Chapter 6 #2
“I was sitting at a desk running numbers for people who wanted to make more money. Naomi was out there doing something that mattered, and I was building financial models for quarterly reports.” I picked up a piece of toast and tore the corner off.
Didn’t eat it. Just held it. “After she died, I couldn’t keep doing that.
I needed to be closer to the work she was doing.
Even if I couldn’t do it the way she did. ”
“You didn’t want to try to become an agent?”
I almost laughed. “My lungs wouldn’t clear the physical.
I can’t run two miles without my inhaler, and the Bureau isn’t interested in field agents who need to stop and breathe in the middle of a foot chase.
” I said it the way I always said it, matter-of-fact, the sting long since faded into something that just was.
“Contractor was the door that opened. So I walked through it.”
He nodded. Not with pity. Just acknowledgment. “Analysis work is important, regardless of whether you’re an agent or contractor.”
He picked up his own coffee and drank, and I ate the piece of toast I’d been holding because my hands needed something to do, and food was better than fidgeting.
“It’s not glamorous, and nobody in that building thinks of me as anything other than a talking spreadsheet.
” I pushed a forkful of eggs around the plate.
“But being a contractor gave me access to the FBI system and cases. And once I was inside, I started building a predictive model on Lucian Kindt’s trafficking operation. ”
Travis’s hand tightened around his mug. Just for a second, but I saw it. Of course he knew who Kindt was. Naomi had been killed on a mission trying to stop Kindt’s trafficking ring.
“You’re investigating Lucian Kindt?”
“Well, not officially. Nobody at the Bureau would authorize that from a contractor. I’m building an analytical model on Kindt’s operation.” I watched his face. His jaw was locked tight. “I’m sorry. I know that name is—”
“Keep going.”
“I’ve been building my model on my own time, using my own analysis, outside my assigned work. Nobody asked me to. Nobody wanted me to. I did it because the operation that killed my sister is still running, and nobody is doing anything about it.”
“Tell me what you’ve found.”
I gave him the structure. Not the full methodology I would have given an analyst, not the slow build I’d tried with Pratt. Travis didn’t need the primer.
I told him about the courier movements along the I-15 corridor, the pattern I’d found buried inside what looked like randomness, the predictive framework that could project forward with eighty-six percent confidence over the last four months of backtesting.
He asked about the confidence intervals. About the geographic clustering. About the variable weighting between temporal and spatial indicators.
Each question landed precisely, surgically, in the place where my model was either strong or vulnerable, and each one told me he’d already absorbed the architecture of what I’d built and was stress-testing it in real time.
I’d presented this data before. To Pratt. To a senior analyst who’d listened for twelve minutes and then asked me if I’d finished the mortgage fraud case. They’d barely listened. Definitely hadn’t cared enough to ask questions.
This was different. Travis caught every word. He held each one. He turned them over and handed them back sharpened. I could feel my own thinking getting clearer as I talked, as if the act of being understood was making the work better.
“Ten days ago, I found a communication node,” I said. “Active coordination hub inside Kindt’s network. Real-time courier scheduling, route assignments, timing. Not projections. The actual operational data.”
His hands went still around his mug. “From an FBI terminal.”
“Yes.”
“Using your contractor credentials.”
“Yes.”
He closed his eyes for one second. When he opened them, his expression was something I couldn’t fully read. “How long were you inside the system?”
“Long enough to pull the scheduling data. Maybe forty minutes.”
“Did you route through a proxy?”
“No. I went in clean. From my workstation.”
He set his mug down very carefully. “Using your contractor credentials. From a federal terminal. With no cover.”
I knew what he was suggesting. That Kindt’s organization might be able to pinpoint it was me who’d accessed the data. They already had. But I didn’t want to guilt Travis into helping me.
“I didn’t have the tools to do it any other way. That’s why I’m here. I need someone who can access that node without leaving federal fingerprints. Someone who can validate my model against real intelligence, not just the public data I’ve been building from on my own.”
“You want me to be your technical partner to help gather enough info to take down Kindt.”
“Well, get enough intel that the Agency has to listen to me and act on it.”
He was quiet for a long time. Long enough that the toast went cold on my plate and the coffee in my mug stopped steaming. He sat across from me with his hands around his own mug, and I could see thoughts moving behind his face without being able to read any of them.
Then he looked up.
“You need to drop this.”
The words didn’t register at first. It was like hearing a sentence in a language I’d forgotten, where the sounds were familiar, but the meaning took an extra second to arrive.
“What? I thought you understood what I was saying.”
“I do understand, and I can’t help you.”
“Why?”
He didn’t respond to that question. “Go home. Report your Kindt data to your supervisor through official channels and let the Bureau process it. Walk away from the communication node. Walk away from the case.”
“Are you serious? You listened to everything I just said. You asked questions that told me you understood every piece of it. And your answer is to hand it to the people who’ve been ignoring me every time I’ve tried to tell them.”
“My answer is to get you away from this before the people you’ve been tracking figure out who was inside their system.”
He was telling me to walk away. From the case, from this room, from him. Just like everyone else.
So I would.
“Thank you for breakfast,” I said. My voice belonged to someone else.
Someone calm, measured, professionally gracious.
The voice I’d perfected in Pratt’s office, the one that got me from the rejection back to my cubicle without breaking anything on the way.
“And for the guest room. I appreciate your time. Sorry about the break in. I won’t bother you again. ”
I stood up. Pushed the chair in. Walked out of the kitchen and back to the guest room and packed my bag with the same efficient movements I used to shut down my workstation at the end of every day.
Toothbrush. Sleep clothes. The towels he’d given me, folded and placed by the sink.
Thumb drive in the inside pocket. Inhaler in the side pouch.
Travis was in the hallway when I came out. He hadn’t moved from the kitchen doorway. His arms were crossed, and his face held something complicated that I didn’t have the energy or the right to interpret.
“Sera.”
I held out a hand. “No need to say anything further. You’ve been very clear. I wish you the best. Take care.”
I walked past him. Down the hallway, through the living room with its untouched couch and empty coffee table, through the front door I’d opened last night with his dead girlfriend’s name.
The morning air hit my face. I kept walking. Down the porch steps, around the house to where my car was parked by the utility door. Bag in the passenger seat. Key in the ignition. Engine on.
I pulled down the gravel driveway, through the gate that opened automatically on approach, and onto the county road.
I drove and didn’t look back.