Page 98 of The ARC Unit: Breach

“I didn’t know that.”

“You knew where I had been two seconds before.”

“And then I didn’t.”

His voice stayed controlled, but I heard the same thing I had heard in the vehicle.

Something under it.

“I lost you.”

I forgot whatever words were about to come out of my mouth. I realized he had stopped talking about a feed or a camera angle and said he lost me. Actually me.

I studied him more carefully.

Wolf realized what he had said at almost the same moment I did. He looked away and the familiar wall went back up so quickly that I almost wondered if I had imagined the difference.

“You didn’t lose me,” I said.

“I couldn’t reach you.”

“That isn’t the same thing.”

“It is when reaching you is my job.”

I wanted to argue but I turned toward the perimeter lights instead.

“You still can’t control everything.”

“I know,” he said without hesitation.

“You don’t act like it.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t know.”

For a second, the man beside me looked tired in a way I had never seen before. Whatever was weighing on him went deeper than exhaustion. He watched the smoke curl away from the crushed cigarette with a strange kind of resentment, like he hated that even this was something he couldn’t make stay.

My eyes dropped to his forearm.

The black-and-gray scales of the snake wound around him, disappearing around the inside of his arm and surfacing again near his wrist.

“Why the snake?”

Wolf followed my gaze.

“Don’t want to talk about it.”

“I only asked about the tattoo.”

“I heard you.”

“You have an entire snake wrapped around your arm and expect nobody to ask?”

His eyes lifted to mine.

“Yes.”

“That’s unreasonable.”