Chapter Seven #2
He opened the refrigerator, handed me a bottle of water before taking one for himself, then pointed at my shoulder. “How’s it doing?”
“Better.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It aches when I reach too high and otherwise behaves itself.”
“Nice. Just keep being boring.”
“You make recovery sound inspirational.”
“That’s my gift, ma’am.”
He went back outside, leaving a trail of dried mud near the door that he would probably clean later because nobody else in this building seemed capable of noticing dirt until Bear pointed at it.
The work got worse once we left the party behind and followed Morgenstern into overnight security contracts at properties with no obvious reason to need armed coverage.
Südweg serviced three of those addresses, which gave us a smaller set to work through instead of another continent-sized list of possibilities.
Two addresses went nowhere, one because the property had been sold and another because the billing line turned out to belong to a corporate retreat center with enough public records to account for every person there.
The remaining address sat outside Ulm, where Haus Eberhardt presented itself as a private rehabilitation residence.
Its website showed pale rooms and warm wood, landscaped grounds around a converted farmhouse, all photographed in the kind of soft evening light that made every window look welcoming.
The facility held a twelve-bed license and reported six current residents.
Raven pulled its utility history, and the numbers made the declared occupancy look ridiculous.
“That is not six people,” I said.
Water use had been running at nearly three times the expected level for months.
Food orders arrived in bulk quantities without matching the dietary planning or pharmacy purchases a legitimate residential treatment program should have generated.
A commercial laundry contractor collected enough bedding every week to support more than thirty occupants.
The security schedule made the picture worse because Morgenstern billed perimeter coverage every single night. Two guards after midnight on normal weeks. Four during several short periods that lined up with Südweg vehicle visits.
Kade’s trail was nowhere on the invoices, but the route had begun with a conversation he controlled at the pool party.
His file already held forty-three people tied to movements carrying his presence or access signature.
Haus Eberhardt did not prove that every woman connected to this property belonged in his personal count, yet it was the first time I had watched that machinery expand outward from words I had heard him say in person.
I leaned back and rubbed both hands over my face. “A rehab center with overnight perimeter security and thirty people’s worth of laundry.”
Raven’s voice had lost the dry edge it carried through most of our work. “And cameras pointed inward.”
He brought up photographs from an old property listing. The rear cameras did not watch the road, they watched the courtyard and the doors leading from the farmhouse toward the outbuildings. They were built to watch people leave.
A door banged somewhere outside and voices carried through the lower hall. The training group returned all at once, bringing wet grass and mud into the building with them while sweat and gun oil followed a few steps behind.
Jackal looked like he had been dragged behind a vehicle.
Dirt covered the front of his shirt and one side of his face.
Viper had mud up both shins, while Hawk’s sleeve was torn near the forearm and streaked brown from elbow to wrist. Wolf came in last with black soil ground across one knee and a smear along the side of his plate carrier.
His mask remained on, though sweat had darkened the fabric beneath it.
Jackal stopped when he saw Raven’s screen. “We got something?”
“Maybe,” Raven said. “We need another hour.”
Wolf looked at the property image, then at the clock. “Finish the build.”
His voice was rougher from the training and whatever shouting he had done outside.
Jackal glanced toward him. “I’m showering before I contaminate the entire floor.”
Wolf nodded once.
There was still no ease between them, but the work had at least given them a language they could share without either man pretending the night before had disappeared.
Within minutes, the upstairs pipes started complaining.
Jackal went first because he was the dirtiest and argued that this constituted medical priority.
Viper and Hawk followed, while Bear collected equipment before joining the rotation.
For the next forty minutes, the bathroom became exactly the kind of traffic jam I had learned to avoid so I stayed at Raven’s station.
That decision looked like dedication until nearly five, when the last of the doors upstairs stopped opening and closing and the building finally settled into the tired quiet that followed training days.
Raven left to make his perfect chai while Bear was in the garage.
