Chapter Fifty-Three
Rheda
I don’t remember falling asleep.
I wake with my eyes already open. For a few seconds, I don’t move. My tongue is dry against the roof of my mouth, my neck stiff, one hand curled in the sheet like I fell asleep holding onto something.
He isn’t here.
I know that before I look for him, and my body reacts badly to the knowledge, my throat tightening before my mind can dress it up as relief. I push myself upright.
I need to see him again.
Be near him again.
By the time I reach the building, my head is pounding. I swipe my badge. The door opens.
I take my seat in the viewing room without drawing attention to it, slightly off to the side, where I can see everyone. The chair is colder than I expect, sending a sharp shock up my spine. I adjust once, small, controlled, aligning myself with the edge of the desk.
Peter’s back is to me. His attention is angled toward Sean near the back of the room, posture slightly forward, voice low enough that I can’t catch the words, only the shape of them.
Sean listens, head tilted slightly, then nods once. Peter says something back. The corner of his jaw pulls tight before he smooths it away.
I look down. I’ve already been watching too long.
My fingers rest on the edge of the table, pressure uneven where my grip has tightened without permission. I loosen it slowly.
When I look back up, they’ve separated.
Peter finally looks at me, but the timing feels wrong. “Morning.”
I nod once. “Morning.”
My voice holds. That’s something.
My lips part as if an apology is on the tip of my tongue. I should say something about yesterday. Find an excuse. Make a joke. Anything to stop the awkward wrongness in the air. But the thought of talking about it is enough to make my throat swell.
Peter watches me for a fraction longer than necessary, then looks away. He leans over his computer, and the sound of keys tapping echo around the room. Conversation starts between the three men. I am aware of it without being part of it, the way voices move through the space.
“...shouldn’t have—” My brain catches on it before I can stop it, the phrase turning over once, twice, like it’s trying to find somewhere to land.
Shouldn’t have what?
A chair shifts somewhere behind me. A low scrape. The sound folds into the sentence before I can separate it, attaches itself like context.
The words hit somewhere low in my stomach before my brain even catches up, like my body understands first. A cold, sick pull tightens under my ribs, sharp enough to make me stop breathing for a second.
Then the thought slides into place.
Sat her in.
The chair.
My chair.
It doesn’t make sense but heat crawls up the back of my neck anyway. My palms feel suddenly damp.
I don’t move.
I don’t turn around.
Because if I look at them—if I let my eyes land there and see something different, something wrong—then it stops being a passing thought and becomes something real.
“...not ideal—” Another voice. Different direction. But it overlaps too neatly, the timing aligning just slightly too well, like it’s part of the same conversation even though it shouldn’t be.
Mike laughs, just a short, sharp snort of sound, followed by a quick chuckle he seems to swallow almost immediately, like it escaped before he could stop it.
My pulse kicks hard against my throat. Heat crawls up my chest while something colder settles lower in my stomach, tight and twisting.
That was about me.
I know it for certain.
The back of my neck burns. My jaw locks.
I force myself to turn.
But he isn’t looking at me. He’s angled toward one of the screens, one hand lifted slightly as if he’s mid-explanation, expression loose, easy, nothing in it that suggests anything beyond the moment he’s in. Sean nods once. Peter doesn’t react at all.
No one is watching me.
No one is even facing me.
My gut hollows out.
It wasn’t about me. Of course it wasn’t.
My fingers press slightly harder into the table. I release them immediately.
This is nothing.
This is normal.
People talk. People shift. People—
I keep my eyes on the screen until they burn. Looking gives me something to do with my body that’s not shaking.
The footage holds steady beneath the fluorescent glare, the interrogation room scrubbed so clean it barely feels real.
Steel, glass, white light flattening everything into something clinical and dead.
Deogal sits exactly where he should, restrained, still, his body angled the same way it was when I first looked, the same way it was when I sat down.
“Give it a few minutes.” The words drift from somewhere behind me, low enough that they should disappear into the room.
My gaze drags back to the glass like there’s a hook behind my ribs. He remains exactly as he was, and the longer I stare, the more my skin begins to prickle beneath my sleeves.
“Yeah, leave it.” Another voice, somewhere to my left, easy, casual. But the words slide against the first sentence too neatly, like they belong together, like I have heard them in sequence before. The space between them feels wrong, and suddenly my skin feels too tight.
My grip tightens again. I force my hand open.
Someone behind me starts speaking again, voice low, directed toward Peter. “If he doesn’t respond to the—”
“—second interval,” I say. The words leave my mouth at the exact same time as his.
I go still.
How did I know that?
My mouth goes dry so fast it hurts. No one reacts which is somehow worse.
My gaze snaps back to the glass without permission.
My attention narrows.
There is no reason to keep watching him like this, no professional justification. But I can’t stop. Because somewhere inside me, something has already decided the answer is there.
Everything else arrives wrong now. Voices. Movement. My own breathing. All of it half a beat late, except him. He is the only thing in the room that keeps its shape.
I press my palm harder into the table until pain sparks up my wrist, and even then, my gaze stays on him.