CHAPTER EIGHT
Fuentes took the call at eleven that night, and Nash could hear, even through the careful professional calm in her voice, the exact quality of a person doing rapid math on a problem that didn't have a clean answer available.
"I want to pull you both," she said, after Vanessa had laid out the appendix scenario in full, the younger man's question, Voss's unreadable pause before tabling it.
"I want to, and I need you to understand that wanting to and being able to aren't the same thing right now, given where we are with this operation. "
"Explain that to me," Nash said, standing at the window of the apartment that still smelled like someone else's life, watching a streetlight flicker three stories down.
"Because from where I'm sitting, that sounds like a woman telling me the smart move and the available move are two different things, and I'd like to understand exactly how far apart they actually are. "
"We're eleven days from a financial disclosure hearing that could give us enough to seize records from six shell companies tied to this network's shipping operation — records that would let us map the supply chain much further than anything we've managed so far, possibly all the way to whoever's actually running this instead of just the mid-level operators we've been meeting.
" Fuentes's voice stayed level, though something underneath it suggested this cost her more to say than she was letting show.
"Pulling you both now, before that hearing, means we lose the only active eyes we have inside an organization that's already proven, more than once, how quickly it can disappear and reconstitute somewhere else the moment it senses real exposure. "
"And if they decide to test us the way Vanessa's describing, in those eleven days?"
"Then I need you to understand that I can't fully protect you from that risk without pulling you, and pulling you costs us eleven days we may not get back once this network goes quiet again.
" A pause, heavy enough that Nash could feel it through the phone.
"I'm not going to pretend that's an answer either of you deserves to hear.
It's the honest one. The decision is yours to make, both of you, and I'll support whichever way you land on it. "
Nash looked over at Vanessa, curled into the corner of the apartment's secondhand couch, arms wrapped around her knees in a posture that read, to him, as noticeably younger and more frightened than the woman who'd walked into that marina office with such flawless, easy confidence a few hours earlier.
"What do you want to do?" he asked her, phone still to his ear, Fuentes waiting on the other end.
"I want to finish this," Vanessa said quietly.
"Not because I'm not scared — I am, honestly, more than I've let either of you see tonight.
But I keep thinking about the kids Fuentes mentioned in that first briefing, the ones we still haven't found, and I keep thinking about how much longer they stay wherever they currently are if we walk away eleven days short of the records that might actually locate them.
" She looked up at him, something fierce and tired moving across her face at once.
"I don't want to make this call alone, though.
Whatever you decide, I'll follow it. But I don't think either of us should pretend the risk isn't real just because the mission matters. "
Nash carried that back to the phone, Fuentes still waiting, patient in the particular way of someone who'd had this exact conversation with other operatives before and knew there was no version of it that could be rushed.
"We're staying in," he said finally. "Eleven days. But I want something from you in exchange — actual contingency planning, not just a hope that Voss tables it again. If they push either of us toward that line, I need extraction ready to move within minutes, not hours."
"You'll have it," Fuentes said, and something in her voice suggested real relief, quickly and professionally suppressed.
"I'm putting a tactical team on standby within a six-block radius of every meeting location from here forward.
It's not nothing, but I want to be honest with you both — six blocks still isn't fast enough to stop something that happens in a room before anyone outside it knows it's happening.
I need you both understanding that risk fully before we hang up tonight. "
"Understood," Vanessa said, close enough to the phone now that Fuentes could hear her directly. "Eleven days. Then we reassess, whatever the hearing turns up."
"Eleven days," Fuentes agreed. "Call me the moment anything shifts. I mean that literally — the moment, not the morning after."
? ? ?
They sat in silence a while after the call ended, the apartment's borrowed furniture throwing long shadows in the low lamplight, both of them turning over, privately, the exact shape of what they'd just agreed to.
"I should call him," Vanessa said eventually, not moving from the couch.
"I haven't talked to him in four days. I keep telling myself I'll call tomorrow, and tomorrow becomes another four days, and I don't know how to explain why the silence keeps stretching without explaining things I'm not allowed to explain. "
"Call him," Nash said. "Whatever you can say honestly, even if it's small. He deserves that much, even if it's not everything."
"You sound like you're speaking from experience."
"I left Mia with significantly less than I should have.
A folder full of half-answers and a promise I'm not entirely sure I know how to keep yet.
