Page 65 of Silent Watch
"The story is why I'm still alive."Her voice cracked on the last word, and she turned away from him, both hands gripping the back of the kitchen chair."Do you think I don't know what it costs?Do you think I don't see Geri's face every time I close my eyes?I carried this for fourteen months by myself, Caleb.Alone.No backup, no safe house, no one watching surveillance feeds at three in the morning because they gave a damn whether I made it through the night."
She let go of the chair and faced him.
"And then you showed up.And for the first time in over a year, I thought—" She stopped.Pressed her lips together.Started again."I thought I didn't have to do this alone anymore.But that's not what you're offering, is it?You're not offering to stand beside me.You're offering to remove me from the equation."
"I'm offering to keep you alive."
"By taking away the only thing that makes my life worth the risk."
They stood five feet apart in the safe house kitchen.The surveillance monitors glowed on the counter.The white van sat at the end of Inlet Drive, patient and still watching Geri’s house.Outside, the afternoon light slanted through the blinds and laid stripes across the floor between them.
"You don't get to make this decision for me," she said."You don't get to decide that the story isn't worth dying for, because you haven't lived inside it the way I have.You read the files.You traced the money.But I sat across from Edward Marsh while he cried about a newspaper that used to mean something.I held Geri Crane's photo album while she showed me pictures of a town that no longer exists.This isn't an operation to me.It's not an assignment.These are people's lives."
"And yours?"
"Mine too."
Caleb looked at her.She was breathing hard, her cheeks flushed, her hands at her sides with her fingers curled into loose fists.She looked like someone who'd been fighting for a long time and had gotten very good at it.
He wanted to cross the five feet between them.Wanted to put his hands on her shoulders and feel the tension coiled under her skin and tell her she was right, that he had no authority over her choices, that the fear driving his argument was personal and not operational, and he knew the difference even if he couldn't admit it.
Instead, he said the worst thing he could have said.
"Isak Thorne died because of this story."
Harper flinched.A small, involuntary motion, like she'd been struck.Her hands opened and closed at her sides.
"I know that," she said.
"Do you?Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you're repeating his pattern.Working alone, pushing too hard, too fast, refusing to consider?—"
"Stop."
"—that the people you're trying to take down will kill you the same way they killed him."
"I said stop."
He stopped.
The kitchen was very quiet.The refrigerator hummed.The surveillance feed showed the white van's brake lights flash once, then go dark.
"You don't get to use Isak against me."Her voice was low and steady, but her chin trembled once before she locked it."You don't get to throw his death in my face to win an argument.That's not—" She shook her head."We're done talking about this."
"Harper."
"We're done."She picked up her laptop bag and walked to the bedroom.At the doorway, she paused, her back to him, one hand on the frame."I'm staying in Blossom Springs.I'm finishing this story.You can help me, or you can watch me do it alone, but you don't get to stop me."
The door closed.Not a slam—something quieter, more deliberate.
Caleb stood in the kitchen and listened to the silence she'd left behind.
He calledRonan twenty minutes later.
"She won't leave."
"I know."Ronan's voice was unsurprised."Did you ask her or tell her?"
"What's the difference?"
