Decker
Pre-dawn, and I don’t sleep. I sit with my back to the cave wall, lantern turned low, watching the entrance. No signs of anything all night. But that doesn’t mean we’re safe.
I run the problem again, because that’s what I do when I’m stuck. Turn the thing until a solution shows itself.
No solution shows itself.
I can’t hold her here indefinitely, but I can’t let her out either. The Syndicate will be working the roads out of town by now, slow and thorough, with Viktor’s trackers not far behind. I can’t take her to Aurora—the evidence he found would swallow her before anyone thought to question it. Aside from me. And the question I’m asking right now is how they dug up proof that put her in places I know she hadn’t been.
Something is off. And we’re stuck here until I figure it out.
Three walls. No door.
Twenty years in this work, and I’ve never once sat in a hole without a next move. What I’ve got instead is yesterday—every step of it the bear’s, not mine. Pulled her out of the alley. Drove north. Brought her here. The man who works from evidence has been a passenger since town, and the part I keep circling is that I’m not looking very hard for a way to take the wheel back.
She’s been still on the cot for hours.
I watch her.
Awake, she’s never truly in focus. That flicker she runs—the one that affects other people and has never once worked on me. She tried in the yard that first morning, and I watched her face when it didn’t take. She tried again in the supply room. Same result. I read scent and heat. There’s nothing she can do about that. But she’s kept the low burn of it going even up here, with no one to hide from but me. Habit, worn so deep she doesn’t feel herself doing it.
Asleep, it’s off. All of it.
It’s the first time I’ve seen her without the magic, and it tells me more than a week of questions would. Hiding isn’t something she does. It’s how she lives.
The fur is over her now, on top of the blanket. I put it there in the early hours, when the cold came down off the rock and she curled tighter without waking. I don’t remember deciding to. I was sitting, and then I was standing over her with the fur in my hands, and I don’t know how I got there. I keep doing that around her. Move first. Understand later, or not at all.
I keep looking at her, now that I have the freedom to.
She’s slight. Fine-boned. Her pulse beats at her throat, slow and steady beneath skin so delicate it seems translucent.
The bear hasn’t stirred in hours. He’s lying down inside me with his eyes open, focused on the cot.
They brought me in to find something dangerous, and she’s not it. My instincts won’t let me hand her over to a system that believes otherwise.
She’s something to protect.
I know it, even though I keep trying to argue that I might be wrong. The bear isn’t listening.
I turn back to the lantern.
Her eyes open.
She makes a sound—small, sharp, cut off—and for one breath everything is on her face before she can hide it. Then it’s gone. She sits up, pushes her hair back, and takes in the cave again. Boulder. Lantern. Me. By the time she’s done, she’s herself again.
“You’ve been sitting there all night,” she says.
“Most of it.”
“Were you watching me sleep?” She frowns.
“We’re in the same cave. Where else would I look?”
“I don’t know. The floor? The walls? Watching a woman sleep all night is creeper shit.”
I don’t answer. There’s no defense. I was watching her.
She takes one breath. “I need to leave here. Today.”
