Page 142 of Hunt Me, Daddy

I went to the bedroom doorway, smiling. She sat propped against the pillows with my shirt slipping off one shoulder, hair messy around her face, coffee in hand. The look she gave me was soft for less than a second before she remembered what was at stake.

I crossed to the bed and handed her the tablet.

She read the first headline without speaking. Then the second. Then she opened the attached timeline, the one that laid out Daniel’s last known movements, the Seaport connection, the warehouse, the money chain, the witness discrepancy. Her face went still in a way I knew now meant the feeling had gone too deep for expression.

I sat on the edge of the bed, far enough not to crowd her. She read everything twice. When she finally lowered the tablet, her eyes were a bit glassy.

“He’s going to know it was me,” she said.

“Yes.”

“That’s not going away.”

“No.”

“I can’t just go back to my apartment and my crosswords like this is over.”

“No, you cannot.”

The words were simple. I did not soften them. She did not need softness there. She needed the truth with its spine intact. She took a sip of coffee and looked at me over the rim of her coffee mug.

“Is that your version of asking me to stay?”

“Yes.”

Her mouth twitched, though there was no humor in it yet. “That is a terrible way to ask.”

“I am aware.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re basically saying, Mikhail Orlov might kill you, therefore move in with me.”

“When summarized badly, yes.”

“When summarized accurately.”

I inclined my head. “Also yes.”

She looked down at the coffee, then toward the windows where the city had gone bright and indifferent beyond the glass. The news had broken. Daniel’s name was public. Mikhail had been ruined. Nothing about her life could return to the way it was before.

I watched her realize that. I did not try to rescue her from the realization and that was the hardest kind of care.

After a while, she said, “I need my own workstation.”

“You’ll have it.”

“Not a guest laptop. Mine. Set up how I want.”

“Yes.”

“No more files on me I don’t know about.”

I held her gaze. “Yes.”

“No decisions made about my safety that I don’t at least get informed of, unless I am literally unconscious.”