Page 12 of His Wall

"Harlow."

I straightened.

I met her once at a briefing at a Bureau safe house in Queens, after my old handler had rotated out to a desk in DC. She was in her 40s, with dark hair cut blunt to her jaw, a voice that did not warm up over the phone. She had read my file.

"Good morning."

"I have your upload from last night. Walk me through it."

The file access logs were partial but consistent — Julian had pulled five of the same archive folders over the last six months, all tied to deals that predated the firm's split with Conrad Weiss. The browser tabs were innocuous on the surface — Bloomberg, two news sites, a fintech newsletter — but the search history had three queries about historical SEC filings on Vanguard's earliest acquisitions. The desktop folder structure had an unmarked folder titled simply "M." I hadn't been able to open it before I'd had to pull out.

She listened without interrupting.

When I finished, there was a beat of quiet on the line.

"It's something."

"Yes."

"It's not enough." A pause. "Have you found anything that links him directly to Weiss? Anything that confirms he's the line in?"

"Nothing direct. The archive folders he's pulling overlap with the Weiss-era deals, but they overlap with everything from that period. He built the systems. He'd be in those files for any reason. I can't separate the operational pull from the active one."

"Four months in, and you can't separate them."

"No. Not yet."

"Tell me about him."

"Ma'am?"

"Cross. What's he like in the office? How does he operate? What does he talk about when he's comfortable?"

I rolled the coffee mug between my palms. The ceramic was warm against my hands.

"He's a high-functioning chaos. Reschedules on instinct. Charming. Very smart. Reads a room faster than anyone I've worked with. Keeps people at a comfortable distance. He talks when he's comfortable. He jokes when he’s not."

"You don't joke back."

"No, ma'am."

A pause.

"You've been in there for four months, and you can't tell me what he talks about when he's comfortable."

"He's not comfortable around me."

"Why not?"

The kitchen was quiet.

"I haven't given him a reason to be."

"Right."

She let it sit.

I gripped the mug a little tighter.