“You walked back into the depot,” Ranger muttered. “Because that’s a normal thing to do when bullets are flying.”
“It was loud, chaotic, perfect cover,” Amanda said. “I found an office with the morning shift coming in, temp hires. Said I was from the contractor agency that sent the last girl home. They were short-staffed, desperate. I fit right in.”
Doc scrubbed his face with both hands. “You’re telling me you went backward into hell, and they just gave you a badge.”
“Badge, desk, and an outdated password list,” Amanda said. “I’ve been in three hours. They think I’m the new admin. I’ve already pulled internal manifests; there’s a basement they don’t list anywhere.”
Cap leaned on the table, voice low. “So, you’re inside.”
“I’m inside,” she said. “And if you come for me now, you’ll blow it. Wait till I send proof. Then burn them.”
I kept my voice level. “Confirm. You’re hot or you’re safe?”
A short laugh, no humor, just air leaking from a tire. “Define ‘safe.’ I’m on a borrowed badge and a laptop that thinks I’m temp labor. Logistics office. They like fresh faces. I’m not the only one.”
Cap had both hands flat on the table again. “Time since separation?”
“Three hours,” Amanda said. “Give or take the part where I ran, hid, pretended to know how to smoke, and learned the difference between a freight supervisor and a man with a clipboard complex.”
Ranger tilted his head, eyes on the ceiling like he could see her through it. “How’d you get in?”
“Same way I got through college,” she said. “Confidence and a printer.”
Doc made a choked sound that might have been a laugh. Might have been a warning.
I pinched the bridge of my nose till stars got interested. “You walked into the front office while we were trading fire out back.”
“They were short a morning admin,” she said. “Two didn’t show. Smoke spooks people.”
“And you figured, why not me.”
“I figured I was already inside the fence,” she said, voice dropping lower. I pictured her under some front desk, knees to her chest, a cable in her lap. “I figured if I went with you, I’d be a witness. If I stayed, I could be more than that.”
Ghost moved to the map on the wall, the one we’d tacked up with a box of roofing nails and bad humor. He tapped the square that was the depot with his knuckle, soft. “She’s good.”
“We knew that” Cap said. “Question is whether the other side knows it yet.”
“I’m fine,” Amanda said, which is what people say when they’re not. “I’ve got three screens and a password someone wrote on a sticky note like it’s still 2008. There’s a sublease folder that shouldn’t exist. There’s a camera grid with blind corners. There’s a door to a basement that doesn’t show on the plan. I’m pulling copies.”
Something banged in her background. A drawer? A door? A hand on the wrong side of a wall?
“Amanda,” I said, and it came out lower than I meant. “You did good. Now you wait. We get you.”
“No,” she said. The no had shape. “You don’t. Not like that.”
“Say it clear,” I said into the mic.
“Don’t come for me,” she said, and then softer, like the words were private and didn’t want to live on radio. “Not loud. Not fast. If you rush, they burn. You know this.”
“Trap,” Ghost said to the room, not the radio. “Could be.”
“Could,” I said. I listened to the breathing under her voice, the hitch she has when she’s holding anger like a cup she can’t set down. “Subtext says it’s her,” I added. “The phrasing. She hates ‘admin.’ She says ‘temp.’ She hates ‘scrub.’ She says ‘burn.’”
Cap nodded once. “It’s her.”
“Time?” I asked her.
“I have until someone better at spelling than the foreman shows up,” she said. “They hired breakfast help through a contractor. I’m wearing the badge and the attitude. The rest isthe same as any office I’ve ever been in. Three people carry the weight so seven don’t have to. I’m pretending to be one of the seven.”
