The day bed is already in my office when we arrive. A proper one, not a cot, with a mattress that doesn't fold at the wrong angle. It looks wrong, a thing that belongs in a bedroom sitting under spreadsheets.
Pillows from the residential floor. A blanket that isn't scratchy. Her water and medication on the small table beside it, within reach of her left arm. Two monitors shifted so she won't wake up staring at accounting reports.
She stops in the doorway and looks at it.
"You've been busy," she says.
"Lie down."
"Logan—"
"Lie down."
She lies down. She lets me straighten the pillow, which she doesn't need, and adjust the blanket, which she also doesn't need. She watches me do both with patience. I take her medication out of the bag, confirm the dosage against the printed sheet, set it next to the water.
"The instructions say every six hours with food," I tell her. "I'll have something sent up at noon."
"It's ibuprofen, Logan. Not chemotherapy."
"Every six hours."
"I've taken ibuprofen before. I know how it works."
"Then you know to take it with food."
She looks at me for a moment. Her left hand comes up and adjusts the blanket at her own hip with a small, deliberatemotion — not because it needed adjusting. "You're going to be like this all day, aren't you."
"Yes."
"Okay." She settles back against the pillow. Then, quieter: "Thank you. For the pillow."
I go back to my desk.
The guilt is lodged in me like shrapnel I can't find without making things worse. I called her to this building. I wanted her close after two days of distance, and she came because I asked, and the blast radius reached her because I needed her visible, within arm's reach, accounted for. Those facts don't rearrange into something more bearable no matter how many times I run them.
So I don't go looking for it. I go back to work.
The mole hunt is where I left it.
The access logs still open. The timestamps still patient. Three bait threads running — different false information routed through different access points — and nothing has moved since the bombing. Either the mole is holding still, or the bombing itself was the action and now they're waiting to see what I do next.
I read the top report. My eyes flick to Wren. She's settled, not asleep, her left arm resting across her stomach, looking at the ceiling.
I go back to the report.
Three sentences in, my eyes flick to her again.
I let it happen. She's the anchor in a room that has been nothing but crisis for four days. The machinery keeps running.
At some point she shifts onto her side, facing me. I hear the quiet rustle of it. When I look up, she's watching me work. Still, giving nothing back.
"What?" I ask.
"Nothing." A pause. "You do that thing where you look at the screen and your jaw tightens."
"The screen gives me reasons to."
"Is it always the numbers, or do you clench your jaw for fun sometimes?"
