Epilogue If It’s Missing #2
Tael Vosk walks into SNAG Recovery Services at 1430 and the temperature in the room changes.
Not drops. Changes. The way the air changes when a second predator enters a space that already contains one. I feel Xor’s heartbeat spike in my sternum before I see the male in the doorway, and the spike is not fear. It is recognition. The biological acknowledgment of a rival.
Vosk is —
Tall. Not Xor-tall — six-five, lean, the build of something that chases rather than crushes.
Dark charcoal gray skin with black rosette markings across his shoulders and arms that catch the fairy light like tattoos designed by a panther.
Silver eyes — no visible iris, the entire eye a liquid mercury disc with a vertical slit pupil that adjusts to the light with predatory precision.
Sharp angular face, high cheekbones, the kind of jaw that looks severe until it smirks, and it is smirking now.
He has a tail.
Dark gray, ridged underside, perhaps three and a half feet of prehensile muscle that is currently curled behind him in a loose, lazy spiral that communicates complete confidence in hostile territory. His claws are retracted. His posture says he could extend them before either of us blinked.
“Xax.” The smirk widens. Voice like gravel and smoke, a purring bass that vibrates at a different frequency from Xor’s but hits the same register. “I heard you committed treason for a courier. I had to see for myself.”
“Vosk.” Xor is standing behind my chair, tail around my waist, seven feet of crimson Xarthian bristling at six-five of charcoal Draelith. The fairy lights blink between them like a cheerful audience. “You were terminated from SRS.”
“I was. Funny story. Involves principles. You’d know about those now, apparently.
” The silver eyes move from Xor to me. He takes in the claiming mark at my throat, the notebook on my desk, the fairy lights, the tea station, Gerald the ceramic figurine — commuting from the Petal’s throttle for office-warming — perched on my monitor.
“And this is the courier who dismantled a Tier 1 operative’s entire belief system in under a week. ”
“It didn’t take a week,” I say. “I’m efficient.”
The smirk becomes a grin. Sharp canines visible. “I can see why he committed treason.”
“Sit down, Vosk.” I gesture to the client chair. The reinforced one. “We have a case. Xarthian male, bonded, vanished without trace. Bond going silent. Wife dying. Nobody’s looking.”
Vosk sits. The smirk fades. The silver eyes sharpen — the tracker engaging, the professional underneath the performance, the male who destroyed his career to protect a child and has been pretending he doesn’t have principles ever since.
“Bonded males don’t vanish,” he says. Quiet.
The gravel-smoke voice stripped of its charm.
“Not Xarthian. Not Draelith. Not any pair-bonding species. The biology fights it. If he’s gone, someone took him.
And if someone is taking bonded males —“ He looks at Xor. The rivalry suspended. One predator acknowledging another’s kill zone. “That’s not random. That’s —“
“Procurement,” Xor says. “Yes.”
“My recovery rate is ninety-four percent,” Tael says.
“I know,” Xor says. “I am interested in the other six.”
The grin returns. Slower this time. Less performance, more teeth. “When do I start?”
“Now. You’re hired. Welcome to SNAG.” I open my notebook. Write his name. Tael Vosk. Draelith. Tracker. The first name under Xor’s and mine. The crew is growing. “We’ll sort out pay, accommodations, and operational parameters after —“
I’m about to lay out the case details — the notebook, the timeline, the gap nobody’s been tracking — when the door opens and Morrison walks in.
Not through the door. Morrison arrives — the way a weather system arrives, the way gravity establishes itself in a room and rearranges everything around it.
Steel-gray hair. Practical bun. Blue eyes already cataloguing every person and surface.
The chipped WORLD’S OKAYEST DISPATCHER mug is not in her hand, which means she’s off-duty, which means she came here on purpose, which means something is about to happen that she has planned and I have not.
She is not alone.
Behind Morrison — actually behind, as in using Morrison as a physical shield — is a woman.
Human. Mid-twenties. Dark eyes, sharp grin that she’s trying to suppress and failing.
Hair pulled back in a knot that’s already coming loose.
She’s wearing an OOPS courier jacket with the patches still warm and carrying a box of personal belongings.
The box contains three data pads, a collection of lock-picking tools in a leather roll, a half-eaten protein bar, and a small stuffed animal of indeterminate species.
“Morrison.” I stand. My exasperation is immediate and genuine. “We are in the middle of a hire interview. This is my first hire interview. I am attempting to conduct this professionally.”
