CHAPTER FOUR
Miles had suggested his apartment mostly because the alternative was a restaurant, and restaurants meant other people.
Other people meant performing a version of himself he didn't currently have the energy to maintain.
He had told Sarah Kim this directly (she was the only person he would reveal such a stark truth to) when he'd texted her earlier in the week.
He understood that it wasn't the most compelling dinner invitation ever extended, but she had responded with a thumbs up and asked what kind of food he wanted.
So apparently it had been compelling enough.
She arrived at seven with the takeout bags and he met her at the door to take them for her while she got her jacket off.
The apartment was clean, or clean enough, and he had put music on before she arrived.
It was something from the mid-nineties that he had been listening to a lot lately without examining why.
They spread the containers across the coffee table and settled on the couch with beers and plates.
They then fell into the simple and low-maintenance conversation and comfort they'd been building over the past two or three months.
It was the routine of people who had spent enough time around each other recently that the silences didn't need to be filled immediately.
The food was good, from an Indian restaurant Sarah had introduced him to.
They talked about small things for a while.
Sarah mentioned a new show she'd been watching.
Miles said he hadn't watched anything in weeks, but he'd been reading a few old horror novels he'd loved in college.
"You look tired," she said after a while, not unkindly.
"I am tired."
"More than usual?"
He opened another container and spooned rice onto his plate. He shrugged and said, "It's been a long two weeks."
Sarah pulled her legs up onto the couch and settled back against the armrest, her plate balanced on her knee. She looked at him for a moment before she said anything else. "Have you been sleeping?"
"Off and on."
"What does off and on mean for you specifically?"
"It means I fall asleep fine and then wake up at three and don't really get back there." He took a drink of his beer. "You sound like Dr. Mitchell.”
“Good.”
He smiled at her and said, “I've been having some bad dreams."
"About what?"
He considered how much to say. Sarah was not a person he had to manage carefully, which was one of the things he valued about spending time with her, and so the habit of deflection felt more conscious with her than it did with most people.
"Kane's escape," he said. "It’s just these stupid, different versions of the same thing. I'm there when it happens, watching it, and I can't do anything. I can't move, can't call anyone, can't get in front of it. I just stand there while it happens and he grins at me as he leaves."
Sarah was quiet for a moment. The music shifted to the next track, something slower than what had been playing before. He recognized it as “Glycerin” by Bush.
"That's a pretty specific nightmare," she said.
"Yeah."
"Are you talking to Mitchell about it?"
"I saw her this week."
"That's not what I asked."
Miles looked at her. She was watching him with the direct, patient attention she brought to everything. Easier because she didn't push dramatically. Harder because she noticed when he was doing it.
"We talked about some things," he said. "It was a productive session."
"Okay," Sarah said, in a tone that indicated she didn't entirely believe him but wasn't going to press it further.
He was glad she let it go. But he was also distantly aware that Mitchell would find the entire exchange interesting.
"Can I ask you something work-related?" he said.
"Sure. I mean, if you must."
"Honestly, what's your read on where the task force is right now? And I mean your actual read. Not the version you'd give Hayes."
Sarah considered the question for a moment, tilting her beer against her knee.
"I think we're stretched too thin and nobody wants to say it out loud.
The Kane manhunt is pulling attention away from the disciple work, and the disciple work was already slow before that.
We've been at this for months and we've got eleven identified and either captured or deceased, and the rest is speculation and dead ends. "
"Twelve, counting the Manhattan case."
"Twelve. Right." She paused. "I don't think the structure is wrong. I think the problem is that we're reactive. We identify a disciple after they've already killed someone, and then we chase them. The proactive piece, finding them before they activate, that's where we're not getting traction."
"That's what the task force was supposed to fix. And there are some very good agents on board. I keep seeing the name Hahn floated around—Agent Tim Hahn, with a background in undercover work. He’s supposed to have a good nose for this sort of thing."
“Yeah, I’ve seen that name, too,” Miles said.
