Page 52 of Reckless

Calloway doesn’t waste effort.

If he’s talking to someone this carefully, they are important.

The thought stays with me longer than it should, and I don’t know why.

Not yet.

My mind drifts to Sage anyway.

To the flowers I’d brought her. The surprise on her face when she’d looked at me and said, ‘You went to Millie’s opening,’ like it genuinely hadn’t occurred to her that I’d show up.

I think about the way she drops into the chair across from my workstation now without asking if she’s interrupting. It is as though somewhere along the way she’d decided she belonged there.

She does.

And her laugh, the real one. The one that slips out before she can censor it.

I have started noticing how rarely I hear it.

I have also started noticing when I don’t.

I have data, patterns, and systems that behave the same way every time if you know where to look. But whatever this is, it doesn’t fit inside any system I’ve ever understood.

And that should bother me.

Instead, it mostly makes me want to hear her laugh again.

My eyes drift back to the monitors, where the encrypted traffic still scrolls steadily across the screen, refusing to give me anything useful beyond the fact that it exists.

Calloway’s network is talking to someone.

Or something.

I just don’t know who.

Not yet.

I close the laptop and open it again thirty seconds later. Closing it doesn’t stop the monitor from running. It definitely doesn’t stop my brain. I’ve got enough to tell me something’s happening, but not enough to tell anyone what.

A pattern.

A conversation I can’t read.

I need answers before I start asking questions. Until I know who’s sitting on the other end of that connection, this stays with me.

Instead, I find Sin.

He’s in the Chapel on his own, paperwork spread across the table, reading glasses abandoned beside a coffee that’s long since gone cold. The poker chip rests near his hand instead of moving through his fingers, which tells me his head isn’t in the paperwork at all. He’s somewhere else entirely, working through whatever problem presidents carry around when the rest of us aren’t looking.

He glances up as I step inside, and it takes him less than a second to decide I wouldn’t be here unless something had shifted. “What.”

It’s not really a question, just room for me to start talking.

“I’ve got something.”

He closes the folder without taking his eyes off me and leans back in the chair. “A good something?”

“I don’t know yet.”