Page 81 of In the Dark of the Past

The call ended.

Finn set the phone face-down on the desk, and we stood there in the silence it left behind.

Tell her hello.

I was the only her in the room. The only her that was also involved in this case, in Finn’s orbit, and in the crosshairs of whoever that voice belonged to. The Watchers knew about the two of us in a way that wasn’t tactical. It was personal. Specific. It was the kind of knowledge that only comes from someone close enough to watch.

“They’ve had eyes on us for longer than today,” I said.

“Yeah.” Finn’s jaw was set. “Which means we’ve been moving through a building that’s been leaking since well before the tripwire. We suspected, but now we know.”

I turned toward the window that overlooked the bullpen. Through the glass, Jordyn Vale sat at her desk. She was typing slowly, the kind that wasn’t actually typing—fingers moving without intention, body going through motions while the brain was somewhere else entirely.

I watched her for a moment, the way I watched clients when they thought the session was just small talk.

“She got a call,” I said.

Finn came to stand beside me. “What?”

“Since she left your office. Somebody called her.” I kept my voice even. “Look at her hands. She’s been off rhythm since she sat back down. She was performing with confidence when she came to see you. That was rehearsed because she’d been told exactly what to say. Now, she’s waiting for new instructions and they haven’t come yet.”

Finn was quiet.

“She’s not the decision-maker here,” I continued. “She never was. She’s a relay. Someone activated her this morning, told her to assess the situation and report back, and now she’s sitting there waiting to find out what she’s supposed to do next.”

“And when those instructions come,” Finn said slowly, “she’ll move.”

“Probably somewhere she thinks is safer than here.”

Atlas appeared in the doorway, his shoulder against the frame, arms crossed in that way he had of taking up space without appearing to. “You two are doing the thing where you talk like I’m not here,” he said. “I’d like to be included.”

“She’s going to bolt,” I told him.

He looked at Jordyn through the glass. Back at me. “How soon?”

“I’m thinking as soon as her phone rings.”

We waited.

She checked her phone at 9:04 a.m., and her shoulders dropped just a bit—the release of someone receiving information they’d been dreading. It wasn’t the move of someone relieved. Just resigned to whatever came next.

She stood, grabbed her bag, and walked toward the back exit with the brittle, controlled stride of someone who had been told where to go and was making herself go there.

We gave her about five minutes, and then, “Atlas,” Finn said.

“Already moving.”

I fell into step behind them both, and nobody argued. We’d passed the point where Finn told me to stay behind and I argued back. Despite the short time that’d passed, we operated differently now. It wasn’t without friction, but it involved a shared understanding of where we each needed to be. Right now, I needed to be in that truck.

Atlas had placed a tracker on Jordyn’s sedan the minute she arrived this morning—standard precaution, he’d said, in the same tone he used for most things that weren’t standard at all. He pulled it up on his phone as we crossed the lot, and there she was, already pulling out onto Route 9.

“Where’s she going?” Finn asked.

Atlas read the route. “West on nine. Then what looks like the old quarry access.”

Finn didn’t react. Or rather, he reacted in the way he had when information landed exactly where he expected it to, and he didn’t like being right.

“She’s gotta be meeting someone,” I said.