HE WAITED 1,095 DAYS TO CLAIM ME

Chapter 13

The emissary was a woman.

That's not what I thought would happen. Not because the faction didn't use women; they did, strategically, when they wanted to be underestimated, but because of the particular type they'd sent. In a nice, non-flashy way, with the characteristics of a person who is at least in his mid-forties and has been in the presence of a lot of people who said the wrong thing for years. She introduced herself as Maren. No surname offered. She shook my hand and held it a half-second longer than necessary, and I let her, because that half-second told me everything about what she thought of me.

She thought I was manageable.

Good.

We received her in the west sitting room, neutral ground within the compound, no operational material visible, the kind of room that communicated we have nothing to hide without communicating we have nothing to prepare. Raze sat to my left. Silas was standing by the door with his arms at his side and his face in the exact blankness that it assumed when it was listening hardest. With her, she had brought one man, young, watchful, his hands always in view. Security presence, not muscle. She wasn't here to threaten.

She was here to negotiate.

"We appreciate your willingness to receive us," Maren said. Her voice was measured, the cadence of someone who had rehearsed this opening enough times that it no longer sounded rehearsed, which was its own kind of tell.

"Of course," I said. "My father valued dialogue."

A small pause. I observed her adjust. She'd been briefed on me as the daughter who left, the civilian, the woman who'd spent three years outside and come back soft. I used my dad as a reference point, instead of a grief point, and it landed on me in a different way than he had modeled. She'd expected sentiment. She'd gotten positioning.

She moved on smoothly. They always did.

"The situation following your father's passing has created some instability," she said. "Understandably so. The faction's interest is in resolution. We believe there are arrangements that could benefit all parties involved."

"What kind of arrangements?" I said.

"Access, primarily. Your father held certain relational assets, networks, contacts, and established channels of communication that have been dormant since his passing. The faction believes these assets are too valuable to remain inactive."

"You want my father's network," I said.

She smiled with her mouth only. "We want to discuss a framework for collaborative management."

"Of assets that belong to this compound."

"Of assets that carry value for multiple interested parties."

I let a moment pass. Not long, not enough to be hesitant, mind you, but enough to be considered. I was not hostile. I did not have to fear for my life. I was simply a woman taking her time, and I watched her read that and file it under inexperienced, which was exactly where I needed it filed. "Walk me through the framework you have in mind," I said.

She did.

It took 11 minutes. It was thorough, well-structured, and almost entirely fictional, a proposal designed not to be accepted but to draw out a counteroffer, to map what I valued, what I feared, and what price I might put on cooperation. I listened to all of it. I asked three questions, each one constructed to sound like clarification while extracting a specific piece of information I needed. I kept my hands relaxed in my lap, my expression open, mildly interested, and gave her nothing she could use.

By the time she finished, I had the faction's timeline. I had the name of a secondary contact she'd referenced without meaning to, a slip so small that she almost certainly didn't register it herself. And I had, in the gap between what she offered and what she carefully omitted, a clean outline of what they actually wanted and precisely how afraid of it they were.

My father's network wasn't dormant. They knew it wasn't. They were trying to get to it before I understood what it was.

"This is helpful," I said when she finished. "I'll need time to review with my advisors."

"Of course." She set a card on the table between us. "We hope for a response within seventy-two hours."

"I'll do my best."

She stood. I stood. We shook hands again, and this time the half-second pressure was absent. She was still recalibrating, something not sitting right in her read of the room, the conversation not having gone the way her briefing had suggested it would. I watched her absorb that and file it and keep her face composed.

I walked her to the compound entrance myself. Raze came with me, three steps behind, present and silent. At the gate Maren paused and looked at me with the first genuinely unguarded look she'd given since arriving.

"Your father was a careful man," she said.

"Yes," I said. "He was."

Something moved in her expression. Not warmth, recognition. The specific recognition of someone encountering a thing they'd been told wasn't there. "You're not what we were told to expect."

"People rarely are," I said.

She left.

I stood at the gate until the vehicle cleared the outer road and turned onto the main approach and disappeared. Beside me Raze was quiet. The afternoon light lay flat across the yard, and the compound behind us had resumed its normal movement, the held-breath quality of the morning finally releasing into something that felt like action rather than waiting.

"The secondary contact," Raze said.

"I caught it."

"They didn't mean to give you that."

"No," I said. "They thought they were talking to someone who wouldn't recognize what it meant."

He was looking at the road where the vehicle had gone. Something in his profile had shifted. The quality of attention he was giving the moment was different from his usual operational stillness. More considered. The way he looked at things he was putting somewhere permanent.

"What?" I said.

He turned. Looked at me with that direct, unhurried look that had no performance in it. "Nothing," he said. “Your father would have been pleased.”

It landed somewhere I wasn't prepared for, and I turned back toward the compound before it showed.

One of Raze's men was at the inner door. Something in his hand, an envelope, sealed, with no markings. Found at the east gate while we were receiving Maren at the front.

The east gate. Both of which were closed all day. Which was the side of the wing that Marcus was held on.

I took the envelope. Didn't open it. Looked at Raze.

His jaw had tightened. He'd already run the calculation.

"Inside," I said.