Page 167 of Tracked and Taken

“Because the system doesn’t, lovey. And someone should.”

Charlie’s pen moves once across her own page. She closes the notebook.

The two women look at each other.

“Right, lovey. Let me tell you what we are going to do.”

Thane leads by operational continuity. Charlie embedded, working the trail with him from the safe house, by the Velar Three tail and the Junction Two transfer. SPROUT and BRICK on handoff. Me consulting only, because I have a Ferran salt merchant and a bonded mate with a Junction One operational priority and no availability for an unaffiliated space until the Ferran clears.

Charlie nods through all of it.

Charlie’s eyes go to Thane’s hands twice and do not, on any visible register, register that she has done it.

The teacup, in his hand, is still.

Flossie wraps. Charlie is staying tonight at the small SNAG safe house two corridors over. She does not know Junction One.

Thane is staying with her.

Flossie said: Thane, the safehouse perimeter requires a Korrhai-grade body inside it for the duration. The Velar tail is a known unknown. I would be more comfortable with you inside the safe house door rather than in your own quarters at level five.

Thane said: Copy, Florence.

Charlie gave no sign of having heard the conversation she had not been part of and whose subject was the arrangement of her sleeping quarters for the next number of nights.

She set her tea down at the moment Flossie said Korrhai-grade body and her hand has not picked the tea back up.

He stands. Sets the notebook back on the desk in front of her. Drinks the rest of his lukewarm tea and waits at the door.

Charlie picks up her notebook. Slides it into her pocket. Crosses the office.

She stops at his elbow. He, beside her, shortens his pace by one half-step before she has cleared the office and reached the corridor.

The door cycles. They go.

The door closes.

The office holds its breath for three seconds.

“BETTING POOL OPEN,” Petra announces.

“Logged,“ SPROUT says. “Opening odds: forty-eight hours to first kiss, six days to first acknowledged courtship behavior.”

Petra takes three weeks. Xor takes eleven days. Flossie writes a number in the brown notebook without looking up, and the number, when Petra drags it out of her, is six days, and Petra says her name at a volume Flossie’s own inside-voice policy does not permit.

I clear my throat.

The room looks at me.

“Four days.”

A pause.

“Vosk. You’re betting under Flossie.”

“I am.”

“Why.”