“It is exactly what it looks like,” I answer, just as quiet. “It looks like proximity. It looks like choice. It looks like risk. And it looks like me making sure Caldwell doesn’t get to put her next to a poster board and ask her to read into a microphone.”
“You think he’ll try to put her in front of a committee,” Reid says. “As a witness.”
“I think he wants a story shaped like hers,” I say. “If she stands next to him, he gets to pretend the wordartis evidence. If she refuses him, he’ll call her compromised and print that word too. Either way he uses her. We don’t give him either.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Double the perimeter on her. Seat an operative at the guest wing door who can pass as concierge. Any calls to her device from D.C. area codes get flagged and recorded through legal. And change the house locks on the service corridor to controlled. She doesn’t need surprises at her back.”
Reid bites the inside of his cheek like he does when he’s debating a thing he’s already lost. “And what do you wantmeto do when she decides you’re the enemy of her independence?”
“Be better at your job than I am at arguing with a woman who has better instincts than both of us,” I say. “And make sure the cameras stay cameras, not contact.”
He doesn’t answer that. He closes the folder, tucks it under his arm. “Navarro at 6:30?” he asks.
“Now,” I say, and step into the control room adjoining my office.
We take the call on the secure screen without preamble. Navarro’s face appears with hospital light behind her. She’s on a bench. She’s in scrubs. There’s a smudge of pen on her jaw. She’s been here since three. She skips hello. “I’m not bringing my people into that hearing,” she says. “I don’t care what subpoena he drops. They can hold me. They can fine me. They can threaten to pull funding. I will not bring survivors into that room.”
“You won’t,” I say. “We’ll take the contempt and we’ll win it upstream. Your name is on a subpoena because he wants to spook other doctors. He wants headlines that sayDefies SenateandHidden Clinics. We’re not giving him what he wants.”
“North needs to move,” she says. “We had a man parked down the hill last night with binoculars, and one of the new arrivals recognized him. Ex-partner. If Caldwell names us—”
“North moves in two hours,” I say. “We have fallback ready. Logistics is staging at the west turn. All digital logs for last week are already in a vault. You will get a new intake schedule tonight.”
She leans into the camera. “Who leaked?”
“We’re finding out,” I say. “If it’s ours, we’ll handle it. If it’s his, we’ll handle it.”
“What do you need from me?” she asks. Navarro never asks whatsheneeds. That’s why I appointed her.
“A statement on camera this afternoon,” I say. “Not at a podium. One-on-one with a reporter we pick. You’ll saywe save lives,andwe don’t reveal locations because people dieand you will not use Caldwell’s name. You’ll saylawmakers, plural. You’ll saysome officials. You won’t feed his search engine.”
“Send copy,” she says, already moving.
“And Navarro—” I add.
She pauses.
“Sleep,” I say.
She huffs a laugh that isn’t one. “After we move North,” she says, and drops.
Reid is already dialing legal. I wave him on and step back into my office. The mist is thinner now. The hedges are losing their edges. The studio behind me is still and loud because my head won’t stop filling it with what happened. I rub the heel of my hand down the scar because that’s the one place my nerves answer directly.
You saved people by staying untouchable. Now you’ve touched her.
The sentence handles itself like an accusation. I move it across the desk and lay it next to Caldwell’s threat and Flores’sabsence. I try to fit the pieces together without lying about any of them. Send her away rings the loudest at first because pure logic tells me distance is safety. That equation collapses when I add Caldwell. Off the estate she’s visible in ways I can’t predict. He’s already bought call logs for my staffers’ personal phones; he can buy an Uber record; he can buy a doorman if he wants to. In here, the only person who gets to decide what touches her is me. The ethics of that sentence are ugly and true at the same time.
On the muted TV, Caldwell lifts a folder and taps it with his finger like a schoolteacher. His tie is the exact red of a headline scientist would pick if he were asked to paintdangeron a graph. My jaw sets all by itself.You want a witness. You want a woman with paint on her hands to stand next to you and lend you a conscience you haven’t earned. I already have her. And she isn’t yours.
The phone buzzes again. Mara this time:Donor board wants talking points. Some are spooked. Others want blood.I reply:Three bullets. 1) Our clients’ lives > optics. 2) We obey the law; we do not help abuse it. 3) We will not be bait.She sends back a thumbs-up.
I open a new thread and type to Aurora, the simplest way I can:10:00 — West Wing briefing. Non-negotiable.I hesitate. Then I add the thing I would not add to anyone else:You’re not safe out there.I hit send and let the sentence sit on the glass for three seconds before the bubbles fade and the message becomes a mark in a thread that carries other marks I am not going to read again right now.
There’s movement at the door to the guest hall. The concierge I added overnight shifts to get a sightline down the corridor. I don’t need to see him to know his posture has changed because my security breathe in a different rhythm when the person they’re hired to guard wakes up behind a closed door. The house is listening.
Reid steps back in with a printout. “We pulled Flores’s machine,” he says. “There’s a draft email to a Hill domain from yesterday afternoon. It was never sent. But the attachment was the North supply run. Metadata says she made the PDF at 12:04. At 1:10 she googled Caldwell’s chief of staff. At 2:00 she pulled up bus routes. At 2:14 her phone died near the fence.”
