Page 20 of Tracked and Taken

I do not say I told you so. I do not look at Torres, but I keep my eyes on Harkin and I let the silence sit.

Torres keeps working. A second pass, a third angle. She tries the sister. She tries the time pressure. She tries the lawyer, framed the way a lawyer framed at the right moment is an olive branch and not a wall.

Wall. Wall. Wall.

She stops. Breathes out. Half a breath. The breath of a woman who has just watched the exact scenario play out the way a civilian contractor predicted nine minutes ago.

“Vosk.”

“Here.”

“A word.”

I follow her one step down the corridor. Two meters from Harkin, not out of earshot but out of the detainee’s immediate space. Her back is to him. Her voice drops to a frequency my senses register, but the officers will not.

“He’s closing.”

“He’s closed.”

“Your adjunct.”

“Yes.”

“Walk me through the limits again. Word for word.”

“No contact. No verbal threats. I stand there. I do not smile. I do not speak. You take him thirty seconds down the corridor and come back. Whatever happens in that silence is whatever he brings to it.”

“If his counsel raises coercion—“

“I sign a statement the moment we file the report. I made no threat, made no contact, did not speak. Your officers witness. Detention logged clean. The only thing in the room between me and Harkin will be his own imagination.”

“His imagination is going to be vivid.”

“Yes.”

Her eyes hold mine. The weight of what she’s about to authorize is sitting behind them: four years of rulebook, a scar she wears like rank, and whatever put the scar there. The trust in that look is more intimate than anything physical.

“Three weeks,” I say. Quiet. Not pushing. Handing her the math book.

Three weeks. Maren Torek. The window.

She exhales.

“Do it.”

Two words. Low. Costing.

“Understood.”

“Thirty seconds. Not a second more. If I hear your voice, if I hear one word, I pull you out of this corridor and off this case.”

“You won’t hear my voice.”

“Vosk.”

“You won’t.”

She walks back to Harkin. Addresses him by name, informs him she’s discussing next steps for protocol reasons, gestures to her officer to take point. Professional. Clean. The moment any competent attorney would sign off on without blinking. That she is handing me this, trusting me with the silence, sits in my body like possession.