"Surveillance. On Victoria."
"On her network. Anyone she contacts, anyone who contacts her. Tommy can set up monitoring protocols that track communication without alerting her we're investigating."
I lean back in my chair, tension coiling through my shoulders after hours of staring at screens. "If Victoria finds out we're surveilling her, it burns the relationship permanently. Even if she's clean, she won't forgive the lack of trust."
"If she's dirty, the relationship is already burned. We just don't know it yet."
It's cold logic, ruthless pragmatism. Exactly how Micah operates when trust becomes a liability and operational security demands verification over faith in people's good intentions.
Exactly the logic that let him disappear for two years without contact.
"Kane needs to approve surveillance protocols," I say, standing and gathering my analysis files. "This goes beyond routine investigation if we're monitoring our primary intelligence broker."
"Agreed." Micah stands as well, maintaining distance across the analysis table. He knows exactly how close he can get before I react. "I'll compile the operational intelligence we've identified, provide context on Committee activity patterns that support surveillance authorization."
"Briefing this afternoon?"
"I'll be there."
We're back to cold efficiency, professional distance that lets us function as analysts investigating a security breach without acknowledging everything else charging the air between us.
I head for the door and Micah's voice stops me.
"Sarah."
I won't turn around. I can't look at him right now. If I do, I might say things that aren't about the investigation and I'm not ready for that conversation. I may never be ready for it.
"The Committee identifying you as exploitable," he says quietly. "Personal complications they can leverage. They know about us, about what we were in DC. They think they can use that history against you because I left without explanation. That vulnerability exists because of me."
"Then they miscalculated." My hand's on the door frame, knuckles white from gripping too hard. "I don't have personal complications. I have a job. And I'm very good at it."
I walk out before he can respond, before the ice I've been using to keep everything frozen cracks under the weight of his guilt and my rage and the years of silence that neither apology nor explanation can repair.
My office is down the hall from the analysis room. It's small and secure, equipped with terminals that connect to Echo Base networks and external intelligence sources I've cultivated since joining Echo Ridge. I close the door, lean against it, and let myself breathe for the first time in hours.
Working with Micah is operating on a razor’s edge. One wrong word and I'll split open, spill everything I've been containing since he walked back into my life.
But we're good together analytically, falling into rhythms that feel automatic despite the time and distance and betrayal between us.
That's almost worse than the anger. The way we still think in parallel, still build cases with methodical precision that made us dangerous when we were tracking Committee networks together.
Two years didn't erase that. He didn't disappear and I didn't spend months thinking he was dead while my brother was missing and I was desperate for help that never came, and we're just picking up where we left off.
Except we can't. And we won't.
My secure phone vibrates. A message from Kane.
Tommy reports Victoria Cross requesting immediate meeting. Says she has financial records that need urgent analysis. Safe house in two hours.
I stare at the message, recalculating everything we just analyzed about potential leak sources and surveillance protocols.
Victoria's requesting an urgent meeting, unannounced, with financial records she claims need immediate attention.
Either timing is coincidental or someone in her network knows we're investigating and she's here to control the narrative before we find evidence of compromise.
I compose a response to Kane.
Acknowledged. Micah and I just finished preliminary analysis on potential leak sources. Victoria's network flagged as high probability. Need to verify her intelligence before accepting at face value.
