Page 93 of The Grumpy Defenseman

He closed it behind him with the soft precision of a man who had already decided the meeting would remain off-book.

His gaze moved once around the room: me, Sandra, my open desktop, the folder structure, and the expression on my face that probably said recently hit by my own choices.

He took all of it in and said, “Tell me we’re ahead of it.”

Sandra answered before I could.

“We are now.”

Silas nodded once.

Confirmation.

He was checking whether the fire had reached the structural beams yet.

“Walsh is irritated,” he said.

“That must be very difficult for him,” Sandra said.

Silas’s mouth nearly twitched.

Nearly.

“He’s been told the frame is not clean for use.”

“Good.”

“He wants to know why it existed in the environment at all.”

That one was for me.

I straightened, because sitting under a question like that felt worse.

“Because I held it,” I said. “That was my call.”

Silas looked at me steadily.

Not cold.

Measuring.

“Was it a mistake?”

There are questions that are traps because they want denial.

That was not one of them.

It wanted competence.

“Yes,” I said. “The choice was mine. The sync was accidental. The choice wasn’t.”

Silas held my gaze for one beat longer, then nodded.

“Fine.”

I blinked. “Fine?”

“You named the error correctly,” he said. “That makes it fixable.”