Chapter 16 – Silas - Break Protocol #2
She's either unreachable, or she's not answering on purpose. Either way, I'm on my own.
I've been sitting here for hours. The light through the windows has shifted from morning to late afternoon. I haven't eaten. Haven't moved except to type and wait.
But now I have a name.
I pack up. Laptop, gun, two burners—one in my pocket, one taped under the lining of my coat.
No Naomi. No backup. No permission.
But this isn't about the operation anymore.
This is about Lydia.
I pull the burner from my coat pocket, and send one line:
Marrow’s active. He’s inside my perimeter. Talk. Or I’ll start without you.
No reply.
I don't expect one.
Instead, I stare at the name on the screen until it becomes something else.
Not a person.
A trigger.
Then I head out. A few blocks down, then east.
Lydia’s building comes into view just as the sun slips behind the roofline. The second-floor window is cracked open a finger-width.
She never does that.
I take the stairs up, slow but steady. No noise. Just presence.
Then I knock.
But this time, I feel it pressing differently in my chest.
The last time I knocked on Lydia’s door, she didn’t flinch.
This time, she doesn’t answer.
I don’t knock again, I wait.
Then she opens it a few seconds later, hair tied up like she didn’t sleep, hoodie zipped to her collarbone. There's a smudge of ink on her wrist. Not makeup. Ink. Like she’s been redacting her own thoughts.
She doesn’t say hi.
Just turns around and walks back inside like I’m already forgiven or already condemned. I'm not sure which.
Her loft feels ten degrees colder than the hallway. The monitors are off. The coffee table’s a mess of corded wires and half-peeled surveillance stickers. A gun case sits open by the couch. Empty.
She’s spiraling.
“I thought you were dead,” she says, without looking up.
I step inside. Shut the door. “I was busy.”
“Doing what? Faking your own disappearance?”
Her voice is calm, but she throws something onto the counter. A plastic ziplock bag. Crinkled.
I pick it up.
Inside: a photo. Torn, then pieced together. Not expertly. Just... angrily.
It's me. Her. In this loft. Two nights ago.
The angle is tight but clear enough. Shot from outside, from above—a rooftop across the street, most likely. Long lens. Grainy but unmistakable.
I'm pressing her against the wall near the window. One hand on her waist. Her shirt slipped off one shoulder. My mouth half an inch from hers.
The moment right before I kissed her.
It looks intimate. Raw. Private.
Too private.
But it's not just the content. It's the angle.
I hold it to the light.
“Rooftop,” I mutter. “Maybe two blocks out. High glass. Zoom lens with stabilization. They had to adjust for this building’s slope and shadow line.”
Her arms fold over her chest. She doesn’t look away.
“They waited for this moment,” I add. “This wasn’t caught. It was chosen.”
“And now it’s in my apartment.”
“No,” I say, softer this time. “It was left in your apartment.”
She doesn’t respond. Not verbally.
She just stares at me like I’m one of the suspects now.
I walk past her. Not fast. Not threatening. I move toward the couch, set the photo on the table, and study the grain on the back of the print.
Thick paper stock. Professional. Not from a home printer.
I turn.
She’s closer now.
Still guarded. Still trying to look like this doesn’t cut her open. But I see it in the angle of her chin. In the way her fingers twitch.
“You think it could be Drazen?” she asks.
“No. If it were him, the frame would be cleaner. And you'd already be dead.”
Her hands curl at her sides.
I step closer.
She doesn’t back up.
There’s no space between us now.
And for a second, just one, I consider touching her. The back of my fingers against her jaw. My hand on the side of her neck. The place just behind her ear where the tension gathers when she’s pretending not to be scared.
She watches me. Doesn’t blink.
I lean in.
Her lips part slightly.
Then her eyes flick toward the window.
“What if they’re watching again?” she says.
I pause.
Breathe in — taut, controlled.
“Then they’re about to see me put a knife in someone’s heart.”
She doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t look away.
But she steps back.
Just enough to let the air back in.
“I’m not leaving,” she says. “So, if that’s what you have in mind to say next—”
“It's not,” I cut in. “But you should. You’re not safe here.”
She nods once, almost to herself.
“Running doesn’t make me safer,” she says. “It just makes me quieter. And I’m done being quiet.”
I let that sit for a second.
Then I nod. “Okay.”
She doesn’t expect that.
I step toward the door.
“What does that mean?” she calls after me.
“It means I’ll get to the bottom of this. Then I’ll come back for you.”
She says nothing.
I pull the door closed behind me.
Not hard.
Just final.
