Chapter 32 – Cassian
Files cover the desk in stacks I created last night and didn’t touch. The coffee in front of me is black and cold. My door is half open. Through it I can see the corner of the studio where she came to me, where I let restraint bend until it held us both instead of just me.
I’m not dressed yet. I should put the uniform on before anyone from the day shift comes to the office door. Instead I sit shirtless with a legal memo open in front of me and see none of it because my mind keeps slipping to the wall and the sound she made when she let go of her performance and spoke with the only voice I trust: the one that doesn’t shape itself for an audience.
Stop. You don’t get to linger. That’s how you make mistakes that cost other people.
I stand, pull the shirt on, button it from throat to sternum, and tuck it. I turn the TV up long enough to hear the network’s breakfast voice: “—in a stunning escalation, Caldwell claims whistleblowers suggest unregulated clinical operations—” I turn it off. I don’t need his adjectives before six a.m.
The phone on the desk vibrates once. Reid:I’m downstairs. Media at the gate. Navarro on standby. We have a problem.
I open the door all the way. “In.”
Reid enters fast, jacket damp at the shoulders. He doesn’t sit. He lays a folder on the desk and taps the top sheet. “Caldwell’s committee issued an overnight subpoena. Not the shells. Navarro by name. And this—” He flips a page to a staff memo printed from our legal channel. “—is a leaked itinerary for Sanctuary North’s supply run. It hit a blogger at two a.m. and then a Hill aide retweeted it and then deleted.”
My voice is steady. My palms turn warm. “Who had the itinerary?”
“Operations, logistics, the clinic lead in North, and your office because you asked for audits last quarter.” He doesn’t meet my eyes on the last one. He doesn’t have to. We both know what a missing person in a system like mine looks like before it’s a headline.
“And Navarro?” I ask.
“Her counsel called at five,” Reid says. “She’s not panicking yet. But Caldwell’s latest brief insinuates he’ll name locations on the Senate floor if we refuse to cooperate. He wants cameras when he does it.”
“If he names a site, we move in hours, not days,” I say. “Start with North. Trigger the fallback protocol. No traceable vehicles, no repeat routes, no texts. Get them under before eight, and change the intake ban to seventy-two hours.”
“That’s going to put three new arrivals on ice,” he says.
“Move them to Portside. Quietly. You’ll get me an updated headcount by nine. Anyone with open court cases gets a new number, new counsel, and a burn phone.”
“Done,” Reid says. He points to a second sheet. “There’s more. A staffer is missing.”
“Whose staffer?”
“Ours,” he reveals. “Miriam Flores. New in development. She didn’t badge out last night. Her car is still in the lot. Her phone pings once at 2:14 a.m. near the east fence and then dies.”
I don’t sit. My body stacks decisions instead. “Pull entrance camera buffers for the last twelve hours. Check the east gate proximity logs for any ride-share or unmarked plates. Call security two blocks out and put those eyes on Caldwell’s people. Flores’s desk. Who has a copy of her keys?”
“Development head and facilities,” he says. “We’re pulling her machine from the network.”
“Do it. If she’s part of the leak, I want proof before I make a move that scares a good kid who’s just lost in the wrong way. If she’s hurt, I want to be the one to tell the police what to say to press. Call legal. Freeze non-essential disbursements and get me a note I can read at donors tonight at seven. Keep it under sixty words.”
Reid nods. He’s writing while we talk. He’s good at being a right hand because he knows when I’m moving ahead of the pen. “Statement to press?” he asks.
“Draft it. Two versions. One if Caldwell stays in subtext. One if he goes direct. In both, call his threat reckless, not evil. People forgive recklessness. They forgive a man who wants attention. They don’t forgive evil and we’re not trying to teach them to put him in that box; we’re trying to bleed him of oxygen.”
Reid lets out a thin breath. “Understood.”
“Anything else?” I ask.
He hesitates. Looks at the open door to the studio and back. “Yes,” he says. “Ms. Hale.”
I don’t move, but the room tilts a degree. “What about her?”
“You know the answer,” he says. He’s careful, because he’s learned that the wrong kind of care makes me cut.
“She is under my protection,” I say. The sentence lands heavier than any signature I’ve put on paper. The room hears it. So does Reid.
“That’s not what it looks like,” he says quietly.
