Yeah, right, Decker.
Any professional would’ve called it in by now, too.
The phone’s been sitting on the seat for an hour. I haven’t touched it.
That’s the part I can’t square. I always have the next move. It’s the one thing I’ve built a reputation on—hand Decker the mess, he’ll already be three steps into cleaning it up. Right now I’m driving north with a bound woman under a tarp and no plan past the next curve, and every time I reach for one, the bear leans on me instead.
“Goddamn you,” I mutter. The beast’s been leaning since the lane. A steady weight, low and certain. He knows exactly what he wants. He’s just waiting for me to stop pretending I’m still deciding.
The phone goes off on the seat. Viktor.
There’s no good way into this, so I put him on speaker and keep both hands on the wheel.
“You’ve gone quiet,” he says.
“Driving.”
“Where’s the woman?”
“With me.”
“Good.” A pause, and I can hear him waiting for the rest. I don’t give it to him. “The depot clerk logged a van out with herthis morning, and it never came back up the mountain. You want to fill me in?”
“There was trouble in town. Third party. I got her clear.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“The kind I’m still working out. I need time to put more information together before I bring her anywhere.”
“You don’t need more information.” His voice doesn’t climb. It never does. “That’s why I’m calling. We have enough.”
I watch the road and let him say it.
“My team searched her quarters this morning. Zoe led it, two witnesses, by the book. The room came up clean. But her badge history puts her in the restricted wing six nights running, every one during a shift change, in spaces she’s got no clearance for. A supply runner’s credential, opening doors it was never cut for.”
My shoulders go tight against the seat. I make myself ease back before I answer.
“That doesn’t fit what I watched all week. She runs errands. Keeps her head down. I watched her walk past an open door with our ops board in plain sight and never once turn her head.”
“Maybe you just didn’t see her. Maybe you weren’t around when she did it.”
“I was around.” My teeth clench. I release them. “I would have picked it up.”
“Or she’s better at this than you gave her credit for, and you missed it.” He says it flat. “That’s the whole point of someone who’s good at it, Decker. You don’t catch them being good at it.”
I don’t have an answer for that. The logs are real, or real enough that I can’t prove otherwise from a truck cab forty miles up a mountain. All I’ve got standing against his file is a week of watching a woman not do the thing it says she did. And a hunch.
“Bring her in,” Viktor says. “She goes into containment tonight. It keeps her contained while we finish the investigation, and it keeps her safe from whatever went down in town. Thesystem works. You saw it work with Jericho. We took that file apart piece by piece until it cleared him.”
“Jericho had half of Aurora fighting for him while that file sat open. Who does she have?”
“She has the process. That’s what it’s for.”
“I’ve seen your process in action, Viktor. I don’t like it.”
“You’re talking about the feral—”
“He wasn’t feral. They made him that way. We kept it going. Theprocess.” I let out a breath through my nose.
