Page 130 of Operation: Defiance

“Mind if I check in every so often?” After a beat, he adds, “You can say no.”

“You can check in. But I may push back.”

Asher inclines his head. “I’d expect nothing less. I’ll get the laptop.”

This time, I don’t feel the need to track his movements as he disappears into the bedroom. When he returns, he sets the laptop between us—angled so I don’t have to twist or lean and aggravate my ribs.

The tea warms my hands, the light scent soothing my nerves as the computer boots up.

Asher lets out a slow breath. “Yesterday, while you were sleeping, I dug into the data a bit. Can I give you the basics?”

I nod.

“The physical site houses three different entities,” he says. “Northbridge Containment, LLC, Kovacs Resolution Partners, and Coherent Path, Inc. Do any of those names ring a bell?”

“Kovacs…maybe.” I close my eyes and let my mind cycle through old briefings, half-remembered reports, operations that never quite sat right. “They primarily relocate people?”

“Yes. Forcefully. But unless something goes wrong, their targets live. Northbridge extracts information through pain. That’s where my target was initially sent. I’ve dealt with them a time or two.”

He hesitates. “Coherent Path is different. An unknown. I made a few casual inquiries to my contacts. No one’s gotten back to me yet. On paper, they’ve only been in existence at that particular location for a little over a year.”

I suck in a breath. Too sharp. Too sudden. My ribs send lacy pain wrapping around my core.

But the structure,” he continues, watching me carefully. “The protocols. The efficiency. It reads as practiced. Like they’ve been doing this a long time under other names.”

I nod again.

“I’d like to ask you a question,” he says. “You don’t have to answer. No matter what, I’m here with you for as long as you want me to be.”

There’s no deception in his voice. His shoulders don’t tense, his eyes don’t tighten, his hands stay relaxed, folded.

“Ask.”

“Why did they take you?”

I press my chapped lips together. The sensation is wrong. It skitters along my spine, and settles in my fingers, where the tremor starts up again.

“Raine? I want to know you. Who would be so afraid of you that they’d send you to be erased? And…at the risk of sounding indelicate, why erase you instead of killing you?”

I drag my thumb across the side of my index finger, looking for something that isn’t there. The ghost of a tether I’ll never have again.

Tell him.

The urge to shut down—to disappear like they wanted me to—flares bright and hot. But they don’t get to write my story. I do.

“I work—worked—for the Global Security Directorate. Fifteen years in the field, then eleven months as a Systems Analyst.”

Asher’s reaction is so small, I almost miss it. A subtle darkening of his eyes. His mouth flattens for half a second. “The GSD doesn’t have a high tolerance for risk.”

“I became one.” My voice cracks, and I stare down at my hands. At the bruises, the dry, cracked skin, the slight tremble in my fingers. “Because I spotted a pattern—a single contractor attached to forty-three separate ops. That…doesn’t happen. Or shouldn’t.” The tremor gets worse. “I thought…maybe it was a logging error. Or a glitch.” I press my thumb into my palm until I can feel my heartbeat. “I started pulling the after-action reports. Just to check. On a handful of them—six, I think—one of the assigned field agents disappeared from the personnel rosters shortly after. They hadn’t retired or transferred. They were just…gone.”

Asher doesn’t interrupt.

“In every one of their files,” I continue, my voice thinner now, “there was a code I’d never seen before. RJ-3.”

I stare down at the bruises circling my wrists. Taste the blood from biting the inside of my cheek over and over again under the hood.

“That code doesn’t exist in any system I have—had—access to.” My pulse starts to skitter again, the uneven rhythm leaving me off balance. “Tessa, one of the junior analysts, found a file in her queue that didn’t belong there. It had that same code attached to a handful of medical reviews. She…” I stifle a sob. “I think she might have been sent there too. The black site. What if—what if she’s still there?”