Page 143 of The Vagabond

Until—I see it.

The second to last name on the list makes my stomach turn.

Special Agent in Charge Rod Dorsey.

Of course.Of fucking course.

He was always too clean, too perfect. The golden boy at the Bureau. The one who signed my suspension order withoutblinking. The one who buried my reports on Kadri three years ago, buying Kadri precious time in which to relocate.

Dorsey is the one standing at the center of the storm, smiling like he owns the goddamn weather.

And now it’s clear. He’s the leak. The one feeding intel from the inside, the reason we were always a few seconds too late — every time, like clockwork. The targets vanished. The evidence scrubbed clean before we even kicked down the door. Because someone on the inside was tipping them off. Someone with unrestricted access. Someone who read our reports before the ink dried and passed them along like breadcrumbs to the enemy.

My pulse slows. My focus sharpens, narrowing to a razor’s edge.

I don’t feel the pain in my ribs anymore. I don’t feel the bruises or the cuts or the exhaustion.

All I feel is the slow, coiling burn of betrayal — and the cold, lethal clarity that comes when you realize your enemy has been smiling in your face all along.

According to the Bureau,I’m on indefinite leave, pending psychological evaluation and full internal review. But I walk through the front doors of the Bureau like I never left.

Suit on. Tie loose. Stubble grown out. Just enough of a mess to be written off as a man who’s had a bad night—not a man with murder in his eyes.

“Agent North?” the clerk at the front desk stammers, voice tight with confusion.

I flash the access card Halbridge slipped me during our midnight deal. “Ghost protocol,” I say. “Directive 11-C.”

She blinks. Nods. Lets me through. Worked like a charm.

The elevator feels like a coffin. Steel and silence and the weight of every choice I’ve ever made pressing against the walls.

When the doors open, Dorsey’s office is at the end of the hall. I walk the stretch like a man going to war. Inside, he’s alone. He looks up when I walk in. He smiles, but it’s that tight politician’s smile.

“North. I didn’t expect?—”

I throw the file down on his desk. Hard. His mouth snaps shut.

“That’s your signature,” I say. “On the funds transfer. That’s your face on the dock cameras. That’s your voice giving the order to scrub the warehouse raid in ’23. And that,” I jab a finger into the last photo, “is a girl with a broken arm chained to a radiator in a containeryou paid for.”

He blinks. Once. Twice.

“Where did you get this?”

“I buried a rat to find a snake.”

He leans back. He’s too calm, and it almost unnerves me.

“You’ve always been reckless, North. Always chasing shadows.”

“You can’t imagine my surprise when I realized it was you all along selling us out.”

His eyes flick to the door. Then to the panic button under his desk.

“I press this,” he says, “and a dozen agents storm in. You’ll be gone before you reach the hall.”

I grin. Wolfish. “You really think so little of me that I wouldn’t have pre-empted you doing such a thing?”

His face twitches. He doesn’t ask, so I tell him.

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