Page 165 of What We Burn

“If you’re where you said you’d be, I check at the agreed arrival time and again when you’re expected to leave.”

Knox shifts at the end of the table.

She looks at him. “And you?”

“More.”

Of course he does.

“How much more?”

“Enough.”

“That also isn’t an answer.”

“Every fifteen minutes,” Milo supplies.

Knox gives him a flat look.

“What? We’re doing disclosure.”

Sage takes a slow breath. “Okay. Here are my terms. While the threat against me is active, I’ll wear it when I leave the house.”

Relief moves through the room. Quiet, but visible.

“In return, I want to know how and why you’re watching me. Not later. Not if I catch you. Every time.”

“I can add an access alert,” Milo says. “You’ll get a notification whenever one of us opens the map.”

“Do it.”

His fingers twitch toward his laptop before he remembers she isn’t finished.

“No one adds any new surveillance to me, my clothes, my things, or my phone without telling me.” Her gaze moves over all five of us. “You don’t have to ask permission to be scared. You do have to tell me what you’ve done with that fear.”

Milo goes very still.

It lasts less than a second.

Then he nods with the others.

“From now on,” he says.

“From now on,” she agrees. “If I’m going somewhere ordinary, you don’t sit outside unless we agreed to it or something changes. If you’re all on an operation, one of you can stay with me while Odin’s restriction is active. I don’t like it, but I understand it.”

Eli watches her carefully. “And if the threat escalates?”

“We talk again. You don’t quietly put me under house arrest and call it love. I need to live my life without feeling like I’m the prisoner of a ghost with a shitty username.”

“Agreed,” I say.

She glances down at me. Some of the tension leaves her hand where it rests against my neck.

Holden looks around the table. “Anyone have a problem with those terms?”

No one speaks.

“Good. Then there are no more short straws. We assign the person remaining with Sage based on the skills needed in the field, and we stop talking about staying with her like it’s the losing position.” Holden looks at Milo. “Your part can be done remotely, so you stay here Friday. Everyone else has an on-site role.”