“That so?”
“You don’t say much. People fill it in for you.” He tilts his head, friendly enough. “So what are you here for?”
“I’ll know when I find it.”
He laughs like I’ve made a joke. I let him keep it.
“Well, I’d better get on with my day.” He carries his coffee off to the window table, where two more techs are already going. I’m fairly sure he’s about to tell them what I said to him.
I stay put a while, then find an empty table and sit.
The bear didn’t settle the whole time Domenic talked. Hackles up, half down on his haunches, watching the door I came through like she might come through it next. Not the way he stands when something’s wrong; I know that version. This one leans the other way. Toward. I can’t get a clean thought past it.
So I work. Zoe’s case points one way. A survivor. Quiet. Someone with the run of the building who’d know when the mountain road would be clear the night Creed set his trap.
That person has a name.
But I don’t trust a clean line drawn straight to one name. I’ve chased this ghost for months, and they never left enough of a trace to draw a line at all. I need to put the pieces together myself before I take anyone’s word.
I push the tepid coffee away and stand. Stop at the roster in the hall on my way out. It doesn’t take long to find what I want.
The name. An assignment for the day. Admin floor.
I find her on the storeroom run. Flat cart, north corridor. Moving past people who barely notice her.
I notice her. The bear notices her. Because it’s her. The woman from the yard.
Fuck.
The bear, who hasn’t sat down since dawn, drops his head and goes still the second I see her. Same quiet he gave me out in the cold.
The name in the file is hers.
I stand at the end of the corridor and take that in for a minute. It doesn’t improve.
Pay attention. You’ve got a job to do.
I’m not going to lose focus because my dick twitched at the sight of a little she-wolf.
But it’s the sight of her that stops me. Delicate features, fair skin, honey-blonde hair to her shoulders. She’s slighter than most wolves I’ve seen. The issued jacket swallows her. She holds herself carefully, contained, like she’s half waiting for the floor to give under her.
She’d be easy to miss. That’s the part I keep catching on. Nothing about her asks to be looked at, and I can’t make myself look away.
Why?
The bear watches her like she’s the one solid thing in the building and the rest is unnecessary detail. Under that, quieter and worse, something in me wants to cross the floor and take the cart out of her hands.
Enough. Eyes on the job.
So I put them on the job. I stay out of sight and track her. Her hands. The cart. What she does next—the only part of her that’s any of my business.
I stop at the end of the hall and let her put distance between us. She moves like she’s done this a thousand times. No list in her hand as she steps into the stationery room. She’s back out, cart loaded and moving inside four minutes.
The corridor runs her past the annex. The door sits open three inches—the latch won’t catch unless you haul on it, and nobody hauls on it. Inside, on the wall, is the ops board. Names. Assignments. Current as of this morning. Two seconds and a person would know where every field team is sleeping tonight.
She doesn’t turn her head.
Not a glance. Not the stiff little non-look people do when they’re working hard at not looking. Her chin doesn’t move. The cart doesn’t slow.
