“I don’t know.” Her voice isn’t steady anymore. “I got instructions. A number that called. I never met anyone. That’s the truth.”
“And you just did what they asked?”
“You have no idea what was at stake.” It cracks in the middle. Her hands are shaking around the blanket, and she sees me see it. Something desperate moves through her face before she shuts it all down. Goes still. Goes flat. The same switch from before, the one that hides everything because somewhere she learned that letting people see costs too much.
I sense the resistance failing. Ten more seconds and she gives me all of it.
But I stand up and step back instead, and I couldn’t say which part of me made that call. Only that it wasn’t the part that’s done this a hundred times.
It’s the part that doesn’t want to scare her.
“Tell me,” I say, from a distance that doesn’t threaten anything.
She doesn’t.
The cave goes quiet and stays that way.
Fine. What she gave me is enough.
The lag before every answer. The lie that’s wrong—a professional lies big or doesn’t bother. No handler she’s ever laid eyes on. She stood in that road with no cover and no exit, and she had no idea the men coming for her existed until they were practically on top of her. Nothing about her says she’s trained. Everything about her says someone found leverage and used it against her.
The file Viktor has says otherwise. Skilled. Careful. Six nights in the restricted wing on clean logs. That person exists. I’ve been hunting them for months. But they’re not sitting across this cave with shaking hands and a blanket around their shoulders.
Which means whoever built that file is still inside Aurora. Still working. And they pointed Viktor at her so nobody keeps looking.
I pull the rope into my lap and coil it slowly.
She’s no operative. But she’s sharp. I watched her plot a way down this mountain while complaining about the plumbing, and she almost sold it. The bear thinks that’s the best thing he’s learned all day.
The man knows better. It doesn’t matter what she saw. The boulder is not going to budge. The slope past the gap drops hard before it flattens. She doesn’t know this country, and the ridge is two hours of darkness from anything.
The rope is in my lap. Her wrists don’t need to be tied for her to be bound here.
Chapter 14
Grace
The questions stop, and somehow that’s worse. He’s back on his side of the cave, coiling the rope, and I’m still against the wall, going over what I gave him. The outline of it, nothing more. Not the one thing that matters.
I almost said her name.
When he crouched in front of me, it was right there in my mouth. He asked what the hold was, and for one second I wanted to hand it to him. Just give it to someone bigger than me and let him carry it.
Then he stood up and stepped back, and I still don’t understand why. He had me. He must have known he had me. Anyone else would have stayed right where he was and waited for me to break.
He didn’t. Now he’s winding rope like the whole thing is settled, and I can’t tell whether I won or lost.
I can’t sit here with it either way.
“I need to clean up.”
He looks over.
“I’ve been in these clothes since you took me. I can smell myself, and I can’t think.” All true. Also chosen, because it ends the silence and gets me moving through a cave I’ve only seen from one corner. “I can keep sitting in it if you’d rather. It’s your air too.”
“There’s no shower in a cave.”
“I noticed. But you drink, and you cook, so there’s water somewhere. I’d settle for cold.”
