CHAPTER 32
Jameson
Swiss Alps, Switzerland
Night Three Off Grid
When we returned to the safe house, Brynn went straight to the bedroom for her laptop and notebook.
She didn’t slam the door.
She didn’t throw anything.
She didn’t say another word about Mirrorstream, the drone, or the fact that I had built the thing that had turned her life into a target.
I could have answered anger.
Her silence left me waiting for a verdict I had no way to influence.
I locked the door behind us.
Then the second lock.
Then the third.
The alarm panel blinked green and gave me the internal log. No breach. No motion. No door contact since we left. No secondary signal detected within the passive sweep range.
Clean.
By the time she came back out, I had the drone components laid out across the kitchen table: storage module, backup chip, telemetry board, three fragments of casing, and the shielded pouch beside them.
She had changed out of her jacket, but not into anything softer. Dark sweater. Jeans. Boots still on. Hair twisted back like she needed it out of her face because her hands had work to do.
She set her laptop and notebook on the far side of the island.
Not beside me, and not close enough to share the work.
Close enough to watch.
I looked at the notebook.
Then at her.
Her pen was already in her hand.
I had the unpleasant thought that I was no longer only a source of information.
I was part of the evidence.
“Can it still be tracking?” she asked.
Her first words since the slope.
Low and hoarse, but practical.
“The drone?” I asked.
“The parts you took out,” she said.
“No. I disabled the components before bringing them inside, and the workstation is isolated. Nothing on this table can reach a network.”
“And if it already sent something?” she asked.
“That’s what I need to find out.”
Her jaw moved once.
I opened the hard case and took out the forensic workstation.
The laptop woke slower than I wanted, the blue line across the keyboard cutting through the kitchen’s low light.
Outside, the evening pressed against the shutters, cold and gray, while inside, the fire had burned low enough to make the room smell like ash and old pine.
I connected the isolated reader.
The equipment ran clean. No network. No wireless. No broadcast. Nothing reaching out from the table.
Every indicator came back clean.
I still didn’t trust it.
Brynn opened her notebook.
The sound of paper shifting was small.
I heard it anyway.
I removed the telemetry board first.
No manufacturer stamp. No consumer label. No serial plate. Someone had stripped the drone down and rebuilt it with better tools than a hobbyist would have and more caution than most contractors bothered with.
Not elegant, but efficient.
I connected the telemetry board to the diagnostic bridge.
The first line of data populated.
Brynn’s pen moved once against the page.
I looked up. “Are you documenting me or the drone?”
Her eyes lifted.
For a second, the room went still around the question.
“Both,” she said.
I deserved that.
I looked back at the screen. “Good.”
Her pen stopped.
I felt her watching me, wary and suspicious.
“You wanted me to lie?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I’m just surprised you didn’t object.”
“I don’t have standing to object.”
The sentence could have seemed funny to anyone else, but I was completely serious.
Her expression didn’t change.
The telemetry log finished loading.
Brynn came around the island but stopped at the opposite corner, leaving space between us and the equipment. The space between us had never felt less accidental.
“The drone was flown manually,” I said. “It attempted three transmissions before it went down. Two were partial. The last one failed.”
I disconnected the board and inserted the storage module into the isolated reader. The file index populated slowly.
“The camera was active,” I said. “And it recorded.”
“Tell me plainly,” she said. “Did it send anything of importance?”
I looked at the log.
The answer blurred the line between safe and exposed and I didn’t like that.
“The last send failed. It was the largest packet, which most likely contained the majority of the recorded footage.”
Her face went still. “You’re sure?”
“They may know the drone was damaged. They may know it failed to return. They may have enough to guess the rough area.” I looked at her. “But the largest transmission failed. They shouldn’t have the full images from the clearing.”
Her eyes dropped to the pieces on the table.
For a moment, she didn’t move.
Then her pen shifted in her hand, one small adjustment, like she needed the weight of it to keep herself from reaching for something else.
“So there was something on it,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “Whatever didn’t transmit was still there when I recovered it.”