“Anyway…none of this is surprising. After all, we have the entire country to look for these very specific, very quiet people."
"I know. I just wanted to hear someone else say it."
She smiled briefly. "Happy to be your reality check."
Miles set his plate down on the coffee table and leaned back.
The beer was cold and the food had been good.
Also, the apartment felt less empty than it had in a while, and he was aware of all of that simultaneously in a way that made him slightly uncomfortable.
It had been seven months since Elena had passed away.
He had thought about this dinner more than he'd thought about most things in the past two weeks, which was its own piece of information that he was not ready to do anything with.
He had told himself he was simply glad to have someone to eat dinner with who wasn't Vic, which was true, but it was not the complete truth.
He looked at Sarah and found her already looking at him. They both looked away at slightly different moments, like kids across the lunch table, harboring crushes.
They talked for another forty minutes or so, easy and enjoyable.
The longer they spoke, the more Miles felt the particular tension of the past two weeks ease down to something closer to manageable.
He was on his second beer and Sarah was finishing her first when his phone lit up on the cushion beside him.
He glanced at the screen and saw HAYES on the display.
"Sorry, it’s Hayes,” he told Sarah. He then answered the call with, “This is Sterling.”
"Sterling." Hayes sounded clipped and alert, which at 8:20 on a weeknight meant something had come in.
"We have a suspicious death in Austin, Texas that could track with Kane.
A fortune teller was found dead in her shop, and responding officers initially called it accidental.
But after the autopsy, the medical examiner flagged it due to electrical burns consistent with high-voltage exposure.
Local detectives discovered that there's an electrical setup in the shop that doesn't match any normal commercial equipment configuration. The local field office reached out."
Miles was already sitting forward. "How high voltage?"
"That's part of what needs to be established. The equipment in the shop is being held for examination. There's a neon sign apparatus that the ME thinks may have been the source, but it's not a straightforward conclusion."
"Neon sign transformers run at several thousand volts," Miles said. "If the ground was disconnected and someone made contact with the secondary terminal, it would be sufficient."
"Which is why I'm calling you and not leaving this to the Austin field office." Hayes paused briefly. "I want you and Stone on a flight tomorrow morning. I'll have the local contacts ready for you when you land."
"Understood." Miles stood and walked toward the kitchen, lowering his voice out of habit rather than necessity. "What about Kim? She's been running chemical compound surveillance for the disciple work, but if this is elemental, she could be useful on the ground."
"I'd rather keep her where she is," Hayes said without much thought.
"She's in the middle of three active screening cases and I don't want to pull her off that. You and Stone are sufficient for the initial assessment. If it develops, we'll reassess. And if it doesn’t, we’ll hopefully have you back home in less than two days. "
"Understood."
"I've got you and Stone on a 7 a.m. flight out of Dulles. I'll send the details."
Hayes ended the call, leaving Miles to stand in his kitchen for a moment. He considered the details—not quite sure it did track with Kane and his disciples, before walking back to the living room. Sarah was already reading his expression, smiling sadly.
"You have to go," she said.
"Tomorrow morning. Austin." He sat back down and reached for his beer. "There’s a death that looks like it might be elemental. And I stress looks like.”
She absorbed that without visible reaction, which was one of the things he had come to rely on in her. She didn't perform alarm. "What's the element?"
"That's what we're going there to find out. And because it’s not so clear, it makes me think it could be a wild goose chase.”
“Better safe than sorry, though…right?”
He nodded and began gathering the takeout containers into a loose stack, consolidating what was left.
As he threw it all in the bin, Miles looked back to her for a moment and thought about saying something else, something that acknowledged the evening for what it had been. He didn't quite get there.
"This was good," he said instead. "I'm glad you came over."
Sarah looked up at him. "Me, too," she said, and her voice was straightforward and without any subtlety. She held his gaze for just a second longer than the words required before she looked back down at her beer bottle.
Miles finished his beer and felt a small war begin to form in his head as he wondered what it might be like to kiss Sarah while standing in the shadow of grief that was Elena's memory.