Chapter Fifty-One
Rheda
The room is too full.
It isn’t the number of people. It’s the way the space holds them—tight, compressed, like the walls have shifted inward by degrees too small to measure but large enough to feel. The air is stale in a way that doesn’t match the ventilation. Warm where it should be neutral. Still where it should move.
No-one talks.
Peter is at the head of the table. Forward-leaning, weight through his forearms. To his right, a suited man I don’t recognise—quiet, watchful, pen already moving across a pad he hasn’t looked up from since I walked in.
Two guards stand at the back wall. They are not needed for this meeting, which means they’ve been placed here deliberately.
I take the seat opposite Peter, trying to control the shake.
I align my fingers with the edge of the table in front of me, creating symmetry without thinking about it. My toes curl hard inside my shoes, searching for pressure, pain, anything small enough to control.
Which is exactly why I know this is not going to go well.
“This is Harris,” Peter says finally. “He sits on the board that decides what happens to Deogal.”
My eyes move to him properly now.
He doesn’t look back straight away. His attention stays on the file in front of him, pen moving in slow, deliberate strokes that don’t quite match the pace of the room. When he eventually lifts his gaze, it lands on me without warmth. He looks at me the way people look at paperwork.
My palms go clammy.
I look away first.
Harris holds the silence for a beat too long and then finally speaks. “Doctor Ainsley, how familiar are you with the prisoner?”
For a second, I just look at him. My throat goes dry.
“I—I’m not. I mean, professionally. I’ve reviewed his case, I’ve been present for interviews, but there’s no personal—”
“Let me rephrase that.” He cuts across me without raising his voice. “How does a condemned prisoner know you well enough to ignore everyone else in the room?”
The words hit harder than if he’d shouted.
My mouth closes. I don’t have an answer that doesn’t sound insane.
Peter shifts beside him, jaw tight.
Harris folds his hands neatly over the file.
“He refused legal counsel. He refused direct questioning. He ignored Detective Holmes’ thorough interrogation,” His eyes stay on mine. “And yet the moment you entered the room, his behaviour changed.”
I can feel my pulse in my throat.
“He spoke to you like there was already something established between you.”
My fingers curl tighter against the table.
“That is not a small detail, Doctor Ainsley. That is the kind of detail people lose careers over.”
The room feels smaller. I force myself to breathe. “I can’t explain his behaviour.”
“No,” Harris says calmly. “That is exactly the problem.”
He pauses, then continues. “Did you have contact with Deogal before his arrival at SCU?”
“What?” I jolt. “No, of course not.”
My head tears toward Peter who doesn’t say anything. He sits there, tight lipped, eyes fixed and mistrusting. “Peter, this is ridiculous. Of course I do not know the criminal.”
“Then why did you speak into the microphone?” He replies smoothly.
My stomach tightens before I can stop it.
“I,—" I start, and then stop, because the words don’t come quickly. “I was fed up.”
“Fed up?” Harris asks. The intensity of his gaze makes my skin crawl.
My cheeks burn. “With his silence.”
“Why did it bother you?”
It doesn’t feel like a question. It feels like something being slid under my skin.
I hold his gaze or try to. It’s harder than it should be. There’s nothing in his expression to anchor to. No reaction to read, no shift to measure. Just that same fixed stillness, like he’s already decided what I am and is now waiting to see if I confirm it.
“I mean, yes, I was fed up,” I force the words to slow. “With the lack of progress. We’ve had him in containment for two weeks and there were no signs of engagement.”
Harris watches me without blinking. “And speaking into the microphone solved that?”
I swallow. My throat feels tighter now, the movement more noticeable than it should be.
“It was an attempt to disrupt the pattern,” I say. “Introduce unpredictability and force a break in his behavioural loop.”
It sounds correct. It sounds like something I would write. And yet, something in my chest recoils from it.
Because it isn’t the reason. Not really.
“Do you do that with other subjects?”
