Chapter Seven #3
Heat climbed my neck, and I had the sudden, ridiculous suspicion that he had noticed my reaction before I managed to hide it. I pushed the thought aside and forced myself to act like nothing had happened.
“I wasn’t asking.”
“I know.”
I rinsed the shampoo and decided the ceiling was fascinating.
But his shadow bent again in my peripheral, forcing me to look back down.
Cargo pants dropped into a dark shape around his ankles and disappeared from view when he stepped out of them.
A moment later he straightened fully, and the outline between his thighs was unmistakable for one brief second before I snapped my eyes toward the wall.
There were facts adulthood should have prepared me to process without ceremony. Wolf having a penis was one of them. The fact that the silhouette suggested a very specific amount of penis did not need further analysis while I was naked behind translucent plastic.
I put my face under the spray and concentrated on conditioner with the intensity of someone defusing a bomb. Bare feet crossed the wet tile behind me. One stall curtain moved, then another. Then the stall directly beside mine opened.
I turned my head before I could stop myself. “There are five others.”
“This one actually has water pressure.”
“So does mine.”
“You’re using it.”
I stared at his blurred outline through the partition. “You are an exhausting person to share plumbing with.”
“You wanted the bathroom.”
“I wanted the bathroom empty.”
“Good luck with that.”
His shower came on before I could come up with a response that didn’t sound irrationally immature.
The water between us filled the room with enough noise that the silence should have become easier.
Instead, it made every movement more noticeable.
His silhouette shifted under the spray when he pushed wet hair away from his face.
I could see the angle of one arm when he washed, the broad outline of his torso when he turned and the blurred shadow of a face he had hidden from me since the day I arrived.
I carefully raised both arms to work the conditioner through the ends of my hair and immediately wondered what the movement looked like from his side.
The overhead light turned my own curtain into the same useless privacy screen.
My breasts were only shape and shadow through it, but the wet fabric occasionally pulled closer when the air moved, and my nipples had hardened enough that I had no confidence the silhouette was as anonymous as I wanted it to be.
I lowered my arms and focused on the tile again while Wolf stayed quiet beside me.
After another minute, I finally gave in. “This is incredibly awkward.”
“You’re the one narrating it.”
“I’m trying to make it less awkward.”
“Working?”
I considered the question. “No.”
A low sound came through the partition that might have been the beginning of a laugh. With his face uncovered and the curtain between us, even that felt more intimate than it should have. I kept rinsing my hair until his shadow turned slightly toward my stall.
“Shoulder,” he said.
I glanced at my right arm. “What about it?”
“You’ve been protecting it when you lift your hands.”
“You can see that through the curtain?”
“I saw it when you walked in.”
I pictured him at the long mirror, catching my reflection as I walked in with the towel tucked under my arm, before either of us had taken anything off.
“It’s fine. Bear said mild strain.”
“He told me.”
“Apparently Bear has made my medical chart public.”
“I asked.”
That pulled my attention fully toward his silhouette. “Why?”
I heard the change in the water when he turned to me beneath it.
“Because I caused it.”
And then I became painfully aware of what we were actually doing. Wolf and I were standing completely naked less than two feet apart, his mask off, having a conversation with nothing separating us but a thin shower curtain that had never offered much privacy to begin with.
“I’m following Bear’s instructions.”
“Good.” He went back to facing the front.
“You don’t need to keep checking on it.”
“I know.”
“That sounded suspiciously like you plan to anyway.”
“Then stop doing stupid things with it and I won’t have anything to check.”
I looked toward his curtain. “There he is.”
“Who?”
“The asshole from yesterday.”
“He never left.”
The exchange loosened something in my chest without pretending the night before had been funny. The marks around my wrists were fading and the shoulder was improving, but both still existed. So did the memory of him stopping the second I told him not to touch me.
I did not know what to do with a man who could cross a line that badly and then become almost rigid about respecting the next one.
I shut my water off before I could think too hard about it.
The sudden quiet on my side made Wolf’s shower sound much louder.
I wrung water from my hair, reached for the towel and wrapped it around myself before pulling the curtain open.
The floor was slick from an hour of showers. My foot slid just enough to send my stomach into my throat, and I caught the partition with my left hand before anything worse happened. A small yelp escaped me.
Wolf’s silhouette turned immediately.
“I’m fine,” I said, before he could move.
His shadow stayed where it was.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
I crossed to the bench and started dressing with my back angled toward his stall.
His curtain showed only the dark shape of him under the water, but I became aware every time his head seemed to turn in my direction.
I could not tell whether he was looking at me or simply facing the mirrors, and asking would have required admitting I cared.
My clean shirt caught on damp skin when I worked the right arm through. I slowed before the shoulder could complain and reached for my pants.
Wolf’s shower shut off.
Shit. I shoved one foot into my pants so fast I missed the leg hole entirely and nearly introduced my face to the bench.
“Mercer.”
“What?”
“You’re dressing like the building is on fire.”
“Maybe I value privacy.”
His silhouette remained behind the closed curtain. “Then take your time. I’m staying behind here until you’re dressed.”
I looked at the blurred outline of his shoulders, then slowly dropped my eyes lower before common sense caught up and forced my attention back to my own clothes.
“Well you don’t have to stand in there like a hostage,” I said.
“I’m wet.”
“Excellent point.”
“Finish getting dressed.”
I did, at a pace that was still faster than normal but no longer likely to turn Bear’s mild strain into a lecture. Once my shirt was on and the waistband of my pants sat where it belonged, I gathered the wet towel and shower bag.
“I’m dressed.”
Wolf stayed behind the curtain.
“Goodnight, Mercer.”
I looked at the clock above the door. “It’s 5:40.”
“Then have an excellent evening.”
The laugh escaped before I could swallow it. “Asshole.”
“Door’s behind you.”
I left him there with the mask still on the bench and his face still reduced to a shape I could not quite see.
The tension in that bathroom still could not erase what had happened in my room.
My shoulder still reminded me if I reached too high, and the last traces around my wrists had only just stopped advertising the webbing.
Wolf staying behind the curtain until I was dressed mattered because of that history, not in spite of it, and I carried the thought downstairs without deciding what it meant.
◆
Downstairs, Raven had found the part of Haus Eberhardt that made the entire day turn cold again.
A holding company behind the property had paid twenty-six separate document fees over nine months.
The descriptions were bland enough to disappear inside legitimate accounting, split between relocation administration and identity support, with several more buried under residency processing and document services.
The amounts matched forged document costs from older Cerberus cases closely enough that the pattern now made sense.
The payments left the headcount open, yet the repeated purchases made one thing clear enough to act on: somebody connected to the property was buying new identities again and again.
I sat beside Raven with damp hair soaking through the back of my shirt and started matching the dates.
Two payments occurred within days of women disappearing in Austria. Another followed a missing-person report from Brno. Several lined up with cross-border movements under names that later collapsed under verification. The numbers became people when we reopened the photographs.
Lenka Horvat was nineteen. Her last verified location was outside a Salzburg club at 1:18 in the morning, and the family statement said she had texted her older cousin that she was walking toward a taxi rank. No taxi record ever showed her getting into a car.
Nazanin Haddad had answered a hospitality job listing in Vienna.
She called her sister afterward and said the interview had gone well enough that she might start the following Monday.
Her phone moved east two days later, then disappeared.
Amalia Ionescu’s device came back to life three weeks after she vanished and touched a tower sector that covered Haus Eberhardt before going dark again.
Raven added another file to the screen. “This one is older.”