Chapter Thirty-Eight
Raine
I tuck a damp lock of hair behind my ear. I miss my special hair towel. And unscented laundry detergent. Whatever Asher uses isn’t…bad. But the vague “ocean breeze” scent lingers long enough to be distracting and reminds me of everything I’ve lost.
The long-range photos Inara sent of my apartment almost sent me into a spiral this morning. At first, I thought everything was fine. But then I noticed the throw pillows on the couch. I always leave them spaced equally. One on each cushion. But in the picture, they were pushed to one side.
The violation was too much. Having someone in my private space. Touching my things. They could have taken anything. As if they haven’t taken enough from me already.
I set it aside long enough to get through breakfast, then disappeared into the shower and let myself cry. By the time I turned off the water, my breathing was steady again.
My shoulder pulls when I zip up the hoodie, the ache following me all the way out to the main room. A deeper breath than I planned sends a flare of pain through my ribs. My balance falters for a step, but I catch myself against the counter.
Asher’s brows lift, but he says nothing as I reorient, then slip into the small kitchenette and rest my fingers briefly over his wrist as he stands at the counter timing his French press.
These little touches are my way of proving that I’m still here. Still me. Still able to choose what I want—who I want.
“I think I might be able to handle a second cup of coffee,” I say. While I can feel all my fingers again, my grip strength is still compromised. The grinder takes more than I have to give—a fact I tested and confirmed earlier while Asher made us an omelet and hash browns.
“Living dangerously?” His smile warms something deep inside me.
“Living.”
Asher flips on the kettle and places the new pour over basket he bought yesterday on top of a mug. Fresh grounds, hot water, a quick stir. The rich scent fills the space between us, steadying.
“I would have kept drinking French press.”
“You deserve to have choices,” he says. “This was an easy one.”
It shouldn’t help—this little bit of normalcy—but it does.
The mug warms my hands, and I take a sip, drawing comfort from the aroma of coffee mixed with Asher’s woodsy scent. My stomach doesn’t protest. Small victories.
Wandering over to the window, I peer down at the street below. At the people going back and forth to work, the cars waiting at the stoplight, the leaves dancing in the wind.
“When I joined GSD, I had a great mentor. Ellen taught me how to pick locks, read a room, and notice what other people usually miss. If anyone can help me make sense of how Coherent Path and GSD intersect…it’s her. She retired six years ago, but she understands the system.”
“Last night, you said you thought she’d survived Coherent Path. You’re sure they won’t be tracking her calls?” he asks.
A pang of guilt hits me square in the chest. “No. But I still have to try. I know what to say. How to start out. If she hangs up, I won’t call her again. But I need context before I move. She’s the only one who can give it to me.”
Asher leans back against the counter. “We can send the call through a VPN and encrypt the connection, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be traced.”
“I know.”
“All right. We’ll manage the risks as best we can. I’ll grab another burner.”
I sit on the couch, my arms wrapped around myself, while Asher digs around in the bedroom closet for a moment.
“Go ahead and power it on,” he says. “I’ll make sure the hot spot’s secure.”
I move through the setup, disabling location services, any account sign-ins, and backups. It takes me less than ten minutes to strip the permissions down to the basics, then install an encrypted voice-over-IP client and connect to the hot spot Asher set up.
The call won’t be invisible, but it will be hard to trace. “Five minutes,” he warns me. “Ten at the most. If the hot spot detects a ping, it’ll sever the connection.”
“The moment I hang up, I’ll pull the SIM card and snap it.”
“Do you want me to stay?”
“No.”
He nods like he already knew the answer. Still, the fact that he offered—that he asked what I wanted rather than needed—steadies me. I reach for his hand, giving his fingers a gentle squeeze. “I’ll tell you everything. After. But I have to do this on my own.”
He watches me just long enough to confirm I’m steady, then steps back. “I’m going to shower and make a few calls of my own,” he says. “I’ll be nearby.”
I don’t track him when he leaves. It’s enough to know he’s still here. I pick up the phone, and take a single, measured breath before dialing Ellen’s number.
The call connects on the third ring.
“Hello?”
I don’t say anything. Just let the cadence of my breathing carry over the line and hope she understands what I need from her.
“I was wondering if you’d call,” Ellen says. She sounds careful. Brittle, in a way I’ve never heard before.
