Page 45 of Rogue’s Mark

"Maybe he did," Sting says. "Maybe that's why he disappeared."

The room goes quiet.

It's the thing nobody has said out loud yet. Not like this, not this directly. Vi's father didn't just get close to the ceiling, he might have gotten this close. A real name. A real address. And then he was gone.

Vi looks at the paper. "Then we finish what he started," she says.

Armen looks at her for a moment, then picks up the marker and turns back to the whiteboard.

“They don't know how much we've found. We need to keep it that way," I say.

The meeting breaks up. Armen and Sting stay to work the whiteboard. Vi heads out and I follow because I've been following her out of rooms all day and at this point, I’m not sure I can do anything else.

I am so fucked.

She's in the corridor, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed.

"Hey," I say.

"Hey."

"Long day."

"Very." She looks at me. "We found out a lot today."

"We did."

"The suite that doesn't exist. The firm connected to the spy. A real name."

"Yeah."

"My father was right," she says. Quiet. "He was right about all of it and he couldn't prove it and someone stopped him. But he was right."

"Looks like it,” I say.

She holds that for a moment, then pushes off the wall and takes the two steps between us to kiss me.

Not desperate. Not urgent. Just deliberate, the way she does everything when she's decided to do it. Her hand finds the front of my shirt and I get mine in her hair. We just stand in the corridor and kiss.

When she pulls back, she looks at me. "Thank you," she says. "For today."

"You’re welcome," I say.

She almost smiles. Then she turns and heads down the corridor toward her room.

I watch her go.

26

VI

I didn't sleep last night.

Well, I did get three hours of sleep, maybe, which is three more than I expected, given everything swimming around in my head. A name on a piece of paper. An address across the city. And the question I can't stop asking myself no matter how many times I tell myself to stop.

What if my father is alive? Out there somewhere, laying low, just waiting for…

Waiting for what? For me? Or somebody else? Does he have a plan? Is he okay? Healthy? Has he been hurt?