Decker
I don’t go back inside right away. I stay at the wall past the point where the cold starts to bite. Tell myself I’m watching the gate. The gate’s empty. Has been the whole time.
My jaw aches. I unclench it, and it wants to lock again. Under my ribs the bear is up on his feet, pacing a line he won’t quit, and I don’t know what he’s doing.
The woman. She got me on the back foot.
I should have moved before she did. I had a second where I could have turned, found something to look at, been a man crossing a yard. I didn’t take it. I stood there and let her catch me looking. That’s the part that sits wrong. Not the look. That I gave it to her.
I go in ten minutes behind her. Any sooner and I’d be following her through the door. Like a stalker.
Not a good look, asshole.
I head for the dining hall. The urn’s at the far end of the line. I fill a cup I don’t want and put my back to the wall.
“Hey.” I know the face, not the man. Comms tech, runs the eastern relay desk—the kind who thinks out loud and has never been told it’s a problem.
“You’re the one who went after the feral wolf.” Not a question.
“He wasn’t feral.”
“Good to hear. I’m Domenic.”
“I know.”
“You’re Decker, right? I’ve seen you around.”
“That so.”
“You keep to yourself.” He nods. “I get it. I’m kinda the same.”
He absolutely isn’t, but it’s not my job to tell him. I grunt.
He tips his head toward the serving line. “Eggs are from a carton. Just so you know.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Coffee’s good, though. Mountain water.” He pours his own. “You here long? Nobody can figure what you’re here for.”
“That so?”
“You don’t say much. People fill it in for you.” He tilts his head, friendly enough. “So what are you here for?”
“I’ll know when I find it.”
He laughs like I’ve made a joke. I let him keep it.
“Well, I’d better get on with my day.” He carries his coffee off to the window table, where two more techs are already going. I’m fairly sure he’s about to tell them what I said to him.
I stay put a while, then find an empty table and sit.
The bear didn’t settle the whole time Domenic talked.
Hackles up, half down on his haunches, watching the door I came through like she might come through it next.
Not the way he stands when something’s wrong; I know that version.
This one leans the other way. Toward. I can’t get a clean thought past it.
So I work. Zoe’s case points one way. A survivor. Quiet. Someone with the run of the building who’d know when the mountain road would be clear the night Creed set his trap.
That person has a name.
But I don’t trust a clean line drawn straight to one name. I’ve chased this ghost for months, and they never left enough of a trace to draw a line at all. I need to put the pieces together myself before I take anyone’s word.
I push the tepid coffee away and stand. Stop at the roster in the hall on my way out. It doesn’t take long to find what I want.
The name. An assignment for the day. Admin floor.
I find her on the storeroom run. Flat cart, north corridor. Moving past people who barely notice her.
I notice her. The bear notices her. Because it’s her. The woman from the yard.
Fuck.
The bear, who hasn’t sat down since dawn, drops his head and goes still the second I see her. Same quiet he gave me out in the cold.
The name in the file is hers.
I stand at the end of the corridor and take that in for a minute. It doesn’t improve.
Pay attention. You’ve got a job to do.
I’m not going to lose focus because my dick twitched at the sight of a little she-wolf.
But it’s the sight of her that stops me. Delicate features, fair skin, honey-blonde hair to her shoulders. She’s slighter than most wolves I’ve seen. The issued jacket swallows her. She holds herself carefully, contained, like she’s half waiting for the floor to give under her.
She’d be easy to miss. That’s the part I keep catching on. Nothing about her asks to be looked at, and I can’t make myself look away.
Why?
The bear watches her like she’s the one solid thing in the building and the rest is unnecessary detail. Under that, quieter and worse, something in me wants to cross the floor and take the cart out of her hands.
Enough. Eyes on the job.
So I put them on the job. I stay out of sight and track her. Her hands. The cart. What she does next—the only part of her that’s any of my business.
I stop at the end of the hall and let her put distance between us. She moves like she’s done this a thousand times. No list in her hand as she steps into the stationery room. She’s back out, cart loaded and moving inside four minutes.
The corridor runs her past the annex. The door sits open three inches—the latch won’t catch unless you haul on it, and nobody hauls on it.
Inside, on the wall, is the ops board. Names.
Assignments. Current as of this morning.
Two seconds and a person would know where every field team is sleeping tonight.
She doesn’t turn her head.
Not a glance. Not the stiff little non-look people do when they’re working hard at not looking. Her chin doesn’t move. The cart doesn’t slow.
She doesn’t know it’s there?
