“You’re six foot two.”
“I like a challenge.”
“You have work tomorrow.”
“I am the chief.”
“That doesn’t mean you can disappear.”
“It means I have an administrative structure filled with highly capable people who frequently remind me that the department will not collapse if I go home.”
“Will it?”
“Probably.”
I smiled.
Then winced.
“Don’t make me laugh.”
“I’ll try to become less charming.”
“You’ve had forty-three years to practice.”
“Sleep, Maya.”
For a while, I listened to the soft hum of the room.
The occasional footsteps outside.
Liam shifting in the chair.
My thoughts kept circling the fake portal.
Who knew?
Claire.
Possibly Ethan.
Someone inside Halden.
Someone inside Apex.
My audit had looked backward at four years of payments.
But the deception around me was current.
Active.
Careful.
I slept in fragments.
At 2:14 a.m., I woke from a dream about my father’s office.