My mouth dries. I shake my head, soft at first and then once harder, unable to find the words.
Harris leans back slightly, pen tapping once against the paper. “You deviated from observation protocol. And you did so...spontaneously?”
“I made a judgement call,” I say.
He doesn’t write that down. He watches me instead. “Based on what?”
My fingers press slightly into the edge of the table, grounding, anchoring, something to hold onto while my thoughts shift too quickly beneath the surface.
Say it.
The thought arrives fully formed.
Tell them.
Tell them he knew you were there. Tell them he spoke to you before you gave him permission. Tell them he visits you at—
My chest pulls tight like my body already knows this ends badly.
“What we were doing wasn’t yielding results,” the words rush out.
Harris’s gaze doesn’t shift. “And you were confident you could control that engagement?”
I nod once. “I thought it was worth a try.”
Another lie.
Peter shifts beside him, just slightly. I catch it peripherally, the change in his posture, the way his weight redistributes like he’s preparing to step in.
Harris finally looks down, pen moving again, but the movement is slower now as though he’s not recording what I said, but what I didn’t.
The silence stretches, and I sit inside it, trembling. I resist the urge to wipe my palms on my trousers.
“Is there anything else you want to add?” He asks sharply.
I shake my head. “No.”
Peter watches me for a second longer, and then his attention flicks back to Harris.
“Alright,” He says, his tone returning to something procedural. “We’ll proceed as planned then.”
Harris doesn’t respond straight away. He closes the file in front of him with a soft, precise motion, aligning the edges before resting his palm flat against it, as if sealing whatever decision has already been made.
His eyes lift to Peter. “I don’t trust her judgment anymore.”
My stomach drops.
Peter’s expression doesn’t change, but I see the tension in his jaw.
“She’s too close,” Harris continues. “Whether that’s manipulation, compromised objectivity, or something she hasn’t admitted yet, I don’t particularly care. The result is the same.”
Heat crawls up my throat. “I am not compromised.”
Harris looks at me then. “That confidence is usually what makes people dangerous, Doctor Ainsley.”
I feel my nails pressing into my palm beneath the table.
Peter exhales slowly. “Pulling her now creates more problems than it solves.”
Harris says nothing.
Peter continues, harder this time. “She knows the case. She knows his patterns. Replacing her this close to sentencing would raise questions we do not have time to answer.”
There is a devastating pause before his voice drops lower. “And if there is something there, she is more useful inside the room than outside it.”
The words hit almost as hard as Harris’s.
Not trusted. Useful.
Harris studies me for a moment too long.
“Then she stays,” he says. “But understand this—I am not keeping you on this case because I believe you are objective. I’m keeping you there because right now, removing you is inconvenient.”
The humiliation burns so hot it almost steadies me.
His voice stays calm. “If he is using you, I will know. If you are protecting him, I will know. And if I decide you are the greater liability...”
He lets the sentence die there. He doesn’t need to finish it.
Peter stands. The chair legs drag quietly against the floor, the sound controlled but deliberate enough to mark the end of the meeting. Harris rises a second later, slower, his movements just as measured as everything else about him.
Peter steps forward first. They shake hands.
“Friday, then,” Peter says too sharply.
Harris nods. “Friday.”
He releases his hand, turns. The guards follow him out of the room.
Peter watches them leave, staring at the closed door, tight enough to hurt just looking at it.
Then he faces me.
“Peter—” I start.
“You’re off rotation for the rest of the day.”
“But—”
“Go home.”
It feels like I’ve been punched in the chest. I want to protest but nothing useful comes to mind. I dip my head because anything else would sound like pleading.
I stand. The movement feels slower than it should, like my body is recalibrating after sitting too long under too much pressure. My chair slides back into place with a soft, final sound.
He steps aside. He gives me space this time.
I walk past him without looking up.
The corridor air is colder, cleaner. It should feel like relief, but it doesn’t. Because all I can hear is Friday.
The day that they take him from me.
And the day that could reveal how invested I really am.