“I can see that.” Morrison’s gaze takes in the two alien males, the fairy lights, the testosterone currently fogging the air quality. “Very professional.”
“What do you need?”
“I need to deliver something. Someone.” Morrison steps aside.
The woman behind her steps forward — reluctantly, the grin wavering between confidence and something more fragile.
Morrison’s hand lands on her shoulder. Brief.
Firm. The Morrison equivalent of a shove and a hug simultaneously.
“Florence, this is Petra Phan. She was a courier.”
“Was.”
“As of this morning, she is a former courier, because I have terminated her employment after she opened a sealed, classified, red-tagged diplomatic pouch bound for the Corsairian Embassy.”
I look at Petra. “Why?”
“It was making a noise,” Petra says.
“Diplomatic pouches don’t make noises,” Morrison says.
“That one did.”
Morrison closes her eyes. One breath. The breath of a woman who has managed pirate incursions, alien bonding incidents, and weaponised Christmas presents and is somehow being undone by a girl with a stuffed animal.
“She has the best infiltration instincts I’ve ever seen in a courier.
” Morrison’s voice shifts. The love-language voice.
The one that means she’s giving me something she cares about and disguising it as a problem.
“She can talk her way into any room and come out with everyone thinking she was supposed to be there. She picks locks I didn’t know could be picked.
She finds things nobody is looking for because she opens doors nobody told her to open.
” Morrison looks at me. Blue eyes. Steady.
“That’s a liability in a postal service, Florence. In a recovery company, it’s the point.”
I look at Petra. She’s standing in my office holding a box with a stuffed animal in it, her jacket patches still warm from the job Morrison just took from her, and underneath the grin there’s something I recognize.
The look of someone who has been told she’s too much and is waiting to hear it again.
“What’s the animal’s name?”
Petra blinks. “Maurice.”
“Maurice can sit next to Gerald.” I point to the ceramic figurine on my monitor. “You’re hired, Petra. Sit down. Have some tea. We’ll sort out the rest after I finish the interview you’re currently interrupting.”
“I’m — hired?” The grin falters. Something real underneath. “Just like that?”
“Morrison doesn’t send me people by accident. And I need someone who opens things.” I hold her gaze. The warm voice. The real one. “Welcome to SNAG.”
She sits. In the second client chair. She puts the box on the floor, sets Maurice on her knee, and looks around the office with the expression of a person who has just been given something she doesn’t trust yet but desperately wants.
Her hand drifts toward my tea canister. Xor’s gold eyes track the movement. His tail, still around my waist, twitches once — not aggressive, alert. The territorial catalog of a predator noting a new variable in his mate’s space. Petra catches the look. Her hand stops mid-air.
“Sorry,” she says. “I touch things. It’s a whole — I’m working on it.”
“Tea is communal,” I say. “Everything on my desk is not. We’ll establish boundaries.”
“The lock-picking tools stay in her box,” Xor says. Flat. Non-negotiable.
“They go everywhere with me,” Petra says. Then, reading his expression with survival-instinct speed: “But I will absolutely ask before deploying them on company property. Starting now. Immediately. Consider me reformed.”
“I have scanned the new arrival,” Sprout announces, descending from the ceiling. “Petra Phan. Lock-picking proficiency: exceptional. Risk assessment: significant. Impulse control metrics: concerning.” The orb bobs. “I anticipate excellent data production.”
Tael Vosk, who has been watching this entire scene from the reinforced chair with visible delight, raises one hand. “For the record, I was in the middle of saying something important about procurement when the chaotic woman with the stuffed animal arrived.”
“You were,” I say. “And we’ll come back to it. But first —“ I look at Morrison. “Was there anything else, or did you just come to ruin my professionalism?”
“One more thing.” Morrison’s tone shifts. Operational. “The Torek case. The missing Xarthian.”
“You know about —“
“Sprout has been broadcasting biometric data to my console since 1430. Apparently two predator species in a small room produces what it’s calling ‘exceptional cardiovascular theater.’” Morrison doesn’t smile.
Morrison never smiles. But the corners of her mouth do something adjacent.
“Torek disappeared from a Junction One docking berth. Which means the transit logs, the security feeds, the docking bay access records — all of that falls under station security jurisdiction.”
“Torres.”
“Torres. My Head of Station Security.” Morrison pauses. The pause is surgical. “I’ve already asked her to come down and discuss coordination protocols.”
“You’ve — Morrison, this is my operation. You can’t just summon your staff to my office without —“