Another message drops in before I can type:Also: part-time nurse (Ghita L.) missed 04:00 start. Not answering. GPS ping dead since midnight. Last known near south ferry loop. Might be nothing. Might be a lot.
I read it twice, and the second time I let the questions line up in my head with the neatness of a row of scalpels. How many credentials had Ghita? Which doors do they open? Whohired her? Who vetted the hire? Who spoke with her last? Why is Caldwell pressing hard here instead of at North Harbor where I’m sitting? Because he thinks Haven South is softer. Because he knows I’m distracted. Because he’s testing how many fires I can put out while holding what matters in my hands.
“Stop,” I tell myself, because my brain will chase those lines into a snarl if I let it.
She exhales in her sleep—a small sound like someone agreeing with themselves. The corner of my mouth softens without my permission. The fact that she is here, that she stayed, that she trusted me enough to fall apart and then fall asleep where I could watch her, is the most precise pleasure I have ever known and the most potent liability. There is nothing in the security manual for this.
You were supposed to guide her,I think, anger aimed at the man in the glass.Not take her. And now you won’t let her go.
The phone buzzes again. This time it’s Navarro’s name and an image of a chart showing heart rate, medications, and room assignment, overlaid with a simple message:New intake at South asking to call mother. Not safe to allow. Staff short. Caldwell chatter increased. Will update after morning rounds.
I send back:Hold intake phones until we can rotate comms. Zero public calls. Tell them it’s a system outage; I’ll take the ethics complaint. Move two floaters from West Annex to South. Double badge checks today and manual sign-ins on each wing.
Then to Reid, I write:Pull the deep-archive keys offline for now. Treat the breach like Stage Two even if we’re still in Stage One. Isolate HavS servers, air gap the data vault. Put two watchers on Ghita L.’s socials and bank records. If she’s in trouble, we find her. If she ran, we make sure she can’t take us with her.
A three-dot ellipsis bounces, then settles into words:Copy. I’ll route South traffic through North headend until we can clean.
I glance at the bed. At her. At the faint shadow of her mouth where my thumbs were, the way her body learned the sound of my voice and then taught my body something I can't unlearn. The thought of her picture, face lit by noise with my name under it, on some chyron behind Caldwell’s smirk scratches down my spine.
I set the phone down as quietly as I picked it up. When I sit on the edge of the bed, the mattress dips and her body rolls toward me like the tide finding a shore it has been trying to reach all night. Her face is open in sleep in a way it never is when she’s looking at me. She is not untouchable; she is not even difficult. She is simply her. It might be the hardest thing to hold.
I move a curl from her cheek. She stirs—a small intake of breath, eyelids struggling with light they can’t see. The urge to confess everything, about South, about Caldwell, and about the fact I’ve just moved her three chess squares deeper into a game she started by painting a door she didn’t know led down, flares and fades in the space of a breath.
“Working already?” she murmurs, voice shredded and soft.
“Always,” I answer, and it is both the truth and an excuse.
Her mouth curves, not a smile exactly, more like a body remembering a shape it likes. She blinks slowly, once, twice, and for a second I see the moment she registered that I was going to stop when she said blue and then start again when she asked. The memory sits in my chest like a lit match.
“Sleep,” I say, because rawness makes me generous in ways the day will punish, and I want her in my bed without wanting anything else from her for ten more minutes.
“Bossy,” she chuckles, eyes already slipping closed.
“Yes,” I say, and stand before I can back my own word down into charm.
In the dressing alcove I pull on a t-shirt, then the jacket I left on a chair. The cotton drags once over the scar and the slight pull is a reminder, not a pain. I take it with me when I leave. The door seals behind me with a muffled click.
The elevators are empty; I take the stairs because motion calms the animal and keeps the strategist awake.
The glass gives me myself again as I pass it. I look like a man who leads because no one else will when the floor drops. I also look like a man who is trying not to go back into a room where a woman is sleeping because he does not know how to lie next to her without flinching at the weight of his own want.
Mother used to tell me that want is like hunger: it tells you what you need, but it doesn’t tell you what you should eat. I still keep her picture in the desk I never use. She’ll be angry with me when I open it today, and I’ll deserve it. I left ethics on a chair last night when I picked up a blindfold and told myself the work justifies the means.
Did it? The thought lands like a hand on my face. I stop walking. I consider it. I let it hurt. Then I file it for later. I don’t get to aim my self-recrimination at the darkest parts of me when women I said I would protect are breathing in rooms built on my promises.
If I were a better man, I would wake her and tell her what I’m about to do. I would offer her a choice, and the choice would be clean. But clean is for people who have the luxury of a single column decision tree. I never have, not once, not since the night my mother’s best hopeful plan ended on a linoleum floor with sirens making promises no one kept. I was sixteen and shaking, and I built a life out of that lesson: safety is never clean.
I text Mara: Bring up Hale’s press kit. Scrub anything that looks like residency language. Rebrand—artist-in-residencebecomes visiting fellow for survivor arts initiative. If anyone asks, she’s consulting on program design. Put my name on the letterhead and the photo. If Caldwell wants to make a story out of her, he can do it with the story we give him.
Mara writes back: You know she’s going to hate that.
I type: She can hate it here where I can absorb the blow.
Three dots. No snark this time. Just: On it.
I text Reid again: Shift car two to East garage by 07:00. If she wants coffee, the answer is yes. Keep the driver in the dark about route changes until we’re moving. Swap plates in the tunnel if we need to peel anything off.
Copy.
