It feels weird to be wearing normal clothes.
The thought surfaces unbidden, my brain seizing on the tangential detail because the primary detail—the moving-in detail—is too large to process in one pass. The tights and crop top fit correctly, which means someone retrieved them from my apartment, which means someone was in my apartment, which is another question on the growing list. But the sensation of cotton and lycra against my skin instead of a uniform is strange. Foreign. Like wearing a civilian identity that doesn’t quite belong to me.
As of today, you’re on paid leave.
That much, at least, had already been confirmed.
The call from Callahan this morning had been unexpected. I’d been sitting in the hospital bed, halfway through the water Dr. Winters had prescribed and entirely through the mental capacity for surprises, when the phone Roman had charged for me buzzed with a number I recognized from my previous department’s directory.
Director Callahan.
The man who reassigned me. The man whose motives exist in the murky, unresolvable territory between protective and strategic. The man who pulled me from a city where I was solving cases no one wanted solved and placed me in a small town where Omegas disappear and the cases close themselves.
His voice had been measured. Professional. The calibrated tone of a bureaucrat who has been briefed on a situation and is responding through the appropriate institutional channels with the specific, practiced neutrality of someone whose everyphone call is probably recorded and whose word choices are vetted by legal before they leave his mouth. He’d heard about the “incident”—his word, not mine; I’d have gone with “assassination attempt” but semantics are the government’s native language. He’d been informed that the station had sustained prior damage from an arson event. He was instructing that an additional investigation would be assigned to the Sweetwater Falls jurisdiction, and while I could be relocated to the newly designated backup station, the blast injury qualified me for mandatory medical leave under federal employment protection statutes.
He hadn’t asked if I was okay.
Not in the personal sense. Not in the way Roman had asked, crouching beside a hospital bed with torn clothing and red-rimmed eyes. Callahan had asked about mystatus—medical clearance, physical capacity, operational readiness. The bureaucratic proxy for human concern. And maybe that’s just how directors communicate, or maybe it’s how directors communicate when the concern isn’t about the person but about the asset.
By law, they have to give her a few weeks off to ensure she’s physically, emotionally, and mentally okay.
Isn’t that generous of the government.
There had also been the fine print.
The detail that Callahan mentioned with the practiced casualness of a man who wants information to land without appearing planted. Since Ididhave a pack registered to my name, I was entitled to expanded medical leave benefits—the Omega Pack Protection provisions that the federal system had implemented three years ago and that I had never qualified for because I had never been officially registered.
Until Roman drove to the city.
The day of the blast.
Which means the registration was processed and confirmed on the same date as a targeted attack on my life. And now the government benefit triggered by that registration is providing me with paid leave and medical coverage that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Perfect timing.
Suspiciously perfect timing.
The kind of timing that either represents cosmic coincidence or strategic foresight from a man who filed paperwork like he was deploying a tactical asset.
Callahan’s tone hadn’t shifted when he mentioned the pack registration. No surprise. No questions about when or why or with whom. Just the notation, the benefit trigger, the administrative consequence. As if the registration were an expected development rather than a revelation.
Add it to the list of things about Director Callahan that don’t quite add up.
But the moving-in part.
That hadn’t been in anyone’s phone call.
“It’s the only logical course of action,” Alaric says.
His voice carries the steady, unhurried authority of a man who has already mapped every variable and is delivering the conclusion rather than walking me through the proof. He straightens from the windowsill, the burnt vanilla of his scent shifting as his posture changes, the warm cardamom giving way to the sharper espresso notes that emerge when he’s in analytical mode.
“They’ve targeted your workplace twice,” he continues. “The fire and the vehicle. Both at the station. Now that you’re on leave, the station is no longer your primary location. Which means your apartment becomes the next point of vulnerability.”
He lets the logic sit.
It’s clean. Irrefutable. The investigative architecture of a man whose career was built on tracing patterns and predicting their next iteration.
“If they know you’re there,” he adds, “it’s only a matter of time.”
