Page 171 of Only the Hunter

“You look…normal,” she says.

It isn’t a compliment.

It’s a test.

“I am normal,” I reply.

Her mouth twitches. “Liar.”

I let myself exhale. “I’m functional.”

“That’s closer.”

She watches me a beat longer. “You did good work.”

It lands unexpectedly—not because I doubt it, but because it’s rare to hear it said without caveat. Without someone trying to benefit.

“Thank you,” I say.

Delgado nods once, then turns away, already moving on to the next fire.

Hanford doesn’t speak to me again. She doesn’t need to. Her acknowledgment was procedural. Her apology, if it exists, will come in the form of resources and signatures and files moved from suppressed drawers back into active hands.

That’s how she speaks.

On the way back to my office, I cross paths with Shonda.

“I’m late to a meeting. But…lunch tomorrow?”

That should work, but if something comes up, Shonda will understand. I nod.

She’s called several times. Stopped by my house with wine—apologized for blowing off my concerns. And she’s a fan of Gabe’s. But says she’d like him better if he had a single brother.

I return to my office and close the door.

The quiet inside is different now. Not safe—this building will never be safe the way a home can be safe—but clearer. Less distorted.

Details have unfolded about Michael Harridan that weren’t shared in the room. He agreed to intimidate me. He claims he didn’t know I would be on a freeway after my brake line was cut—and that’s likely the truth. Most of the time I drive straight home from the parking garage at the office. When I survived, he was dismayed I didn’t back down. The drive-by shooter was instructed to scare me, not hit me. Everything he did was an attempt to intimidate—in exchange for payment to be made via a sale on property he owns at a higher than market value price. He claims he believed Project Safe Passage was a dead end anyway. He had the same gripes many civil servants do—not paid adequately for his time, an opportunity to earn his worth.

He claims he had nothing to do with hiring an assassin—a claim that’s difficult to square with the fact that he confessed to writing the note meant to explain my death, an admission he apparently doesn’t see as contradicting the first. He says he wrote it with the understanding he wouldn’t be contacted again about the matter. That matter, of course, being me.

Whether a jury buys the distinction he’s drawing—present for the plan, absent from its execution—will be someone else’s problem to argue. Prosecution’s job will be making sure the distinction matters less than he thinks it does.

On my desk, I set down a folder I carried with me to the briefing.

MOROZOVA, LINA — ORIGINAL.

The old file.

The one that started this.

The one I refused to bury even when everyone else treated it like paperwork that had outlived its usefulness.

I open the bottom drawer and slide it into the active section.

Not hidden.

Not archived.