He didn't pull away. Progress that still made my heart swell, even weeks after he'd first allowed my touch without flinching.
"You did good, baby boy," I murmured, pitching my voice low enough that only he could hear. "Real good."
The door clicked shut behind Investigator Crosby and the artificial formality drained from the room like air from a popped balloon. Butch immediately loosened his tie with a grunt of relief. Bear slouched back in his chair, propping his boots on the table edge. I rolled my shoulders, grateful to shed the diplomatic stiffness I'd been maintaining throughout the presentation.
But Liam's reaction caught me completely off guard. Instead of relaxing, he snorted—an actual, audible sound of dismissal—and reached for his notepad.
His pencil scratched rapidly across the page, and he slid the pad toward Butch with unusual force. Two words stood out in his neat handwriting:"Too easy."
Butch raised an eyebrow, glancing between the notepad and Liam. "Care to elaborate?"
Something shifted in Liam then—a transformation so subtle yet profound that I found myself leaning forward, transfixed. His usual hunched posture began to straighten, his shoulders squaring as he pulled the notepad back and flipped to a fresh page.
His golden eyes, typically wary and quick to look away, now held a fierce intensity I'd only glimpsed during moments of danger.
"What's he saying?" Bear asked, dropping his boots from the table with a thud.
I moved to Liam's side as his pencil flew across the page, filling it with a complex web of connections. "He thinks theCouncil is only seeing the surface," I translated, though I was still processing what I was witnessing myself.
Liam's writing grew messier, more urgent, his normal careful print giving way to rapid notations that crowded the margins. He was writing faster than I'd ever seen, filling the page with observations about shipment schedules, communication protocols, security measures that seemed too sophisticated for Victor's known resources.
"Look at the pattern," he wrote, underlining the words three times before sketching a timeline of raids."Seven facilities taken down, but all tertiary. Main processing centers untouched. Why?"
Butch leaned closer, his brow furrowing as he studied Liam's notes. "You think they're being deliberately fed the smaller operations?"
Liam nodded emphatically, flipping to another page where he sketched a hierarchical diagram. Victor's name appeared midway down the structure, with question marks above him connected by dotted lines to other names I didn't recognize. He tapped his pencil against the topmost question mark with such force that the lead snapped.
Without missing a beat, I handed him another pencil from my pocket—I'd started carrying spares the day after he'd accepted the Security Advisor position. Our fingers brushed during the exchange, and I felt a slight tremor in his hand—not from fear, but from the intensity of focus radiating through him.
"These communication patterns,"he wrote, his handwriting growing even more erratic with urgency,"suggest military-grade encryption. Victor doesn't have access to that level of tech without higher connections."
I watched in amazement as he filled page after page, detailing surveillance blind spots the Council had missed, extraction routes that followed patterns dating back years before Victor'sknown involvement, funding sources that didn't match the operational scale we'd witnessed.
"Jesus," Gunner muttered, moving to look over Liam's shoulder. "How the hell did you put all this together?"
Liam didn't pause to answer, instead flipping to yet another page where he began drawing what looked like a map—not of physical locations, but of organizational relationships. Lines connected seemingly unrelated incidents across years and states, forming a pattern that was invisible unless you knew exactly what to look for.
And Liam did. He knew precisely what to look for because he'd been watching, cataloging, analyzing for fifteen years while the rest of us saw only what was directly in front of us.
"The Council is satisfied with Victor's capture because they don't see the whole picture," I summarized for the others, finding my voice. "They think they've cut off the head of the snake, but Liam's saying Victor was just a middle manager."
Liam's hand paused mid-stroke, and he glanced up at me with an expression of surprise—not that I'd understood, but that I'd articulated it so precisely. A flash of something like pride crossed his features before he returned to his work, adding more connections to his diagram.
"Security measures at the Wyoming facility,"he wrote, his pencil tip pressing hard enough to leave indentations in the pages beneath,"identical to government black site protocols. Who authorized that? Not Victor."
I placed a hand on the back of Liam's chair, steadying myself as much as offering him support. This wasn't the feral, frightened creature I'd been carefully coaxing from the shadows for months. This wasn't even the brave but traumatized man who'd placed himself between me and Victor's knife.
This was something else entirely—a tactical analyst with skills honed through years of life-or-death observations, a mind that connected dots others couldn't even see existed.
"The shipping manifests Crosby showed,"Liam continued writing,"falsified. Real shipments go out Tuesdays and Fridays, not Mondays as records indicate. I watched the Nevada facility for three weeks before the raid. Eighteen trucks, not the twelve they documented."
His golden eyes burned with an almost feverish light as he worked, the kind of focus that consumed everything around it. He wasn't writing for us anymore—he was in conversation with himself, externally processing years of observations that had previously existed only in his head.
"Council is using standard playbook,"he noted in the margin."Predictable. They'll be anticipated. Next raids already compromised."
"How can you be sure?" Butch asked, his voice carrying none of the skepticism it might have held weeks ago.
Liam looked up, his expression so certain that it sent a chill down my spine. He didn't write his answer this time, just held up five fingers, then spread his hands wide in a gesture that clearly meant:I've seen this pattern before, five times over.
