“Additionally, a connection to Hudson.” Solomon’s pale eyes held mine. “This is more than Mira’s stalker, Percival but it was definitely related.”
“What do you think is the agenda?”
“Uncertain. But I keep recounting that night. The dart wasn’t aimed at me. It was aimed at whoever moved to attack Hudson. As if it was a test.” He paused. “I was the target because I was attacking him first.”
The blender fired up again. We had another minute.
“Do we tell her about our theories?” I asked.
“Soon.” Solomon’s voice was final. “She’s processing a lot. Adding an unknown enemy organization to the list can send her to a breakdown.”
“She’s tougher than you think.”
“I know exactly how tough she is. That doesn’t mean we pile every threat onto her at once. Especially if we’re unsure.”
“So basically, we have a larger problem than we anticipated.”
The blender stopped. Footsteps padded back toward us. Mira rounded the corner carrying a tray with three glasses of green liquid and a plate of sliced fruit. Her version of a peace offering wrapped in nutritional warfare.
She stopped in the doorway.
The tray hovered mid-step. Her eyes moved from Solomon’s rigid posture to the papers he’d flipped face-down on his lap to my face, which I was actively trying to rearrange into something that didn’t scream guilty.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said. Too fast.
Shit.We’re screwed.
“Your faces say otherwise.” Mira set the tray on the side table. The glasses clinked. “Both of you looked the way you do when you’re pretending everything’s fine. Which means it’s not.”
My mind scrambled. Solomon’s expression had locked into neutral, which was somehow worse than looking guilty because Mira had learned to read his neutrality as a tell.
I needed to say a word. An excuse that was boring enough to kill her curiosity but believable enough to survive her bullshit detector.
“Firehouse scheduling,” I said. “Lucian’s been dealing with the shift changes since Founder’s Day. Solomon was updating me on the new rotation.”
Sorry, Lucian. Throwing you under the bureaucratic bus.
“Scheduling.” Mira repeated the word. Her gaze lingered on Solomon’s papers. On his hands, which had shifted to cover them more completely. “And where is Lucian?”
“Went to the firehouse earlier,” Solomon said. “Captain updates.”
She didn’t believe us. I could see it in the tilt of her head, the way her jaw set, the micro-pause before she decided whether to press or file it away. Mira had a mental cabinet for conversations she planned to revisit, and I could practically hear the drawer sliding open.
“Fine,” she said. The word carried a warning. “Drink your smoothies.”
She handed me a glass. I accepted it with the gratitude of a man who’d just dodged a bullet and the dread of a man who now had to drink another glass of liquified suffering.
Solomon took his without complaint. He drank half in one pull, face betraying nothing, because of course the man who could endure torture could survive this poison smoothie without flinching. Show-off.
The front door opened twenty minutes later.
Lucian walked in carrying a folder tucked under his arm, still in his uniform, looking exactly the way a man looks when he’s spent the morning doing actual captain duties and has no idea he’s been drafted into a cover story.
Mira looked up from her book. “Did you sort out the scheduling?”
Lucian paused. One foot still on the threshold. His eyes found mine, then Solomon’s, then returned to Mira with the careful blankness, performing rapid calculations.