" Nash sat down on the arm of the couch, not quite beside her, close enough to be present without crowding the moment.
"I keep thinking about what Webb's probably telling her right now, whether it's landing as reassurance or just a different flavor of not-knowing.
I don't have a way to ask him without it reading as me not trusting the system I agreed to work inside. "
"You could ask me to pass something along.
Not directly — I know that's not how contact protocols work.
But there might be a version of a message that gets through the official channel without breaking anything, if I phrase it the right way in my next debrief.
" Vanessa looked over at him, something careful and generous in the offer.
"I know it's not the same as talking to her. It might be something, though."
Nash considered that a long moment, weighing the offer against eleven days of silence, against a shoebox on a closet shelf he still hoped, fiercely, Mia hadn't opened yet, against everything he didn't know how to say to a woman three hundred miles away who deserved markedly more than he currently had the ability to give her.
"Tell her I'm keeping my promise," he said finally. "She'll know which one."
"I'll make sure it gets through," Vanessa said, and reached over, briefly, to squeeze his hand — not the practiced intimacy of Trent Marsh's girlfriend this time, but something plainer, more real, one exhausted person offering another exhausted person the only comfort currently available to either of them.
They sat together a while longer in the borrowed apartment's low light, both of them quietly making their own separate calls to the people waiting on the other side of this — Vanessa's voice soft and careful in the next room, Nash staring out at the flickering streetlight three stories down, both of them counting, silently, the eleven days now standing between tonight and whatever came next.
? ? ?
He called Ruiz after Vanessa had finished her own call and retreated to the small bedroom, some restless need pulling him toward his phone despite every protocol telling him contact outside the official channels was a risk he shouldn't be taking, even with someone he trusted as completely as Ruiz.
"This isn't secure," Ruiz said, picking up on the second ring, his voice sharpening with immediate alertness. "You know that, right? You calling me directly isn't exactly by the book."
"I know. Five minutes. I needed to hear a voice that isn't part of the operation, even for five minutes." Nash sat on the edge of the borrowed bed, the apartment's unfamiliar furniture throwing long shadows in the low light. "How's she doing? Really. Not the version Webb's probably giving her."
"Holding together better than I expected, given everything.
Worse than she lets on, some days." Ruiz's voice carried the distinctive weariness of a man who'd been watching someone he cared about closely enough to see past the careful composure.
"She's got Sandra's office keeping her busy, which helps.
Daniel too, apparently — some new friend she's made, though she hasn't told me much about him beyond that he understands the waiting in a way most people don't."
"Good," Nash said, something loosening slightly in his chest at the confirmation that Mia had found her own version of what he and Vanessa had built out here — someone who recognized without needing everything explained.
"I worry about her being alone with this more than I worry about almost anything else out here. "
"She's not alone. I make sure of that much, at least, even without knowing the specifics of what you're dealing with.
" A pause, and when Ruiz spoke again, his voice had lowered, more serious.
"How are you holding up, Nash? Actually.
I know you can't tell me details, and I'm not asking for any.
I'm asking as your partner, not as anybody official. "
Nash was quiet a long moment, weighing how much honesty he could afford even in an unsecured call to someone he trusted completely.
"It's harder than I expected," he said finally, choosing his words with care.
"Harder than Deveaux, in ways I didn't have a framework for going in.
I'm managing it. Some days better than others. "
"That's about as much as I figured you'd give me, and about as much as I probably have any right to ask for over an unsecured line.
" Ruiz's voice carried a rough affection that Nash had come to rely on more than he usually let himself admit.
"I've got your back on this end, whatever that's worth from three hundred miles away.
Watching Mia, watching the case, making sure nobody at the department forgets what you're actually out there doing for them. "
"It's worth more than you know." Nash felt something tighten in his throat, gratitude and homesickness tangling together too closely to fully separate. "I should go. This call's already longer than it should be."
"Nash." Ruiz's voice stopped him before he could hang up. "Whatever's happening out there — whatever you're not telling me, whatever this is actually costing you — come home. However long it takes, whatever shape you're in when you get there. Just come home."
"I'm trying," Nash said, and found, hanging up a moment later, that the simple honesty of that exchange had eased something in his chest that even Vanessa's steady presence these last weeks hadn't quite managed to reach — the exact comfort of a friendship that asked nothing except that he survive it, and meant every word.
? ? ?