I unfold it slowly, careful not to tear it.
"You're not hard to find. But you are running out of places to hide."
—G
10
LOGAN
Where is she?
The thought pricks at my mind like a thorn. But before I can search for her, the door swings open.
At that moment, I knew something was wrong.
The temperature drops with her entrance, and it has nothing to do with the winter air rushing in behind her.
Her shoulders are rigid, her steps measured in a way that speaks of restraint rather than calm.
She doesn't speak. Doesn't meet my gaze.
Just shrugs off her coat, hanging it with precision on the hook beside the door. The soft thud of her boots against the floorboards echoes in the silence as she moves past me, disappearing into the back room without a word.
That silence?
It's not distance.
It's dread.
I know it intimately.
Felt it coil in my gut before the mission went sideways in North Africa.
Before the sand ran red and the extraction never came. That particular kind of quiet that means someone's world just collapsed, and they're still processing how to breathe through the ruins.
I follow her.
She stands by the window, staring out at nothing. The afternoon light catches on her profile, illuminating the severe line of her jaw, the tension gathered at the corners of her eyes.
Her fingers drum against her thigh—a tell she doesn't realize she has.
"Where did you go?" I keep my voice low, steady. The kind of tone that won't shatter fragile things.
She doesn't look at me.
"Nowhere."
The lie sits between us like broken glass. I take a step closer, careful not to crowd her space but close enough that she can't pretend I'm not here.
"Try again."
Still nothing.
Her back stiffens, breath catching just slightly.
A normal person wouldn't notice. But I've spent years reading bodies for signs of threat, fear, deception. The subtle tensing of her shoulders tells me everything her words don't.
I watch her carefully, tracking the micro-expressions that flicker across her face—calculation, hesitation, fear.
