Estella. Iris. Both exist, yet both feel unreal, suspended between truth and illusion. Both are as solid as they are fragile, present yet just out of reach.
There’s nothing about her in any file, any system, any traceable record. She’s a ghost in flesh, someone reborn under a new name, a new life with no trail, no origin. Every program I run comes up empty. Facial recognition fails. DNA scans match no one. Even the samples she leaves behind at her crime scenes—she leaves them on purpose, taunting the idea of being caught.
For her, it isn’t a threat. It’s a statement.
You can’t catch what doesn’t exist.
But now I have her real name. That single piece of truth feels like a loaded gun in my hand. A spark of excitement stirs low in my gut, coiling upward through my chest until it presses against my ribs. My palms sweat as I rub them together, the coarse bandage scraping against my skin, barely grounding me. Curiosity burns through me, feverish and raw. It’s almost unbearable.
A need.
To know her. To know who she was before this. What her childhood looked like—the house, the streets, the laughter or silence that filled them. What happened to her family. The schools, the cities, the shadows she passed through. Who she trusted.
Who she loved.
And that last one—thatfuckingthought—twists deeper than I’d like to admit.
Herlovers.
It’s stupid to assume, and yet I do. She must have had many. How could she not? She’s beautiful in that quiet, haunting way that demands to be seen—not just for her body and face, but for the storm that lives behind her eyes. It’s her humor, her calm defiance, the way she teases the edge of danger without blinking. It’s magnetic. Even through the mask, her true self emerges, and I want to tear it away piece by piece, just to glimpse what’s underneath.
She’s unraveling, inch by inch, painfully, achingly, in a way that feels fucking beautiful. I can feel it in the tilt of her shoulders when I speak, in the flash of hesitation in her eyes when I draw near. I notice the slight catch in her breath when our hands nearly meet, a fragile, electric pause suspended between us.
It feels as though she is studying me just as intently, tracing my movements with the same quiet fascination, pulled in by the same unspoken gravity. Every glance, every subtle shift, hints at a tension coiled tight, ready to spring.
It’s as if any second now she might surrender, step that final inch forward, and close the distance between us. She might let her fingers brush mine and let the world fall away with the simple, unguarded act of touch.
For a moment, I let myself slide—the world loosens at the seams, and everything around me puddles into a smear of sound and color. The van hums, tires whispering over frost, voices a muffled wash behind the steel walls. I zone out, tracing the aftertaste of strawberry on my tongue, hunting for the ghost of her gloss. A few minutes ago, my brain pitched a daydream at me like a gust, and now I step willingly into it, letting the image thicken.
She is on the bed, soft light pooling across her collarbone, that habitual tilt of her head she gives me when she’s curious. I imagine my hands mapping the planes of her body, warmthrough layers of fabric. I picture her arching into the touch, offering more, the little noises she makes folded into the mattress. My mouth wants to map the seam of her lips, then travel down to the seams in her skin, my tongue tracing the ridges of her scars as if I could read a life in them.
The fantasy unfurls for a moment, thick and sweet, curling through me like smoke, then shatters—snapping like a frozen twig underfoot—as I wrench myself back from it, dragging my focus into the present.
Fuck. What the fuck am I thinking of?
This is not the time. Not with Ezra Thompson waiting. The entire drive here has been a storm in my mind—a tangle of strategies and contingencies, small, precise chess moves planned out in my head, each dissolving the instant I try to lock them in place. My thoughts coil and unravel, restless and fleeting, a current beneath the surface of the control I pretend to maintain.
Why plan at all? Ezra is a rat, and rats don’t deserve anything. Still, some small shard of whatever passes for my humanity tries to wedge itself into the equation—a residue of thought that whispers: consider.
Consider what, exactly, I can’t say. Consideration is a dangerous indulgence when The Order is blunt and bright: eliminate the target.
No capture. No interrogation. Justeliminate.
They don’t want him alive to talk; they want the ink wiped clean. If they had merely wanted him taken in, they wouldn’t have sent instructions so mercilessly clear. So if I am indulging fantasies of tenderness, it is a private failing I cannot afford to reveal.
Practicalities scrape against the fantasy’s edges. With two extra bodies in the van, the only realistic way to get to him is to isolate him—improbable and messy on a mountain road. Even ifI did catch him alone, what then? Cut, burn, leave? What would I tell Estella?
The questions taste sour on my tongue, making them impossible to swallow cleanly. The plan stretches out before me, stark in black and white, precise and unyielding. Everything beyond it is improvisation, set against the frozen expanse of ice around us, reflecting every misstep before it happens.
A soft voice edged with a tint of roughness cuts through the fog of my thoughts. “What the fuck are you? His pet?”
I blink hard, forcing my face back into the neutral mask I wear when the world asks for work. A shiver runs through me as I glance down and catch it—a hard, telltale bulge pressing against the fabric of my not-quite-dark pants. Heat rushes up my neck. Reflexively, before anyone can notice, I lace my fingers together and drop my hands over it, palms flat, pretending the gesture is some casual tuck rather than the clumsy concealment it is.
Fuck. Me.
I force myself to breathe, slow and steady, matching the rhythm of the van’s engine, each inhale and exhale a small anchor in the chaos. The sudden bump as we hit a pothole jolts through me, a small indignity that presses wrong against the weight between my legs. Every nerve bristles, alert to the disruption, aware that nothing about this moment is as it fucking should be.
Estella tries to bait the man near us, but he doesn’t even look up. His bright blue eyes stay fixed on the laptop screen, indifferent and small in its glow.
