Weeks ago.
Closing the file, I set it flat on the surface in front of me. “She’s overdue for contact.”
“We’re aware,” Sam says.
“How overdue?”
A pause that tells me more than the answer does.
“Enough that getting someone inside is no longer optional.”
I nod once and say nothing else.
Cole takes me through the rest of the briefing, including entry timeline, communication protocols, and extraction parameters. He’s thorough and doesn’t skip anything or assume I’ll fill in the gaps myself.
When he’s finished, he reaches back into the hard case and sets something else on the table.
A watch. It’s plain-faced and good quality without being flashy, and the kind of thing Marco Reyes would wear.
“Bureau issue.” Cole taps the side of the watch face once. “Stores seventy-two hours of audio. Activate it at the crown.” Another tap. “Passive recording, no transmission. You pull it out, and we pull the data.”
I pick it up.
Turn it over.
Setting it on my wrist, I fasten it without a word.
Cole stacks his materials, closes the hard case, and looks at Sam.
Sam gives a small nod.
Cole picks up his case, shakes my hand firmly, and lets himself out.
The door clicks shut behind him.
The apartment goes quiet. It’s just Sam, the file on the table, the passport with my face on someone else’s name, and me.
Sam reaches into his jacket’s inside pocket and slides something across toward me. There’s no explanation or ceremony. He pushes it and looks away like he hasn’t done anything.
A photograph.
The three of us are in the picture—Tate, Sophia, and me, taken at the Blood Brothers’ yard. Tate is looking at the camera with that particular expression of his, the one that gives nothing away. Sophia is laughing at something off frame, completely unguarded, entirely herself.
I look at it for a long moment.
Sam says nothing.
Because Sam has always understood the things that don’t need words.
Folding it carefully, I tuck it into my jacket’s inside pocket.
That part still feels like old times, the easy silence, the shorthand, the way we’ve always been able to sit in a room without needing to fill it.
Everything else has changed.
Sam pulls out the chair across from me, sits, and for a moment, neither of us speaks.
“How are you doing?”
