Someone cared now. And it was going to destroy everything.
"You see it," Travis said. He wasn't asking.
"I can manage what I give them, draw it out,” I said. "Steer the analysis toward Kindt's operation and away from the disruption source. Or maybe make it seem like the disruption is a group of people, rather than one. Feed the Bureau enough real intelligence on Kindt that the Ghost becomes background noise."
"For how long?"
The question I didn't have an answer to.
The FBI was looking now. Not for the Ghost by name, but for the shape of him. For the negative space my own work had helped create.
If Travis kept operating, the disruptions would continue, and the pattern would sharpen until someone other than me connected the dots.
"I don't know," I finally said. "I don't know how long. And the truth is, they’ll just eventually replace me if I continuously don’t make forward progress.”
It felt like everything was crumbling down around us.
I looked at him, forcing back tears. “This is my fault. I’ve led the FBI basically right to you. I?—”
“Stop. I’m alive right now because of you. And you were never trying to lead the Bureau to me; you were trying to stop Kindt the only way you could.”
He reached for me and I went, settling against his right side, careful of the left. His arm came around my shoulders, and I leaned into him. This warmth was real. The partnership was real. Everything we'd built in these walls over the past weeks was solid under my feet.
But outside those walls, a clock had started ticking that neither of us could stop. Pratt's data packet would arrive by end of day. I would open it and begin the work of protecting Travis while appearing to hunt him, and every analysis I produced would walk a line so narrow that a single misstep could unravel everything.
The kittens slept. Travis's heartbeat was steady against my shoulder.
I had what I wanted most in the world.
But I had also never been more afraid.
