The mole is moving. And they just moved while she was asleep on my chest.
“They don’t realize we have her.”
“And they’ve grown complacent. They think we’re focused on her, so they’re still active. But the night that convoy turned, the evidence stopped pointing at Grace.” His voice doesn’t lift.
“So you can clear her now.”
“And tell them I know? No. I need them thinking they can keep going.” He’s silent a moment. “Grace ran against these people for months. She’s heard the handler’s voice. She knows how the drops were timed, what got asked for, what never did. Vanya can process that against the fresh information, but not from notes.She needs the source across a table, answering all the questions she still has.” A beat. “Bring her in, Decker. Today.”
“No.” It’s out the same way it was in his office. Faster than the reasons. “She’s not safe in there. I told you that across your desk. It’s truer this morning than it was then. They’re not lying still anymore. They’re working.”
“They’ve been working the whole time. The difference is that now I know where to look, and the one tool that shortens the hunt is up a mountain.” He doesn’t raise his voice. Viktor never has to. “It’s only a matter of time before the Syndicate finds you there, Decker. The mountain isn’t a plan. It’s a pause. The safest place she will ever be is here with us.”
Under the talk, low in me, something drags backward. Not at Viktor. At everything he’s proposing: walls, corridors, other people’s ground, her inside all of it. The bear resists the idea with his full weight.
“Your mole just told the Syndicate we’re watching their corridor,” I say. “The same corridor the towers went down.”
“I know exactly what last night cost, and where. But Vanya’s search is still completely under wraps. Nobody knows we’re looking for the sister. That search is still dark.” A pause, and his voice comes back a fraction harder. “I told you to keep her buried. Now I’m telling you things have changed. Sundown, Decker. Or I send someone up there, and we both know I know how to find you.”
The call ends.
I stand on the slope with the phone in my fist and the valley going about its morning below, and the drag in me doesn’t ease. Somewhere down there, a woman is being bled along a route that just got more dangerous, and the person who made it more dangerous is behind the walls I’ve been told to deliver Grace to.
When I turn, she’s standing in the open seam.
Boots on. My shirt still on over her jeans. Arms folded against the cold, hair loose, watching me like she’s been watching since I answered.
“You said later. You’d tell me later.” Her chin lifts. “It’s later.”
I stop two steps below her, which puts us almost level. “Inside.”
“No. Here. Where you take the calls.” She doesn’t move from the gap. “Something changed. Tell me.”
So I tell her what I can.
“Jericho set a trap on a Syndicate supply run. Planned after you disappeared, inside the restricted wing, nowhere else. The convoy dodged it, exactly, hours ahead.” I watch her take it in. “Somebody sold that plan, and it couldn’t have been you. Provably. You were here the whole time.”
She doesn’t move for a breath, and it isn’t fear. Her scent sharpens the way it does when her mind starts running hard.
“The mole was working,” she says. “While I was here.”
“Yes.”
“So it’s finished. Viktor knows it wasn’t me. Not believes. Knows.”
“Inside a small circle. On paper you’re still the suspect the council wants.”
“Why not?” Her voice is sharp.
“So they don’t disappear. Right now, they think they’re safe.”
“And Viktor wants me in the building.” She reads it straight off me. “That’s what the call was. And you told him no.”
“I told him no.”
“Why?”
“Because whoever framed you carries some kind of rank in that building. Sleeps behind those wards. You’d be close to someone with power who’s already tried to bury you.”