And as I walk down the stairs, the weight in my coat pocket reminds me:
If she won’t leave the fire… Then I need to build her a safehouse that burns harder.
I hit the street and walk fast, not that I’m rushing. But standing still now would feel like surrender.
I check the time on my phone. 4:47 PM.
Naomi will be at the café.
She goes there every Thursday around this time—has for months. It's her ritual. Twenty minutes between briefings, a window where she's off the grid but reachable. We met there a few times when I first went under, back when the operation was new and the lines hadn't blurred yet.
The café with the overpriced pastries and underpaid servers. The one she thinks is discreet because it's tucked away and no one from the Bureau frequents it.
I take a left at the corner, three blocks east, duck into the alley behind the wine bar that shares a wall with the café.
She always sits near the back. Corner booth. One foot tucked under her like she’s still pretending to be normal.
By the time I step inside, the sky’s bleeding orange through the front windows. That transitional dusk glow, the kind that makes liars look holy and the guilty look gold.
She’s already seated.
Tablet open. Drink untouched. Eyes on the screen like she’s deciding which truths she’ll bury today.
I walk straight up and drop the flash containing the files onto her table.
She doesn’t move.
“Cute,” she says. “No call first?”
“You ignored my last three.”
Naomi looks up. Studies me for half a second longer than she needs to.
Then she plugs in the flash to her tablet.
A few clicks and her thumb stills on the screen.
“You knew,” I say.
“I knew the file resurfaced. I didn’t know why.”
“Bullshit.”
She drops the tablet and leans back, eyes fixed on me. "How did you get this?"
"I have a source inside Bureau cyber."
"That's not an answer." Her voice is sharp now. "You're deep cover. You don't have casual access to Bureau analysts. So how did you really get procurement records and termination logs that are supposed to be restricted?"
I hold her gaze. "I have a contact. Someone I trust. Someone who knows about the leak and took the risk because this matters."
"A name, Silas."
"Not unless you absolutely need it. And only if there's no other way."
Her jaw tightens. "You're asking me to act on intel from an anonymous source while you're already compromised and ignoring protocol."
"I'm asking you to look at the evidence. If it checks out—and it will—the source doesn't matter. But if I give you the name now and the leak traces it back, we lose the source and possibly more."
She stares at me for a long moment, weighing it.
Then she picks up the tablet again, scrolling through the files. Her expression doesn't change, but I see the shift—the moment she realizes the intel is real.
"Fine," she says finally. "I'll verify this independently. But if your source burned me, or if this blows back, you're both done. Understood?"
"Understood."
She drops the tablet and leans back.
“You’re not here to accuse me of being sloppy. So tell me what you actually want.”
I sit. Not to settle. Just to pin her in.
“I want the Bureau logs on Marrow reactivated. Asset reports, travel aliases, dead drops. I want the heat map from his last confirmed operation. I also want a trace on the burner he used near Lydia’s building…
You told me I was being watched, so is Lydia.
” I pause for a brief moment, “I think Marrow is behind it all… And…”
Naomi lifts one brow as she cuts me off. “You think this is his game?”
“I think someone faked his death and set him loose. And now he’s watching a civilian who shouldn’t even be on his radar. You tell me if that sounds like coincidence.”
She leans forward, elbows on the table now. “Lydia’s not a civilian.”
I stare her down. “Then stop pretending she’s not a target.”
Naomi exhales through her nose. Not annoyed. Just adjusting.
“You said and,” she says.
“What?”
“You listed the things you want. Then you said and. So what else?”
I open the inside pocket of my coat and pull out the burner envelope.
Set it down beside the folder. Tapped shut.
“I want an apartment,” I say. “Off-grid. Off record. No Bureau tags.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s not safe where she is. And this time, I don’t trust your cameras to catch the bullets before they hit her.”
Naomi lifts the envelope. Weighs it with her fingers, like she’s testing how much I’m willing to risk.
Then she smiles, and I hate this one.
It’s not approval.
It’s calculation.
“If I give you that apartment,” she says, “and you catch Marrow, he’s mine. I get the press. The internal credit. The leverage.”
“I don’t care who gets the win,” I say. “I care who walks out alive.”
“Fine,” she answers, flipping open her tablet.
A few keystrokes. Her fingers move fast, too fast not to already have a location in mind. Meaning she was waiting for this.
She turns the screen toward me.
“Redhook Industrial Lofts. Back stair entrance. Third floor. Top unit. It’s unlisted. Scrubbed.”
I memorize the digits. She wipes them before I can ask for a hard copy.
“Use it wisely,” Naomi says. “And don’t pretend this means I trust you.”