Page 85 of Fractured Loyalties
She said not yet, and I believed her. Respected it.
But there’s a line in my chest now, burning low and steady, and I can’t quite breathe around it.
I force myself to look away from the screen and re-engage the comm panel. One more ping to Lydia—“Check last night’s traffic around the clinic. Anyone tag the north-facing cam between 8 p.m. and midnight?”
I don’t expect a fast response. She’s thorough. Won’t send me anything unless she’s certain.
While I wait, I scroll to the cross-feed of exterior sensors. My home is a fortress. Trip-layered security, passive sensors, retinal entries. I designed it that way for me. But now I have her here, and I’m already calculating holes I never worried about until she became one of them.
I flip to thermal. Then to motion.
Still clean.
I tap into the private channel and scrub through the night’s logs again. Nothing unusual. No anomalies. Just the subtle shift in ambient temperature after I stepped out of her room. My motion in the hallway. Nothing from inside. Still, I log it.
I sit back. My neck aches.
This isn’t the part they warn you about.
Not the blood. Not the contracts. Not even the obsession.
It’s the stillness. The knowing someone could touch what you’ve protected by accident, just by breathing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I reach under the desk and flip the hidden panel. Inside, an old ceramic teacup sits nested among encrypted drives and magnetic safes. I pull it out carefully and set it beside the monitor.
Mara’s mug.
She left it on the counter. Didn’t even realize it.
That’s the kind of detail that roots itself in a man like me.
I hear the soft ping of an incoming transmission.
Lydia.
Her voice crackles through. “North camera picked up a shadow. 22:46. No clear face, but the posture’s off. Didn’t linger. Just enough to clock the exit routes.”
“Send the frame.”
“Already in your queue.”
I open it.
A still shot. Mid-stride. Hooded. Gloved. Not facing the camera, but the tilt of the head is calculating. Watching.
Wrong gait for a delivery runner. Too smooth for a drunk. Definitely not a civilian.
“Same guy from the flower box?” I ask.
“Too tall. Different stride. But the same posture. And the same choice of window.”
Mara’s.
Always Mara’s.
I drag the still onto the main screen and enhance it. Nothing new. But the timing—less than two hours after she left the clinic. Right before we drove out here.
I grind my teeth and close the image.
