Decker
She’s on the admin floor. Third door past the stairs, papered window, Vanya on the other side of it with her folders and her questions.
I know this because I walked past it twice this morning without a reason either time.
I’m supposed to be putting faces to a list. Viktor’s rules leave me nothing else—no records pulled, no habits changed, just watching. So I walk the building and learn who moves where and when, and it’s work I’m good at and can’t hold onto today. The bear keeps taking my feet back toward that stretch of the admin floor. She’s behind a door I can’t walk through, sitting across from a woman I know by reputation, going back through the worst months of her life alone. He doesn’t understand why we’re not standing outside that door. Standing outside that door is the one thing I can’t be seen doing.
By midday I give up on the list and go see Viktor instead.
He’s at his desk with the window light behind him, and he doesn’t look surprised. That should tell me how the conversation is going to go. I have never once surprised this man.
“She’s in with Vanya,” I say.
“She is.”
“Whatever comes out of that room bears on my hunt. The same people ran her that framed her. I want what she gives Vanya.”
“You’ll hear what I decide you need. That hasn’t changed since my office on the mountain road.” He sets his pen down. “The sister thread is sealed. One person on it. You agreed to that across this desk, and you were right to.”
“That was before—”
“Before what?”
Before I brought her inside your walls. Before I knew what a locked door with her behind it does to me.
“Before the convoy,” I say. “Things are moving.”
“Things are moving because of the way I’m managing this thing.” He watches me a moment, and something in his face shifts. “Decker…” He pauses. “One more matter. I don’t know what’s between you and the girl. I’m not asking. But you’re hunting the person who threatened her, and that’s work you do with a clear head. If yours is clouded, tell me now.”
“It’s clear,” I say. But it’s not. It’s filled with the knowledge that there’s a target on her back.
“Then act like it.” He picks the pen back up. I’m dismissed.
I don’t go back to the list.
I tell myself I’m walking off the morning, and my feet take me out the main doors and across the yard, and the truth is I know exactly where I’m going. Torbjorn said to find him before he left. I’ve been avoiding it. A man can only carry so many conversations he’s not ready for. Today I’ve got nowhere to put myself, and avoiding him has stopped working as a plan.
He’s easy to find. Outside the wall, off the tree line, sitting on a downed log with a pack already half-strapped beside him, working a strip of hide through his hands like the day has no other claims on it. He hears me coming from a long way out and doesn’t turn around.
“Took you a while,” he says.
“Been busy.”
“Huh.” He moves over on the log, which is as much invitation as bears give. I sit. For a while neither of us says anything, and it’s the first quiet that’s felt calm since we got to this place.
“You look like a man who slept in his boots,” he says.
“Didn’t sleep.”
“No. You wouldn’t.” He turns the hide strip over. “First one’s hard that way.”
“First what?”
He looks at me then, and there’s no hurry in it and no mercy either.
“You know what I’m going to say. That’s why you’ve been avoiding me.” He goes back to the hide. “Rutted this season, did you? First time. At your age.”
It’s not really a question, so I don’t really answer it.
