“What are you doing right now?” I asked.
“Standing outside the operations office.”
“Because?”
“Fewer ears.”
My stomach tightened, low and precise. “Nick.”
“I answered your sister,” he said.
My hand went still around the mug. “You did?”
“Yes.”
“Professionally?”
“Yes.”
Of course he had.
“What did you say?”
“That I’ll be in D.C. next month for Sofia’s homecoming. If useful, I can schedule a separate business stop in Maris Key afterward to meet with her and Vaughn.”
My bare toes curled against the cool floor. “That was the right answer.”
“It wasn’t the whole answer.”
I didn't move.
“I was coming toward you either way,” he said. “The proposal gave me a route that respected the work, the reserve, and Sofia. It also gives us a way to find out what this is without wrecking everything around it.”
The espresso had gone cold in my hand. I set the mug down before my grip became evidence.
“That's a lot of words, Nick Mercer.”
“Needed saying,” he said. “And it still doesn’t make this simple.”
“I don’t remember asking for simple.”
The line stayed quiet long enough for the sprinkler to rotate back across the lawn.
Then he said, “I have reports to finish. Police follow-up. Contractor gate rebuild. Six weeks modified alert before I’ll call that boundary stable.”
“Then do it properly.”
“I won’t leave them exposed.”
“I wouldn’t trust you if you did.”
He exhaled once through his nose. The sound was small and controlled, but I heard it anyway. I wanted his mouth against my temple. His hand at my lower back. His voice in a dark room where neither of us could pretend restraint had been doing all that work for moral reasons.
Instead, I stood in my kitchen with cold tile under my feet and a calendar waiting to punish me.
I set the mug down, straightened, and made my voice behave. “The proposal is real.”
“I know.”