“I didn’t know if I could. Or…should. They’ll be looking for me. They’ll need to finish what they started.”
“You’re a loose end. They don’t like those.”
I close my eyes briefly and tighten my fingers around the phone. “Are they listening?”
“Yes.” Emotion creeps into her voice. “I didn’t know that the last time you called me.
I assumed they’d just be checking logs. I wasn’t worried because we hadn’t talked in two years.
” She inhales, the sound shaky. “They came to my house the next morning. Early. Two men. They were inside so fast. Took my phone, watched while I got dressed, put me in the back of a van…”
She takes another shuddering breath, and her voice tightens. “They brought me to the Kent interrogation facility. Kept me in a room with no windows and questioned me for hours. No breaks. No food or water. They had transcripts of my calls. Not summaries. Exact language.”
“Then they’ll have this too. I have to hang up—”
“No,” she says, the word sharp. “They don’t get to control me anymore. Not after…what it cost you. What it’s still costing you.” There’s so much guilt in her tone, my eyes sting.
A chair scrapes over the line, followed by soft footsteps. “Raine? Tell me they didn’t break anything that won’t mend.”
“I’m—” My breath shudders on the way in. I curl my toes in my shoes, feeling the thick cotton, the soft soles, the solidness of the floor. “Functional.”
“That’s…something. I should have warned you.”
I don’t argue. There’s no room for it, and no need.
“They’ve asked about you before,” Ellen says. There’s a quiet strength under her words now. “How often we spoke. What we talked about. It was all routine. Until it wasn’t.”
“Wait. Before last week?” Shock clogs my throat, and my voice scrapes raw.
“Yes. Twice. Once after I’d completed their…program, and the second time before you transferred to Systems. But those weren’t formal interviews,” she says. “They were part of my required monitoring.”
For a moment, the room thins. Whatever doubt I’d been holding onto is gone. Ellen went through Coherent Path and survived. I set that aside before it can drown me.
“They escalated my intake because I reached out to you, didn’t they?”
“Yes.” No hesitation. “You knew too much. I thought if I convinced you to leave it alone, they’d leave you alone. If I’d known they were recording my calls, or that you were already at the threshold—”
“This is not your fault. They don’t warn anyone, do they?”
“No. At least…they never warned me. I spent five days being…corrected before they convinced me retirement was the only option.”
I feel the weight of that word—corrected—square in my chest. In the pressure points along my jaw. My thumbs. My collarbones. Everywhere at once.
The silence on the other end of the call is so loud, my brain screams to fill it. But before I can, Ellen clears her throat.
“They’ll come for me soon. Make me go through the program again.” Her voice is too calm. Like she’s already accepted her fate. “It doesn’t matter that I retired. They’ll do it anyway.”
“Ellen, you have to leave town. Now. Please! Hang up and—”
“No,” she says, her voice firm.
I hold my breath, pulse loud in my ears.
“Running won’t save me. And if I’m going back, I’m damn well going to do something that actually warrants it.
So you’re going to listen to me, then do whatever you can to keep yourself safe.
They came back yesterday. Different agents this time,” she says.
“They told me I could stay out of Coherent Path if I convinced you to meet me somewhere private, then called them with the location. Clearly, I am not going to do that. But they also showed me a man’s photo.
It wasn’t very clear, but it was from…inside.
They wanted to know who he was and why he was helping you. ”
A tremor runs through my fingers, and I almost lose my grip on the phone. They wouldn’t show her Asher’s face unless they were certain we were together.
“He’s…no one,” I manage. Maybe if it’s on the record, they’ll stop leaning so hard on his aliases. “I stole his access card. That’s how I…got out.”
The room tilts briefly as I get to my feet and move to the window. I need to see the sky. To know I’m not back there.
“We probably don’t have long,” Ellen says. “What you—we—went through…it started years ago under a different name. They called it the Operational Standards Intensive.”
“How long ago?” I ask.
“I don’t know. But they changed the name shortly before I went through it.
A couple of my compliance checks still used that wording.
I don’t think they’d updated all their files yet.
And there’s one other thing you should know.
At the end of my interrogation the other day, they made me sign a form acknowledging that further deviation would send me back into the program.
There was a code stamped at the top of the form I’ve never seen before: RJ-3. ”