She doesn’t know it’s there?
I let her reach the end of the hall before I follow, then double back and read the board myself. Updated since yesterday. Routes. Rotations. Intel that would be useful to someone who knew what they were looking at.
Two staff pass me. I nod at both, drop my eyes to my phone as if I’m scrolling, and keep walking.
I track her all the way to the motor pool. Farris, the head mechanic, is in the far bay, arms black to the elbow, losing a fight with an axle fitting.
I stop, a hand on the open door of a truck. “Wear and tear?” One eye across the yard.
“Road damage. East track’s going.” He doesn’t look up. “Wants a re-grade before the freeze, or we’ll be winching trucks out of ruts till spring.”
“How bad now?”
“Bad enough.” He cranks the wrench. “Put in a call to the higher-ups, but—”
I stop listening. The side door goes. She comes through it with a requisition in her hand, and whatever Farris says next is gone. I watch her cross to the desk. Sign. Take her copy. Turn for the door without a look at the yard, the trucks coming and going, or the teams milling around them.
“You actually interested, or killing time?” Farris pokes his head out from under the carriage, and I realize I’ve missed a question.
“Both,” I say.
He snorts. “Honest, at least.”
I ask something about which end the re-grade crew starts from, just to give him something to answer, and this time I make myself hear it.
She’s gone by the time he’s done.
This feels wrong.
The bear hasn’t called her a threat once. Not in the yard. Not in the corridor. Not now. He went quiet the second she crossed the yard this morning, and he’s stayed that way.
He’s never been wrong before.
I don’t like what that leaves me. Either I’m reading her wrong, or I can’t trust my own gut anymore. And I’ve built a life on my gut.
I cross her twice more before the day’s out, and both times I have to work at not closing the distance.
The second time she’s at the council stairs with a box too big for her, the kind of load she’d carry till her arms gave out before she’d ask anyone to take half. It slips—just an inch. She catches it against the rail, knee coming up under it, and for a second, the whole thing’s about to go.
I’m moving before I know I’ve moved. Two steps. Hand half up.
Don’t.
I stop. A man doesn’t cross a room to carry a suspect’s box. A man doesn’t cross a room for a single one of the reasons I nearly did.
She gets it settled on her own. Then she looks up—straight at me, like she felt me there before she saw me.
Blue eyes. They pin me where I stand.
We hold it. A second. Maybe two.
Then she looks away. Fast. Rattled.
Half this building looks straight through her. I’ve watched it all day. People slide off her like she’s a draft in the room, there and not worth turning for. She doesn’t slide off me. I don’t slide off her. And I’ve made a living out of blending into the scenery. I can’t figure out why.
My foundation feels unbalanced.
I’m at the east wall when Torbjorn finds me late in the day.
