7. Sofia
SOFIA
Two days after the gate, I still hadn't found a way to make peace with what I'd done.
I told myself the trucks would have gotten through with or without me, that a patrol car parked ninety seconds longer would have changed nothing except who got blamed for it. The math never landed the way I needed it to.
Whatever sat inside those pallets, I had helped hide it from a cop with better things to do than dig through cargo. That detail sat heavy in my chest, and no amount of telling myself I'd done it for the bigger case made it any lighter.
Seventy-eight days were left on the clock, and I had spent two of them lying to myself about which side of the ledger that morning belonged on.
My phone buzzed against the desk before I'd finished the thought, Nina's name lighting up the screen.
"You alive over there?" the text read, blunt as always.
"Fine. Long two days," I typed back, already knowing it wouldn't satisfy her.
Her reply came within seconds. "You always say fine when you mean not remotely."
I didn't answer that one right away, and she didn't push, which was more grace than I usually got from a woman who pushed on principle.
The office phone rang ten minutes later, an actual call this time, not a text, and I recognized the rhythm of the ring before I even checked the screen.
"You've had the wire five days," Callahan said, no greeting, a clipped edge in his voice that meant he'd already decided how this conversation was going to go before I picked up.
"I've had a lot of things for five days. The wire's one of them."
"That's not an answer, Reyes."
"It's the only one I've got right now."
"Seventy-eight days sounds like a lot until you're the one watching the calendar from this side of it." He exhaled, sharp, the sound of a man rationing his patience on purpose. "I need that thing transmitting before this week ends. Not next week. This one."
"I heard you the first time."
"Hearing me and doing something about it are two different sports." A pause, shorter than the ones he usually gave me. "Is something wrong out there?"
"No."
"You said that fast."
"Because it's true." It wasn't, not entirely. But the truth I could safely hand him over the phone wasn't the whole truth, and I wasn't ready to say the rest of it out loud yet.
He let it go, which surprised me more than if he'd pushed, and told me to check in by the weekend before he hung up without saying goodbye, a habit of his I'd stopped taking personally months ago.
I put the phone down and went back to the inventory sheets, grateful for a task that only asked me to count things correctly.
Denny passed my desk twice that morning without his usual joke about my handwriting, and the second time he caught my eye and looked away fast enough that I knew word about the gate had traveled further than I wanted it to.
Nobody said anything outright. Nobody had to.
A crew that owed you a favor for keeping a patrol car bored had a way of treating you differently afterward, quieter, more careful, like I'd earned a seat at a table I hadn't asked to sit at.
By early afternoon I had almost managed to forget the gate entirely, buried under manifests and the dull, comfortable boredom that came from adding numbers that always added up. Then a man in an expensive coat planted himself at my counter and ruined it.
"This shipment was supposed to clear yesterday." He slapped a printout down hard enough that a stack of forms slid off the edge. "I don't have time for whatever this operation is running instead of a schedule."
"I can look into it. Can I get your account number?"
"I don't carry account numbers. I carry expectations, and right now you're failing every one of them."
Something old and automatic clicked into place behind my ribs.
It was a version of me that had spent years learning how to stand in a room and make it smaller through posture alone, chin level, weight forward, a stillness that used to make suspects reconsider their tone before I ever raised my voice.
My hand started toward my hip on pure muscle memory, toward a badge that had never once been part of this cover story and had no business being anywhere near my hand right now.
I caught it half an inch from my waistband and turned the motion into smoothing my shirt instead, my pulse loud enough in my ears that I barely heard him demand a supervisor.
"I don't need a supervisor telling me what I already know," I said, and the words came out level, low, carrying farther than they should have for how quietly I'd said them.
"I need thirty seconds to pull your file, and you need to stop raising your voice at someone whose job is to actually help you. "
He blinked. The coat, the printout, the gold watch on his wrist, none of it moved for a full second, and something in his face shifted from irritation into something closer to interest.
Then he laughed, loud and sudden, and the whole performance dropped off him like a coat coming unbuttoned.
"Relax, Reyes. I'm not a customer." He straightened, easy now, nothing left of the man who'd slapped a printout on my counter thirty seconds earlier. "I work with Andrei. Kuznetsov's brother sends me around to new hires sometimes, see how they hold up when nobody's watching the tape."
"You're kidding."
"I'm very rarely kidding. It's a professional flaw." He tucked the printout under his arm like it had never mattered at all. "Most people either fold or start yelling back. You did neither. That's unusual."
"Where did you learn to talk to people like that, anyway? The voice, the stance." He studied me a beat too long for comfort. "That wasn't logistics training."
"Community theater." I said it fast, the first thing that landed, and kept my face perfectly straight. "Three years running. I played a lot of angry mothers."
He stared at me for a second, then laughed again, harder this time, and shook his head like I'd surprised him twice in one conversation.
