I mute the score and pull up the ambient track—fluorescent hum, distant intercom with that syrupy-harsh correctional tone. It’s worse, which is better. Shae’s breath carries like she’s in your ear.
“She sounds… small,” Blake says.
“She understands physics,” I say. “Small pulls you closer.”
He drags a hand down his face. “My God. You’re in love with her.”
“I’m in love with a hummingbird wearing a wolf’s coat,” I say. “That’s not affection. That’s professional interest.”
“And if she’s both?” His eyes flick to the timeline. “Wolf and hummingbird.”
“Then I want the shot where the beak looks clean and the blood is out of frame.” I exhale, feel the room press back. “We’re splitting hairs while The Watcher splits throats.”
“Don’t give that podcaster free marketing,” he says. “They’re an apparition.”
“They’re also not wrong that our timeline has stitches,” I say, and roll back to the body-cam skip. “This is missing two minutes.”
“Two minutes of the worst night of her life.”
“Two minutes of nothing you’ll let me see,” I say, finally meeting his eyes.
He opens his mouth, shuts it. “You think I’m hiding a magic trick for her.”
“I think you loved the way she looked at you like a mirror,” I say, “and you’ve been polishing ever since.”
The air goes very quiet. Somewhere in the building, a cart rattles. The elevator shudders.
Blake sets the camera on the desk—gentle. “We either believe her or we don’t,” he says. “We can’t make a show out of flinching.”
“We can,” I say, “if the flinch is honest.”
He laughs—no humor. “That’ll sell.”
“No one hired me to be a cashier,” I say, but we both know the subscription graph is the altar we kneel at after we kneel at art.
He stands. “Coffee. You want?”
“Black,” I say. He knows that. He leaves anyway. He needs air.
When he’s gone, the room feels bigger and meaner.
I scrub through the night-shift interview with Harper—plain blouse, stud earrings, a woman trying on gravitas like it’s too big in the shoulders. She calls Shae “a survivor” and herself “lucky to tell her story.” She blushes when I push, tells me about an engagement, a wedding planner, a venue. Earnest. Doomed.
“Don’t let them turn you into a trope,” I told her then.
She laughed like I’d complimented her shoes.
I splice a beat where Harper’s hands twist in her lap and her ring flashes—one clean sparkle, and the internet will decide she’s endearing.
The door opens. Blake. Coffee. The smell of burnt beans that comforts me more than it should.
He sets a cup by my elbow. “Don’t hate me,” he says—how men ask for absolution before confession.
He slides a thumb drive across the console like it weighs a pound. The label, handwritten:STAIRWELL_AUD.
“What is it?”
“Off the prison server,” he says. “Anonymous donation.”
