Page 26 of Silent Shadows

Miles points at me with urgency. “Okay, before we start, we should probably establish boundaries.”

There it is. I knew it was coming. It happens with anyone I’m talking to, and Maya had warned me that Miles might get a little nervous about my role here.

I brace myself, but instead of awkward hostility or controlling demands, Miles crouches beside one of the benches and rummages for something.

I stare.

He holds a four-inch binder, stuffed to the gills.

It has dividers. And tabs. Color-coded tabs.

“What,” I say slowly, “is that?”

“This?” He glances down, opening to the first page. It is laminated. Of course it is. “Oh, this is just the field media consent and operational guidelines packet.”

Silence.

Jax loses it first, laughing so hard he has to lean against the wall.

Taylor actually wheezes.

Maya pinches the bridge of her nose like she’s lived through this exact moment before. “I’m so sorry, Daisy. I did warn you.”

Miles looks between all of us, defensive. “What? It’s organized.”

“You laminated it,” Taylor says.

“We’re mostly off-grid,” he argues. “Regular paper degrades.”

“That’s a good point,” I admit.

His head snaps toward me like he wasn’t expecting support.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome?”

He opens the binder with intense seriousness.

“Okay,” he says. “So. A few things. First, no recording of specific GPS coordinates.”

“Makes sense.”

“Second, no filming active investigation screens without approval because some data requires contextual interpretation.”

“…okay.”

“Third, if we encounter potential evidence in the field, operational priority overrides content capture.”

“That one sounds dramatic,” I note.

“It’s safety-based,” he snaps. “People get distracted during high-adrenaline situations and—statistically speaking—that increases accident probability by about thirty-eight percent.”

“You know the percentage?” My eyes widened in scrutinous surprise.

“I estimated the percentage based on four studies I've come across.”

“That feels worse.” I shook my head.