“That isn’t a courier problem,” she said. “That’s a leak.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes sharpened. “Inside Ashenmere?”
“The courier is American.”
Her mouth flattened. “Dominic. I know how mail works.”
“The face is American,” I said. “The source is inside Yuki’s apparatus.”
That brought her head up.
I felt the shift before I saw it. The warmth between us banked, and the operative came forward fast enough that I understood, not for the first time, why people like Davis had trusted her in rooms full of knives.
“You’re sure.”
“The movement patterns are internal. The access is internal. Whoever is feeding the line knows the compound well enough to move through service rotations without drawing attention.”
She took that in quickly. “Who?”
“I have not confirmed it.”
“But you have been watching.”
“Yes.”
Her gaze moved past me as she started assembling. Staff routes. Doors. Rotations. Access points. People who carried trays and folders and keys without being seen as people who mattered.
Her eyes sharpened. “Why haven’t you surfaced it?”
“Because I needed to understand the depth of it first.”
Her gaze returned to mine. “Depth.”
“If Yuki’s people are compromised, then reporting the leak to the wrong person does not close it. It tells them I found it.”
The answer landed between us.
“You were mapping the risk.”
“Yes.”
“The risk to Yuki?”
“The risk to you.”
I held her gaze. “I needed to know where you would need me to be.”
The line between us warmed, but her face did not soften. Catalina did not soften when handed information. She sharpened around it.
“How long have you been thinking that way?”
“Longer than I should have waited to tell you.”
That was the truth.
She watched me for one breath. Then another. “You were going to tell me anyway.”
