THE UNDERTOW

Someone On The Inside

Okafor's office had the tense, contained energy of a room where something had gone seriously wrong, two agents Mara didn't recognize standing near the door, files spread across the desk in a configuration that suggested hours of work compressed into the short time since her call.

"Three separate incidents," Okafor said without preamble, once the door was closed. "The safe house location where you initially stayed, the one you fled from, that address was supposed to be known only to myself and two colleagues. Someone found it anyway. Callum's shift schedule, the specific day and time he'd be alone in the parking lot, that information existed only in a protective planning document with limited access. And now this, a defense attorney representing one of Drummond's associates filed a motion this afternoon that referenced grand jury testimony that hasn't been made public. Testimony from a sealed proceeding."

"Someone inside your own office," Mara said slowly.

"Or adjacent to it. Court staff, a records clerk, someone with access to sealed filings, it's a narrower list than you'd think, but not narrow enough yet to point at a single name." Okafor's jaw was tight, the composed professionalism she'd maintained through the entire investigation finally showing real strain. "I've worked with most of these people for years. I don't want to believe any one of them would do this. But three separate leaks in one month isn't a coincidence, and I have to treat it as exactly the threat it is."

Theo leaned forward. "What can we do."

"Right now, nothing except be careful about what you say and where you say it, and trust that I'm handling this internally." Okafor looked at Mara directly. "I know that's hard to hear, given how much you've already had to trust other people with your safety. I need you to hear it anyway. I am not going to let this compromise the case, or any of you, any further than it already has."

Mara thought of Callum's shaking voice on the phone, of the two men following him to his truck with the casual confidence of people who'd known exactly where and when to find him, and felt the old fury rising again, sharper now for having a specific, nearby shape to attach itself to.

"How do we find out who it is."

"Carefully. Deliberately. Not by you doing anything independently, which I can see you're already considering." Okafor's expression softened slightly, not unkind, but firm. "I know patience isn't your natural setting, Mara. I need it to be, for this specific problem. If whoever's leaking information realizes we're onto them, they'll either go quiet and we lose the chance to catch them, or worse, they'll panic and do something that puts more people at risk."

"So what's the plan."

"Controlled information." Okafor pulled a fresh folder from the desk drawer, laying it open to reveal what looked like an internal planning document. "I'm going to compartmentalize going forward. Different pieces of sensitive information shared with different narrow groups of people, deliberately inconsistent between them. If a specific piece of information leaks, it tells me exactly which group it came from, and eventually, exactly who."

Theo studied the document. "That's a slow process."

"It's a careful one. Given what's already happened, I'd rather be slow and careful than fast and responsible for someone else getting hurt." Okafor closed the folder. "I need you both to understand something else, too. Until I resolve this, the safe house you're currently in should be considered potentially compromised. I'm moving you again tonight, to a location I haven't shared with anyone except the two agents in this room, verbally, five minutes ago."

The new location was smaller, a single-story house on the outskirts of a town none of them had heard of before that evening, no perimeter fence this time, just an unremarkable street of unremarkable houses, the specific kind of anonymity that felt, after everything, safer than any amount of visible security might have.

Elaine took the news of the leak hardest, retreating into a quiet, tight-lipped anxiety that reminded Mara uncomfortably of the woman who'd first opened her door four hours north, bracing for a visit she'd apparently been dreading for eighteen months.

"It never actually stops, does it," Elaine said, sitting at the small kitchen table of the new house, staring at nothing in particular. "I thought handing over those drives meant the end of being afraid. It just means being afraid of different things now."

"It gets narrower," Mara offered, though she understood, even as she said it, how thin the comfort probably sounded. "The threat isn't as big as it was a month ago. It's smaller, more specific, more findable. That has to count for something."

"Does it? Or does it just mean we've traded one kind of danger for a more precise version of the same thing?"

Mara didn't have a good answer for that, and didn't pretend to, sitting with Elaine in comfortable, exhausted silence instead, two women who'd both given up considerable safety in exchange for a version of the truth that still hadn't finished costing them anything.

Theo found her later that night on the back steps of the new house, no porch this time, just concrete steps and a small unfenced yard, the open exposure of it a small, nagging worry Mara couldn't quite set aside despite Okafor's assurances.

"You're doing the thing again," Theo said, sitting beside her. "Where you go quiet and start planning something you haven't told anyone about yet."

"I'm not planning anything."

"Mara."

She exhaled, the exhaustion of the day finally catching up to her all at once. "I keep thinking about who has access to sealed grand jury testimony. That's federal court staff, not Okafor's investigative team. A clerk, a stenographer, somebody adjacent to the judge's office. That's a much smaller list than Okafor's implying, and I think she already suspects that too, she's just being careful about saying so out loud until she's sure."

"That's exactly the kind of independent theorizing she asked you not to do."

"I know." Mara looked out at the dark, unfamiliar yard, the specific vulnerability of no fence at all pressing at the edge of her thoughts. "I'm not going to act on it. I'm just not going to stop thinking, Theo. I don't think I know how to stop thinking anymore. It's the only thing that's ever actually worked."

Theo was quiet for a moment, then reached over and took her hand again, the same gesture from the kitchen a few hours earlier, steadier now, more certain.

"Then think out loud with me instead of alone," he said. "That's the only condition. You don't do this by yourself anymore. Not the thinking, not any of it."

Mara looked at him in the dim light from the kitchen window behind them, and felt something in her chest ease, just slightly, the old, exhausting habit of carrying everything alone finally, gradually, beginning to loosen its grip.

"Okay," she said. "Together, then."

Somewhere beyond the unfenced yard, a car passed slowly on the road, headlights sweeping briefly across the grass before continuing on, and neither of them said anything about it, though both of them watched it go.