Page 44 of Pocket Wife

“What does recommendation mean?”

“That depends on whether I obey it.”

She sets the notices down with excessive care. “And if you do not?”

“Removal from this case. Possible termination from Authority service.”

The bond stirs between us, bright with her alarm. I keep my hands folded behind my back because reaching for her would be too easy.

Lucy reads the notice herself. Her mouth tightens at one line.

“Undisclosed personal involvement,” she says.

“Yes.”

“They know?”

“Helix likely knows enough to imply more than it can prove.”

Her cheeks warm, but her voice stays steady. “Are they using me to remove you?”

“They are using my attachment to you.”

“There is a difference?”

“To me, yes.”

The display chimes.

The conference opens: Director Elaris Kaun, a gray-robed standards officer, and Vance Corvek in Helix’s orbital legal suite, calm as a man who has already counted the outcome.

“Specialist Veyr,” Kaun says. “You received the notice.”

“I have.”

The standards officer speaks next. “You are instructed to stand down from all active investigative functions while your conduct is assessed.”

“On what basis?”

“Conflict of interest.”

Corvek’s expression softens into something almost sympathetic. “Recent developments suggest Specialist Veyr’s judgment may no longer be independent.”

Lucy takes one step forward.

I feel the motion through the bond as clearly as a touch.

“Define recent developments,” I say.

Corvek spreads his hands. “Repeated private contact with Miss Hartwell. Unauthorized field travel. Failure to disclose an intimate association with the central organizer of settlement resistance. Emotion complicates objectivity.”

There it is.

Not a threat shouted aloud.

A threat made official.

I face the standards officer. “Helix’s claim depends on altered records, coerced amendments, stripped archive sites, private offers targeted to medical vulnerabilities, and a sabotaged transport that nearly killed two protected witnesses. Are those also emotional complications?”