"Name's Ilya. I run collections for Andrei on the side." He held out a hand, and I shook it, still half convinced this was some second layer of the test. "Don't worry. I don't file reports on people who pass."
"Comforting. Slightly."
"Angry mothers. Sure." He was still grinning when he turned to leave. "Kuznetsov's going to like you. God help him."
I didn't sit down until he was fully out of sight, my knees informing me they'd been holding more weight than I realized.
My phone buzzed again before I'd caught my breath. "Heard some guy gave you grief up front," Nina's text read. "You good?"
"Fine," I typed, the same lie as this morning, dressed up in fewer words this time.
"You're going to owe me a real answer eventually."
"Eventually. Not today."
The office phone rang again before I'd finished breathing normally.
"You sound out of breath," Callahan said.
"I was walking fast."
"To where?"
"Does it matter?" I closed my eyes for a second, willing my voice back into something steadier. "I'm fine, Frank. I told you that an hour ago."
"You told me a version of fine that I didn't buy an hour ago either." A pause, softer this time, almost careful. "The wire, Reyes. This week."
"This week."
"That's the first straight answer you've given me all day." He hung up before I could decide whether that observation deserved a response.
I stared at the dead line a long moment, then put the phone down and let myself feel, just for a minute, everything about the day I hadn't had time to feel while it was happening.
My apartment that evening still smelled faintly of paint, most of the boxes still taped shut, the one working kitchen drawer still holding a phone case I hadn't touched in five days.
I sat on the couch without turning on the overhead light, the streetlamp outside doing most of the work, and replayed the man's laugh, Callahan's voice, my own hand moving toward a badge that didn't exist anymore.
I was still sitting there when two knocks landed on my door, quick and certain, the knock of someone who already expected to be let in.
I checked the peephole out of habit and found Maxim leaning against my doorframe like he owned the hallway, a paper bag balanced in one hand, his tie loosened in a way I'd never once seen it.
I opened the door without fully deciding to.
"I brought pad thai and zero explanation," he said, holding up the bag like evidence in a case neither of us had agreed to try.
"That's either incredibly thoughtful or deeply suspicious."
"It's the only one I had time to put together tonight." He glanced past me into the apartment, not pushing, just looking, the patience of a man used to being invited places rather than demanding entry. "You looked like you needed both. I could be wrong."
"You're rarely wrong. That might be the most annoying thing about you."
Something flickered across his face, quick and pleased, like he'd caught the echo of a joke he hadn't heard the original of.
"Best offer I've had all week," I said, and stepped back before I'd finished deciding whether that was true or just easier than telling him to leave.
He crossed the threshold like he'd done it a hundred times, set the bag down on my counter without asking where anything went, and started opening cabinets like he already suspected he'd find them mostly empty.
"You don't own plates."
"I own two plates. They're both dirty."
"Then we'll eat out of the containers like civilized people." He found forks somehow, handed me one, and settled onto the couch without waiting for permission, which should have annoyed me more than it did.
I sat down beside him, close enough that our shoulders nearly touched, and let the paper containers fill the space between us instead of the conversation neither of us had started yet.
He didn't ask about my day. I didn't ask why he'd shown up at my door with takeout and no warning, both of us apparently agreeing without saying so that some questions could wait.
We ate mostly in silence, comfortable in a way I hadn't expected comfortable to feel with him, his shoulder warm against mine, the television playing something neither of us watched.
I thought about telling him what happened at the counter today, the coat, the printout, the hand that had almost reached for a badge that wasn't mine to reach for anymore.
I decided against it, the way I decided against most things that would have made the evening more complicated than it needed to be.
At some point he told a story about Kirill losing an argument with a vending machine, and I laughed harder than the story probably deserved, and somewhere in the middle of that laugh the tight coil in my chest finally let go for the first time all day.
His phone lit up on the coffee table beside him, buzzing once, then again, sharp and insistent in a way that had nothing to do with a normal night.
He checked it, and whatever he saw drained the ease out of his face in under a second, replaced by something flat and focused I hadn't seen on him since the night with Chapman.
"I have to go," he said, already on his feet, already reaching for his jacket.
"Is everything all right?"
"It will be." He said it like a promise he intended to keep by force if necessary.
"Same time tomorrow?" I asked, steadier than I felt.
"Bring better plates next time."
"I'll consider it." He touched my jaw the way he had outside the restaurant, brief and careful, and then he was gone, the door still swinging on its hinges when I finally moved to shut it myself.
I closed the door, leaned against it, and only then noticed the oversized watch on my wrist, the one with the taped band, the one I checked on instinct every single night before bed.
I hadn't looked at it once since he'd knocked.
I'd spent twelve days on this job counting minutes, and tonight was the first night I forgot there were any left to count.