the same way she always does, with the confident ease of someone who has tested this boundary enough times to have formed a working theory about it. The paper bag lands on the table between them. Ghost’s jaw moves fractionally, which for him is roughly the equivalent of rolling out a welcome mat.
“What are you working on?” Sage asks, pulling a stick of jerky from the bag and tearing off a piece with an easy, unhurried calm, like she’s got nowhere else she needs to be.
“Database migration.” Ghost keeps his eyes on the screen.
“Is that code for something criminal, or is it actually as boring as it sounds?”
“Migration of archived data to an encrypted server. Genuinely that boring.”
Sage chews thoughtfully. “Why encrypted?”
He pauses, which, for Ghost, is the conversational equivalent of sitting up straighter. “Because unencrypted storage is an invitation.”
“To what?”
“To anyone who wants to know what you’d prefer, they didn’t.”
She actually thinks about it for a second before jumping in with the first answer that comes to mind, her attention locked on the question. “So, it’s basically a lock on the filing cabinet,” she says. “Except the filing cabinet contains things that would ruin someone’s year.”
Ghost looks at her, a brief, sideways glance, the kind that isn’t quite voluntary, a fractional recalibration. “Something like that,” he says.
“Okay, but here’s what Idon’tunderstand…” She leans forward with her elbow on the table, and Ghost looks back at the screen, but something about him shifts. He’s not just sitting there refusing to react anymore. He’s listening now, whether he wants anyone to notice it or not. “If you encrypt the server and someone still gets in, you’ve essentially told them that whatever’s inside is worth protecting. Haven’t you just flagged the most interesting thing in the room?”
He pauses, and Ghost turns his head, looking at her properly. It lasts about three seconds, which, from a man whose default expression is the conversational equivalent of a blank wall, amounts to something significant.
“That’s a real problem,” he says. “And it’s the reason the architecture needs an additional layer of confusion, so the server itself doesn’t appear to exist.”
“So, the best security is making people believe there’s nothing to find.”
“Correct. I’ll make sure to add that layer of security in.”
Sage nods slowly, a small, satisfied motion. “That tracks for life generally.”
Ghost doesn’t answer. But something in the line of his shoulders shifts by approximately one degree, and he reaches toward the paper bag, extracts some jerky without comment, and sets it on the table beside him.
Neither of them says anything.
But I exhale through my nose.
“They’ve been doing this for months.” Marley’s voice is low, directed sideways. I track it without looking obvious about it, finding her at the bar in conversation with Victoria, both of them with their heads angled in the direction of Ghost’s corner.
Victoria doesn’t even glance up from her drink. “He’s going to crack eventually.”
“Oh, I know,” Marley says, sounding way too pleased with herself, warm and smug in that unmistakable way people get when they’ve been front-row spectators to a slow-burn disaster for months and finally feel vindicated. “I’m just waiting to see who cracks first.”
Victoria makes a sound of agreement, the kind that suggests she has formed her own opinion about the outcome and is keeping it to herself.
I look back toward the corner.
Ghost is eating the jerky. He hasn’t thanked her for it. Sage hasn’t pointed out that he’s eating the jerky. They are both pretending this exchange has the mundane, unremarkable texture of two people who happen to occupy the same space, and they do so with the commitment of people who have made this performance a comfortable habit.
There is something almost painfully familiar about watching it.
