Page 151 of Tracked and Taken

“For yourself or for him.”

I have to think about it for just seconds.

The wall. The water. The debt. The forty-two meters. The woman in the mirror who did not button the second button.

“For myself.”

“Good. Keep it that way.”

A pause.

“Finally.”

The door closes.

I sit in my own chair in my own office at 0843, with Morrison’s mug gone from my desk and the warm ring it left behind, the morning’s docket unopened, and the mark at my throat warm at the register the bond runs when it is satisfied with the morning it has had.

I open the docket.

The day begins.

22

Everyone Looks

Tael

1108. SNAG office, Finder’s Market, Level 2.

I open the door of an office that has, in six days, trained itself to leave the reinforced chair empty when I am not in it, and I walk in like a male who has had a very good morning.

I smell like her. Not enough for the room. Enough for me. Soap and skin and the place I put my mouth on her mark before she left me standing in the wash with my hands on the tile. She came on my fingers. She put her hand around me once. She walked out. I let her. I have been hard, on and off, for four hours, and I have done nothing about it except sit in this chair and rewrite a report.

The fairy lights are on. The kettle labeled EMOTIONAL SUPPORT APPLIANCE is at a low idle. The room smells of chamomile and somebody’s leftover noodles and the particular industrial ozone of a workspace that has not been properly aired out since the Iris-Nine team came back through the door at 0300 yesterday.

Petra Phan does not look up from the desk where Maurice the stuffed bear is enthroned on the keyboard.

“Vosk.”

“Petra.”

“You look like a man who got laid.”

“Petra.”

“By the boss.”

“Petra.”

“By the boss, who left a mark visible to civilians, and who I am going to be congratulating in person at the first available opportunity.”

Flossie, from her desk, on a comm: “Director Knight here. I am still on the line. Yes. I do apologize. My intake officer is — yes. Petra, lovey?”

Petra, sweetly: “Yes, Flossie.”

“Inside voice.”

Across the room, Xor looks up from the files at his standing station.