Archivists don’t flinch at ugly truths.
“Okay,” she says.
The word is steady. Braver than it has any right to be.
I nod once. “Sit back down.”
She does.
I move to the table and pull out a clean laptop, slide it across to her.
“When you’re ready,” I say, “I want to see the drive.”
She hesitates, then reaches into her bag and produces it—a small, unremarkable thing that has already bent the night around it.
She places it on the table like it might explode.
I don’t touch it yet.
Neither does she.
We stand there, two people on opposite sides of a truth that refuses to stay buried.
She breaks the silence.
“You’re not going to tell me it’ll be okay,” she says.
“No.”
“You’re not going to promise I can go home.”
“No.”
A beat.
“But you’re not leaving,” she adds.
That one matters.
I shake my head. “Not while you’re a target.”
Her gaze softens—not relief, not romance.
Trust.
Careful. Conditional. Earned by honesty.
“I don’t want to be the reason someone dies,” she says quietly.
I think of the roundabout. The stopper. The van. The list that already has her name on it.
“You’re not,” I say. “You’re the reason we stop it.”
She exhales, long and shaky.
And for the first time since Lisbon swallowed her whole, she lets her shoulders drop.
I take a step back—not because I want distance, but because restraint is the only thing standing between this being clean and this being dangerous.
