"The difference is everything, and you know it."
Caleb pressed his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose.Through the bedroom door, he could hear the faint sound of Harper's keyboard.She was working.Of course, she was working.
"I brought up Isak Thorne."
Ronan was quiet for a long time."That was a mistake."
"I know."
"A bad one."
"I know that too."
"What were you trying to accomplish?"
"I was trying to scare her into leaving."
"And instead you proved her point.That you see her as someone to protect, not someone to work with."Ronan exhaled."Caleb.I've watched you run operations in three countries.I've seen you keep your head when people were shooting at you.You do not panic.So what happened?"
He looked at the brake-tampering data still open on his laptop.The attorney on I-75.The reporter in Jacksonville who'd quit.The county clerk who'd moved to Georgia.
"I saw the pattern," he said."And I put her in it."
"You put her in someone else's story."
"Same threat.Same methodology.Same people."
"Different woman."Ronan's voice was firm but not unkind."Harper Wynn has been running from this for over a year.She didn't break.She didn't quit.She didn't move to Georgia.She came here and started over, and she's closer to finishing this than anyone's ever been.If you pull her out now, you lose the story, you lose her trust, and you lose her."
"If I don't pull her out, I might lose her anyway."
"That's her choice to make."
Caleb didn't answer.Through the bedroom door, the keyboard went silent.Then it started again—slower this time, more deliberate.She was editing, not drafting.
"Fix it," Ronan said."Whatever you said about Isak, you take it back.Not with an apology—she doesn't want your apology.With your actions.Show her you trust her judgment, even when it scares you."
"And if her judgment gets her killed?"
"Then you make sure it doesn't.That's the job, Caleb.Not removing her from the field.Keeping her safe while she works."
The line went quiet.
Caleb sat in the kitchen for a long time after the call ended.The surveillance feed cycled through its rotations—the white van, the front of the property, the road leading to Inlet Drive.The afternoon faded.Shadows shifted across the floor.
At some point, the bedroom door opened.Harper walked past him to the kitchen, poured herself a glass of water, and walked back without a word.She didn't look at him.Her eyes were dry but red-rimmed, and she carried herself with the rigid posture of someone holding everything together through force of will.
He let her go.
At midnight, the light under the bedroom door went out.Caleb sat at the table in the dark, the surveillance feed casting blue light across his face, and tried to figure out how to take back words that couldn't be taken back.
Chapter 18
Harper didn't sleep.
She lay in the dark bedroom of the safe house with her laptop open on her chest and listened to Caleb move through the kitchen on the other side of the door.He was quiet about it—no clattering, no pacing—but she'd spent enough nights in this cottage to know his patterns.The soft thud of a cabinet closing.The hiss of the kettle.The creak of his chair when he sat back down at the table.
He was still working.Still watching the surveillance feeds.Still doing the job he'd been sent here to do.
