Page 24 of Fractured Allegiance
I walk two blocks, then four. I go past a dive bar with a red sign that flickers every third second, a man pissing in the alley behind it, a woman screaming into a phone.
The city keeps trying to hand me distractions. I don’t take them.
I climb the stairs to my apartment with each step sinking like concrete in my joints.
The door closes behind me like a vault.
Deadbolt clicks into place.
Jacket off. Glock back on the table.
I feel it then—like I’ve carried her scent back with me. Like some part of Lydia Carr followed me home, tucked inside the lining of my coat.
I’m not here to stalk women.
I’m here to break a criminal network in half.
Drazen. Dom. The brokers. The fixers. All of them wearing suits with blood in the seams.
But I followed her.
Because I wanted to.
Because I needed to.
And now the space between that distinction feels too thin to walk.
I cross the apartment in four strides. Pull open the window, let in the sting of city air. It doesn’t help. Still feels too tight in here.
The mattress is stripped to basics. I didn’t even put up the coverlet they issued with the Bureau’s housing stipend. Just sheets. One pillow. Another standard-issue Glock is tucked under it.
I drop into the chair beside the desk instead, and let the creak of old wood remind me where I am.
She’s not here.
But that doesn’t stop me from thinking in the present tense.
Lydia Carr.
I say the name in my head and it tastes different now. Not sterile like a Bureau file. Not transactional like an alias or a known asset.
Personal.
Wrong.
I draw the blinds. Turn the lock again. Then I bring out the laptop from where I kept it securely, move back to the desk, and place the laptop on it. I should plug in. Report movement. Flag Lydia’s address, now that I have it. Input times. Notes. Intel.
I don’t.
I just sit there.
I haven’t spoken to her again since the logistics office.
But now her name’s tattooed on the backs of my eyelids.
This is why Naomi gives speeches about distance. About containment. About the risk of masks becoming skin.
She’s not wrong.