Jackal and Viper had disappeared into their rooms, and Hawk was somewhere downstairs cleaning the weapon he had carried outside.
I closed the file in front of me, went upstairs for my towel and shower bag, then folded clean clothes over one arm and waited another few minutes because I had become embarrassingly strategic about basic hygiene.
The corridor was quiet when I left my room. Finally, no Jackal shouting through a wall about “feminine smelling body wash” and no running pipes except a faint hiss somewhere inside the old plumbing. I made it to the bathroom feeling almost smug about the timing.
Then I stepped through the open door and found Wolf at the long mirror.
He was taking his gear apart piece by piece beside the lockers.
The plate carrier already sat on the bench with dried mud worked into one edge, while the black field shirt underneath clung damply across his shoulders and back.
His belt was still on, and the retention webbing had been folded against it with the same compact precision I had watched him use before the party.
Involuntarily, my attention went to the webbing first. Wolf caught the glance in the mirror. He made no move for the belt, he just held my eyes in the reflection and waited.
“I can come back,” I said, tightening my grip on the towel.
His attention dropped to the shower bag and clean clothes under my arm.
“Mercer, just shower.”
“You’re still in here.”
“It’s a bathroom.”
The callback almost made me laugh, mostly because he delivered it with exactly the same patience he had shown when I demanded a lock.
“That line was annoying the first day too.”
“You survived it.”
“Hardly.”
He unclipped the radio from his shirt, wound the cord around it and set it beside the carrier. “Then this should be easier.”
Leaving would have been simpler. It also would have meant standing in the hallway with my towel while Wolf finished doing whatever he wanted, and I was tired of letting the tension between us claim ordinary pieces of the compound.
I walked toward the last stall instead.
“Fine.”
I could feel his attention follow me in the mirror until the curtain closed between us.
The thin pale fabric had always been terrible at pretending to provide privacy. With the overhead lights behind Wolf, his body remained visible as a broad shadow beside the sinks, softened enough to hide details and clear enough that I could tell exactly when he lifted both hands behind his head.
The mask came off.
My fingers stopped on the shower control.
His uncovered profile existed less than fifteen feet away, reduced by the curtain to the line of a forehead, nose and jaw that I could not turn into an actual face no matter how long I stared.
I had spent days catching fragments of him when he smoked and telling myself the rest did not matter.
Now there was one piece of fabric between me and the answer, and looking harder would still give me nothing useful.
Wolf set the mask on the bench.
“You going to turn the water on?” he asked.
I twisted the handle so fast the pipes knocked in protest. “I-I was waiting for it to heat.”
“It was off.”
Fuck.
“Thank you, facilities manager.”
Warm water finally came through. I set my towel over the partition and started undressing behind the curtain, suddenly aware that privacy worked both directions.
Every movement I made threw a darker outline across the fabric.
If I could make out the angle of Wolf’s shoulders from here, he could probably tell when I pulled my shirt over my head.
My hands slowed at my bra.
The bathroom had been embarrassing before because I lived with six men who considered a curtain adequate architecture. After the night before, standing half naked in the same room as Wolf carried a completely different awareness.
I knew the pressure of his palm at my waist. I knew how his hand felt low in my hair and how quickly the combination of anger and proximity could turn my own body against the argument I was trying to have.
I took the bra and rest of my clothes off anyway, stepped beneath the water and forced myself to wash my hair like there was nothing unusual about any of this.
Wolf stayed near the mirror for a while.
His silhouette bent as he unlaced his boots, then straightened when he pulled the field shirt over his head.
The dark shape of his shoulders widened briefly as both arms lifted, and when the shirt came free, I caught the taper from his upper back to his waist before I remembered I had no business conducting surveillance through a shower curtain.
I faced the tile and worked shampoo through my hair.
A metal buckle touched the bench behind me. The sound was quieter than the click I had spent all morning trying not to hear, though my shoulders still tightened before I could stop them.
“It’s on the bench,” he said.
I looked toward his shadow. “What is?”
“The belt.”