People fight. It’s normal.
But the bear won’t settle with that. She pulled away tonight, and the animal I’m made of felt her do it.
“You don’t want to feel what it’s like at the end of it,”Torbjorn’s voice comes back at me.
I stop thinking about the old bear and go wake Viktor, because one part of tonight can’t wait for morning.
He opens his door in shirtsleeves with a folder in his hand.
“Someone got to her,” I say. “Inside the wing. Tonight.”
That moves him faster than anything else I could have led with. He steps back and lets me in. “What happened?”
“A phone. Planted in her quarters, same as the one they planted in her cubicle to frame her. She came at me tonight knowing things she had no way to know—the blood, Serenity, the Sangrey value. Someone told her all of it.” I keep to the part that matters to him.
Viktor sets the folder down. His voice goes flat and careful. “Into a locked room. Past a guard.” He says each one like he’s laying a card. “That’s twice now this person has put a phone exactly where it hurts most. When they framed her, and now this.” He looks at me. “You understand what that is.”
“Access.” My training answers before the rest of me can. “The wing runs off a short list. Whoever did it is on that list, or owns someone who is.”
“Yes.” He pulls a pad toward him but doesn’t write. “And I can’t move on it openly. If I turn that wing over tonight, I’ve told them I know, and they go quiet for a year, and I lose the only lead we have. So we keep it quiet. Duty logs. Who drew wing rotation. Who swapped a shift and who covered it.” He stops, reconsiders. “I’ll pull them myself. Nobody else touches this until I know whose hands are clean.”
“There’s more in the message than facts.” I make myself finish it. “It aimed her. Told her not to trust me. Told her what she’s worth to them. That’s not spite, Viktor. That’s the opening move. They want her leaning their way and away from ours.”
“Then it’s a good thing she’s behind my walls with a guard on her door.” He glances up. “I’ll sit with her in the morning and find out exactly what we’re dealing with.”
“In the morning? Viktor, if—”
“In the morning, Decker. You don’t hammer on a woman’s door at three because you’re impatient. I’m sure she’s rattled after what happened.” He frowns. “Why aren’t you with her?”
My teeth grind. “She’s pissed. Said I should have told her.”
Viktor nods. “I could see why she feels that way.” He shrugs. “She’ll get over it. What matters now is that we find who’s at the bottom of this.”
He’s right. I should be ahead of him on this. A breach inside the wing is the best lead the hunt has thrown up—the framer finally reached too far and left a hole I could read a trail through, and reading trails is the one thing I’m good at.
All I can think about right now is getting to her. Letting the bear know that everything is all right.
Viktor watches me do it. He caps the pen. His expression goes quiet.
“I asked you once if your head was clear,” he says.
“It was, when you asked.”
“No. It wasn’t.” No blame in it. Just a correction to the record. “Go and wait somewhere until the morning. You’ve told me what I need. The best thing you can do tonight is nothing.”
Nothing is the last thing I feel like doing.
“Sure,” I say and turn away. We both know I’m not going back to my quarters, but he doesn’t try to tell me to.
I try the ops room first. The best way I can be useful is by doing something to track down the person who put a phone in her room.
It goes wrong inside ten minutes. Jericho has the night board with two of his people.
“Up late,” he says.
“Yeah.” I take a seat, tap a keyboard, and a screen lights up.
“Did you come in to get the logs from the east approach?”
