I pulled out my phone. Took screenshots of the camera adjustment timestamps and the authorization requests.
Backed them up. Encrypted them, and added them to my documentation file.
I thought about Rune. Whether he was awake. Whether he felt the surveillance tightening around him like I did.
I picked up my phone and pulled up his contact. Not yet. Not at 2:14 AM when I had nothing to offer except confirmation that the danger was real and getting closer.
I didn't sleep.
At 4:30 AM, I watched dawn break over Portland. The sky shifted from black to deep blue to pale gray.
My laptop was still open. Security feeds still running.
I'd spent the past two hours documenting everything I could find. Every camera adjustment. Every personnel rotation andevery authorization that looked routine on its surface but added up to something deliberate underneath.
Obvious patterns. Only two days remaining to the deadline.
It had never been about removing me from the detail. It was about creating a crisis Kang couldn't ignore. A failure so visible and undeniable that keeping me became impossible to justify.
Soo-jin didn't need to injure Rune fatally. It only had to be visible and just enough. It had to show that my presence created danger rather than preventing it.
A fall during a show or a corridor incident. A security breach that happened while I was supposed to be watching.
Something that looked accidental. Soo-jin could frame it as my failure to maintain proper distance. A sign of my compromised judgment.
Precisely what had happened in Seattle. This time I could see it coming.
I closed the laptop.
Rune was three floors up. 1704. Someone adjusted the camera outside his door to watch him more closely.
They'd set the stage. I just didn't know when the curtain would rise.
My phone showed 5:15 AM. Briefing at 8:00. We'd fly to LA after that.
Higher stakes. More pressure. More opportunities for something to go catastrophically wrong in ways that they could blame on the wrong variables.
I needed to warn Rune. Not terrify him. Only make sure he understood that the machinery wasn't theoretical anymore.
I picked up my phone.
Griffin:I'm awake if you are. We should talk.
The message showed as delivered. I set the phone down and crossed to the window instead of pacing.
Portland was waking up. Early morning traffic was building. The city began its day without any awareness of the machinery grinding inside one of its hotels.
My phone buzzed.
Rune:I'm awake. Your room or mine?
My chest tightened. Heat followed immediately. The image of Rune in my room. Or me in his.
Griffin:Mine. Safer.
Rune:Give me five minutes.
Chapter twelve
