Chapter 3
Matt eased the boat back into the slip as the light finished thinning. The wind had settled enough to make docking simple, the hull answering cleanly as he brought it in. He cut the engine, secured the lines, and stood for a moment on the dock while the water went still again.
The marina had emptied out. Late season. Fewer boats. Less noise.
He walked up to the car, opened the door, and sat without starting it. The phone was already in his hand.
One new message.
Hey. Haven’t heard from you in a couple days. Just wanted to see how you’re doing.
Petra.
Nothing dramatic. No assumption. Just presence.
He let the screen dim before touching it again. The memory came easily—walking along the Golden Horn, the way the water caught the evening light, the weight of her hand in his. Her smell lingered in his mind from their first night together.
He decided to call her before the night narrowed again.
She answered on the second ring.
“Hey,” she said, like the call made sense.
“Hey,” he replied. “Just got in.”
They talked the way they always did. Easily. He told her he’d been tied up with work, some travel, nothing worth detailing. Finance was a broad enough cover that it rarely needed reinforcement. She didn’t push. She never did.
She told him about her week—candidates she’d been speaking with, conversations that hadn’t landed yet. One position came up again, something she’d mentioned before. An Egyptian engineer she had be working on for a highly coveted job in America. He was hard to recruit.
“He was caught up in something,” she said. “But I was able to land him.”
“Sounds like you,” he said.
She laughed, soft. “I get what I want eventually.”
They didn’t linger. They never tried to stretch the call into something else. When they hung up, Matt sat a moment longer, feeling steady in a way that didn’t ask for interpretation.
He started the car and drove into town instead of heading straight back to the house.
The grocery store was quiet, late enough that no one rushed and no one looked twice. He moved through the aisles without a list—salmon, vegetables, bread. Enough for one clean meal, maybe two. He planned to stay out by the lake another day or two. The space helped. The water did too.
Back at the house, he put everything away, washed his hands, and started cooking. Oil heated. Salmon hit the pan. Vegetables cut evenly, placed where they belonged. He ate standing at the counter, watching the dark water through the window as the food disappeared.
When he finished, he cleaned up immediately. Pan washed. Counter wiped. Nothing left out.
That was when his thoughts turned fully to the call he hadn’t made yet.
Carissa.
He didn’t know much about her. Not really.
He’d never asked for a last name. Never pressed for history. Whatever she’d been before didn’t matter as much as what she could do now—and what she could do was move through systems he didn’t touch. Systems he didn’t have access to. Municipal records. International pathways that blurred when viewed correctly.
Not his world.
FBI. CIA. DEA. Acronyms that meant oversight, hierarchy, jurisdiction. He didn’t belong to any of that, and he didn’t want to. But Carissa—if she’d ever brushed against those spaces, she’d left without residue. No flags. No noise. No trail he could see.
That alone told him something.
She had appeared when he needed her, not before. Asked the right questions. Delivered only what mattered. Never tried to guide him. Never framed her findings as opinion.
He trusted her.
Not because he knew her—but because she was consistent. Because she stayed in her lane. Because when she said something mattered, it always did.
If she knew more about him than he knew about her, that was fine. Someone always did. He didn’t feel exposed by it.
Matt dried his hands and moved to the table.
The laptop opened smoothly. Notes already there. Times, locations, patterns. Everything he’d exhausted on his own. He reviewed them once more without expectation, just to confirm there wasn’t something obvious he’d missed.
There wasn’t.
WTO3 wasn’t front-facing. Whoever was behind it wasn’t careless. The escalation—fertility clinic, children’s hospital—felt deliberate in a way that suggested insulation. Funding that didn’t panic. Logistics that didn’t rush.
This wasn’t a lone actor.
If there was a back end, Carissa would see it first.
Matt leaned back, eyes drifting toward the lake. The water was flat now, reflecting nothing, a dark sheet stretching into the distance. He felt calm. Focused. Ready.
This wasn’t frustration.
It was posture.
There was no money changing hands between them. No contract. No incentive he could name. That made it cleaner somehow. Harder to define. Harder to corrupt.
Why she helped him—he didn’t know yet.
Why he’d chosen her—he hadn’t questioned.
Matt pulled the phone closer, glanced once more at his notes, and dialed.
The laptop hummed softly on the table.
The lake stayed still outside.
He waited for the line to connect.