Chapter 38
Decker
I don’t sleep. I sit on the edge of the bed where she sat last night and go through the fight again, line by line, both sides of it.
She came in past shouting and left calm.
I hold on to the calm, because it’s what I’ve got.
She said morning. She let me walk her to the door.
I’ve watched her handle anger—in the den, in Viktor’s office, on the mountain—the storm hits, the storm passes, and the mind underneath goes back to work.
By morning she’ll still be furious. Furious I can work with.
Furious means she’s still standing in the same room as me.
Seven o’clock.
I’ll put everything on the table. Not the edited version.
All of it. The towers, the corridor, what Vanya’s finding, Viktor’s plans.
No more schedule. The timing is what she’s angry about.
That I didn’t tell her Serenity is running out of it.
I’ll give her every detail so she can choose what to do with it, and if the answer’s ugly I’ll stand there and take it.
I had that choice on the mountain. I could have laid it all down then. I didn’t. I need to sit down and own that, because I’ve earned it.
The bear won’t let me sit long.
It started when she walked out, and it hasn’t eased since. Not the sharp surge from the briefing room, the kind I can plant against a wall and hold. This is lower, and it doesn’t stop—a drag under the ribs, an ache built into the bone.
Pacing doesn’t burn it off. The cold yard doesn’t either. I stand at the fence with my breath smoking and my whole body turned in her direction. Minutes drag as I try to clear my thoughts.
People fight. It’s normal.
But the bear won’t settle with that. She pulled away tonight, and the animal I’m made of felt her do it.
“You don’t want to feel what it’s like at the end of it,” Torbjorn’s voice comes back at me.
I stop thinking about the old bear and go wake Viktor, because one part of tonight can’t wait for morning.
He opens his door in shirtsleeves with a folder in his hand.
“Someone got to her,” I say. “Inside the wing. Tonight.”
That moves him faster than anything else I could have led with. He steps back and lets me in. “What happened?”
“A phone. Planted in her quarters, same as the one they planted in her cubicle to frame her. She came at me tonight knowing things she had no way to know—the blood, Serenity, the Sangrey value. Someone told her all of it.” I keep to the part that matters to him.
Viktor sets the folder down. His voice goes flat and careful. “Into a locked room. Past a guard.” He says each one like he’s laying a card. “That’s twice now this person has put a phone exactly where it hurts most. When they framed her, and now this.” He looks at me. “You understand what that is.”
“Access.” My training answers before the rest of me can. “The wing runs off a short list. Whoever did it is on that list, or owns someone who is.”
“Yes.” He pulls a pad toward him but doesn’t write.
“And I can’t move on it openly. If I turn that wing over tonight, I’ve told them I know, and they go quiet for a year, and I lose the only lead we have.
So we keep it quiet. Duty logs. Who drew wing rotation.
Who swapped a shift and who covered it.” He stops, reconsiders.
“I’ll pull them myself. Nobody else touches this until I know whose hands are clean. ”
“There’s more in the message than facts.” I make myself finish it. “It aimed her. Told her not to trust me. Told her what she’s worth to them. That’s not spite, Viktor. That’s the opening move. They want her leaning their way and away from ours.”
“Then it’s a good thing she’s behind my walls with a guard on her door.” He glances up. “I’ll sit with her in the morning and find out exactly what we’re dealing with.”
“In the morning? Viktor, if—”
“In the morning, Decker. You don’t hammer on a woman’s door at three because you’re impatient. I’m sure she’s rattled after what happened.” He frowns. “Why aren’t you with her?”
My teeth grind. “She’s pissed. Said I should have told her.”
Viktor nods. “I could see why she feels that way.” He shrugs. “She’ll get over it. What matters now is that we find who’s at the bottom of this.”
He’s right. I should be ahead of him on this. A breach inside the wing is the best lead the hunt has thrown up—the framer finally reached too far and left a hole I could read a trail through, and reading trails is the one thing I’m good at.
All I can think about right now is getting to her. Letting the bear know that everything is all right.
Viktor watches me do it. He caps the pen. His expression goes quiet.
“I asked you once if your head was clear,” he says.
“It was, when you asked.”
“No. It wasn’t.” No blame in it. Just a correction to the record. “Go and wait somewhere until the morning. You’ve told me what I need. The best thing you can do tonight is nothing.”
Nothing is the last thing I feel like doing.
“Sure,” I say and turn away. We both know I’m not going back to my quarters, but he doesn’t try to tell me to.
I try the ops room first. The best way I can be useful is by doing something to track down the person who put a phone in her room.
It goes wrong inside ten minutes. Jericho has the night board with two of his people.
“Up late,” he says.
“Yeah.” I take a seat, tap a keyboard, and a screen lights up.
“Did you come in to get the logs from the east approach?”
“I’ll meet with Vanya about it once I’m done with Viktor.”
He looks up. “What?”
“I said I’d speak to Vanya about it.”
“The east approach?” His brow furrows. “Why would Vanya be involved with that?”
I realize I have no idea what he’s talking about. My head’s too full of how to lay everything out for Grace tomorrow.
“Decker.” Jericho’s watching me carefully. My knee’s going under the table. “When did you last sleep?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re coming apart. I can see it.” He says it low, so his people don’t catch it. “You’ve stood through nights that would fold most men, and you were a wall. Look at your hand.”
I look. It’s opening and closing against my thigh, over and over, and I don’t know how long it’s been at it.
“Whatever this is, get on top of it,” Jericho says. “You’re no good to anyone like this. And I’ve got a bad feeling you’re going to need to have your shit together.”
I walk out in the middle of what he says next. I feel the two techs watch me go, feel the story start writing itself behind me—something’s wrong with the bear—and I can’t make myself care, which is its own warning. I’ve never once left a room like that.
Outside, the sky’s gone gray at the eastern rim.
Not seven. Nowhere near. But I’m standing in the cold with my heart going like I ran here.
The animal’s stopped dragging and started shoving, and every argument I own is coming apart in my hands.
Waiting is the smart play. Waiting is what I promised.
Let her sleep. Come at seven with all of it laid out. Do it right.
I’m already walking.
Because here’s the truth under all of it: I can’t stay away. If all I do is stand outside her door and listen to her breathe, that’ll hold me till morning. I’ve done it before. She never has to know I was there.
The wing is quiet, night lights on, the corridor watch nodding me through the way he stopped questioning days ago. Her door’s the far one. There’s no light coming from beneath it. Good. She’s sleeping. One of us should be.
I pull in a breath and figure out what I need to say.
Sorry. Start with sorry.
Her door gets closer. Something starts to shift beneath my skin. A wrongness that climbs with every step.
Ten feet. Five.
I raise my hand to knock, and stop, and listen for her breathing.