I let her reach the end of the hall before I follow, then double back and read the board myself. Updated since yesterday. Routes. Rotations. Intel that would be useful to someone who knew what they were looking at.
Two staff pass me. I nod at both, drop my eyes to my phone as if I’m scrolling, and keep walking.
I track her all the way to the motor pool. Farris, the head mechanic, is in the far bay, arms black to the elbow, losing a fight with an axle fitting.
I stop, a hand on the open door of a truck. “Wear and tear?” One eye across the yard.
“Road damage. East track’s going.” He doesn’t look up. “Wants a re-grade before the freeze, or we’ll be winching trucks out of ruts till spring.”
“How bad now?”
“Bad enough.” He cranks the wrench. “Put in a call to the higher-ups, but—”
I stop listening. The side door goes. She comes through it with a requisition in her hand, and whatever Farris says next is gone. I watch her cross to the desk. Sign. Take her copy. Turn for the door without a look at the yard, the trucks coming and going, or the teams milling around them.
“You actually interested, or killing time?” Farris pokes his head out from under the carriage, and I realize I’ve missed a question.
“Both,” I say.
He snorts. “Honest, at least.”
I ask something about which end the re-grade crew starts from, just to give him something to answer, and this time I make myself hear it.
She’s gone by the time he’s done.
This feels wrong.
The bear hasn’t called her a threat once. Not in the yard. Not in the corridor. Not now. He went quiet the second she crossed the yard this morning, and he’s stayed that way.
He’s never been wrong before.
I don’t like what that leaves me. Either I’m reading her wrong, or I can’t trust my own gut anymore. And I’ve built a life on my gut.
I cross her twice more before the day’s out, and both times I have to work at not closing the distance.
The second time she’s at the council stairs with a box too big for her, the kind of load she’d carry till her arms gave out before she’d ask anyone to take half. It slips—just an inch. She catches it against the rail, knee coming up under it, and for a second, the whole thing’s about to go.
I’m moving before I know I’ve moved. Two steps. Hand half up.
Don’t.
I stop. A man doesn’t cross a room to carry a suspect’s box. A man doesn’t cross a room for a single one of the reasons I nearly did.
She gets it settled on her own. Then she looks up—straight at me, like she felt me there before she saw me.
Blue eyes. They pin me where I stand.
We hold it. A second. Maybe two.
Then she looks away. Fast. Rattled.
Half this building looks straight through her. I’ve watched it all day. People slide off her like she’s a draft in the room, there and not worth turning for. She doesn’t slide off me. I don’t slide off her. And I’ve made a living out of blending into the scenery. I can’t figure out why.
My foundation feels unbalanced.
I’m at the east wall when Torbjorn finds me late in the day.
I hear him before I see him. That big, unhurried tread—in no rush for anything, ever. He stops beside me and looks out at the yard like he’s got all evening to spend on it.
“You’re far from home,” I say.
“Viktor called me in for a confab.” He doesn’t say what about. “What’s your excuse?”
“On a job.”
He doesn’t ask what I’m working. I don’t ask what Viktor wanted. If the bear clan leader’s been called in, it’s confidential anyway. And bears don’t pry the lid off what another one’s keeping shut.
We stand there a while, watching the yard go about its evening.
Except I’m not watching the yard.
She comes out of the storage block, folder under one arm, head down. Torbjorn tracks my eyes straight to her. He misses nothing. Never has.
“Huh.”
I don’t answer.
“She’s got most of your attention.” Not a question.
“She’s interesting.”
“That what she is?” He looks at her a moment longer, then back at the yard. “Solitary bear, standing watch over a small wolf.”
“She’s interesting.” Like saying it twice makes it true.
He cuts me a look. Doesn’t push it—bears don’t—but he’s seen what he’s seen. She reaches the main door and goes through it. He pushes off the wall and heads for the gate. No parting word. He’s never needed one.
I look at the door she went through longer than I should.
The access is real. The timing’s real. And none of it fits. A thin trail pointing clean at one person is usually the easy answer, not the right one.
And the bear’s quiet. He’s never gone quiet over anyone I’ve been hired to judge.
But I’ve made mistakes before. I know what they cost.
So I don’t clear her.
I don’t call her guilty either. The wrongness could be the trap. A trail just messy enough to read amateur, just clean enough to read innocent.
So I keep watching. I keep her file open. I tell myself it’s the case.
It’s getting harder to make that the whole truth.
I still can’t tell if I’m hunting her or being hauled toward her.