Page 59 of Code Name: Ember
“Then stop treating it like a problem to solve and start treating it like a fact to build on.”She turns to face me, eyes dead serious.“You’re good at building things.”
I don’t have an answer for that so I watch the perimeter instead, scanning the angles between the containers as if they might have the answers.Across the staging area, an object catches my eye.
A section of the secondary warehouse wall holds a bracket for a camera, but it looks broken and without an actual device.The angle would cover the door if it were functional.
I point at it.“Is that on the manifest?”
She follows my eyeline, then scrolls on her tablet.“It says a camera should be there.This wasn’t an area we were to evaluate.”
“Well, someone took that camera down by force.”
She pulls out her phone and photographs it without moving closer, then opens her site map and zooms in on that section of the warehouse wall.“That’s weird.”
“What?”I ask, looking over her shoulder.
“The door isn’t there.I mean… I see it’s there, and you see it’s there, but it’s not on the list of areas for us to look at.I’ll cross-reference the building permits and the original construction plans when we get back.It might be nothing more than a modification that wasn’t filed.”
“Could be a modification that was deliberately not filed,” I say.
She nods, already making notes.Her eyes are sharp and calculating, the intelligence specialist and the field agent operating simultaneously without friction.“I’ll dig into it.”
We finish the remaining checks over the next forty minutes, working our way methodically through the blind spots Josie had mapped in advance.She’s thorough and efficient and she asks good questions—not just about camera placement but about sightlines and approach vectors and the kind of operational detail that tells me she’s thinking several steps past a simple threat assessment.
On our way back to the SUV, we pass a section of dock that overlooks the Duwamish Waterway.Josie stops for a moment, hands in her jacket pockets, looking out across the sound.
“Can I tell you something that has nothing to do with cameras or RainVest or any of it?”she asks.
“Sure,” I say.
She’s silent for a second, her expression hard to read.“I chose Seattle because I thought it would be a quieter existence.The NSA was everything to me.Every single day was consequential.Every piece of intelligence you touched had weight to it.”She pauses.“I loved it.But I was thirty-one and I realized I didn’t own a single piece of furniture I’d picked out myself.Everything in my apartment was functional and nothing was chosen.”
I listen without filling the silence.
“I wanted to choose,” she says simply.“Furniture.A neighborhood.Maybe a person eventually.”She exhales a quiet laugh.“I’m aware that’s embarrassing given what I do for a living.”
“It’s not embarrassing,” I say.
“It’s a little embarrassing.”She turns away from the water and starts back toward the SUV.“The point is—those things are important.Maybe more so than what we do for a living and the people we help.”She stares at me pointedly.“Don’t wait until the threat is neutralized to figure out what you want, Cole.Threats don’t end.They just change shape.The mug on the counter every morning should be all the reminder you need for that.”
I pull open the driver’s door and look at her across the roof of the SUV.“When did you get so wise?”I ask.
“I was born wise, baby,” she says without missing a beat and gets in.
CHAPTER 18
Cole
Thebuildingisquieterby evening, the daytime chaos of Jameson softened and more domestic as the hours turn.The smell of whatever Anna left in the community kitchen slow cooker drifts through the upper floors.The building breathes differently at night, like it’s allowed to relax, secure behind steel bars and infrared cameras.
I find Tessa at the dining table in my apartment.Not the lobby worktable where she’s been spending most of her days, but here, in my home, which has stopped feeling like a small detail worth noting and started to become a feeling I’d be devastated to lose.Her laptop is open, a nearly empty mug at her elbow, printed pages spread in a loose arc around her with handwritten notes in the margins.Her hair is twisted up with locks that have fallen free, her reading glasses on and a pen tucked behind her ear.
She looks up when I come in, and the expression that crosses her face quickly flashes through relief, warmth, and even a flash of irritable jealousy that I can come and go as I please.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey.”I drop my jacket over the entry chair and move into the kitchen, filling a glass of water and leaning back against the counter to look at her properly.“Still at it?”
“Almost done,” she says, which is what she’s been saying for two days.“I’m in final edits.Tightening the narrative arc, closing the loop on the SAPG connection.”She pulls off her glasses and sets them on the table, rubbing the bridge of her nose.“Simon’s going to want changes.”
