[Bailee’s POV]
Spencer Wallace doesn't leave evidence. No abandoned coffee cups, no pens chewed past recognition, no stray water bottles sweating onto rented tablecloths. His desk looks like it was staged for a magazine, and his awareness of every object in a room borders on predatory.
Getting DNA from Miles was a coffee date wrapped in guilt. Getting it from Blake was sleight of hand in a dim office. Spencer is going to require the tactical precision of a woman who has absolutely none.
So I volunteer to coordinate the department lunch. Maeve in HR looks at me like I've offered to defuse live ordnance.
"You want to organise the Q3 celebration?" She blinks twice, pen frozen mid-air. "Voluntarily?"
"I'm a team player, Maeve." My smile could strip varnish. "It says so on my performance review—somewhere between 'adequate' and 'shows up.'"
"You've never once attended a department lunch." Her pen taps the clipboard, making a point.
"Growth mindset." I tap the signup sheet. "Put me on drinks."
She assigns me napkins and water station—my entire war strategy. The napkins are collateral cover.
By noon the conference room on twelve is full—platters of sandwiches, sparkling water, and forty employees pretending milestone lunches are about team spirit. I station myself behind the drink table like a bartender—thank god the water doesn’t require mixing.
Spencer arrives eleven minutes late, scans the room once—one sweep cataloguing every exit, every body, every surface—and my spine locks against the table behind me.
"Water?" I hold out a glass before his attention fully lands. "Still or sparkling?"
"Still." His fingers brush mine for a quarter-second that sends my pulse somewhere it has no business going. "Didn't know you were on the planning committee."
"All you need to do is volunteer and they hand you napkin duty." I gesture at my empire of folded linen. "The power is intoxicating."
His mouth does something that isn't quite a smile—the architectural suggestion of one, blueprinted but never built. "You hate these things."
"With my entire cardiovascular system." I pour myself water I won't drink. "But the sandwiches are free, so my standards have adjusted."
"Standards are just boundaries that haven't met the right incentive." He takes a slow sip, and I track the glass like it owes me money. "You're settling in."
"That sounds dangerously close to a compliment." I arrange napkins that don't need arranging. "Should I document this for HR?"
"Document whatever you like." His mouth shifts by a fraction—tectonic, private. "I'll deny everything."
He almost smiles. Then he takes two sips, sets the glass on the high table three feet to my left, and steps into a conversation about quarterly projections. I fix my eyes on that glass like it holds the codes to my entire life.
Twenty agonising minutes I stand there making small talk while tracking a water glass with the vigilance of a woman whose future sits in a ring of condensation. Jenna from accounting tells me about her daughter's recital and I answer in sentences that sound almost human.
His phone buzzes. He steps toward the window—one hand in his pocket, back turned—and my hands close around the glass before my brain finishes the risk assessment.
Napkin, wrap, hide into the bag. The glass clinks against the one already inside and my fingers betray me so badly the bag nearly slips off my shoulder.
I catch it with both hands and press the strap against my hip. Nobody notices, because there is nothing more invisible than the woman on napkin duty at a party celebrating achievements that aren't hers.
The drive to the courier office takes fourteen minutes and I spend every one checking the rearview. The tech behind the counter has reading glasses on a beaded chain and the efficiency of a woman who has processed ten thousand packages.
I slide three wrapped samples across the counter alongside my blood draw kit, each one wrapped with the steady composure of a woman delivering evidence at a crime scene.
"Results in five to seven business days." She tears off a receipt. "Sealed envelope, no digital copy."
"No email? No portal?" My voice comes out steadier than my hands deserve.
"Paper only, chain of custody protocol." She pushes the receipt toward me like a woman who's had this conversation four hundred times and finds it no more interesting on this occasion. "You'll get a call when it ships."
Five to seven days. My body can't choose between collapse and combustion, so it stands at the counter gripping a receipt while the distinct sensation settles that I've mailed three grenades into the postal system.
The parking lot is overbright, March sun on asphalt blinding me. I dig for my keys, look up, and the air leaves my body like something yanked it out.
Spencer is leaning against my car. Arms crossed, shoulder blades on the driver's door, storm-blue eyes locked onto me with the patience of a man who arrived first and chose to wait.
"Spencer." My keys bite into my palm. "Bit far from the office for a lunch break."
"Had a call to finish." His gaze stays fixed, every muscle in his face held deliberately still. "Saw your car pull out of the garage in a hurry."
"Errands." The word comes out too fast, too light. "You know how it is."
"I don't, actually." He slides his hands into his pockets with the deliberate calm of someone holstering a weapon. "What did you just mail?"
My throat works around three lies before one survives. "My mother's insurance paperwork. Filing deadline—office on Ninth closes at four."
"The courier on Ninth is a chain-of-custody lab service, Bailee." His head tilts a fraction. "They don't handle insurance forms."
My stomach drops through the asphalt. "They do general services too. There's a sign."
"There is a sign." He takes one step closer—not threatening, just reducing the distance between his question and my answer. "General window is on the left.”
"You went right." Two words, and his attention is the most inconvenient thing in this man. Especially right now.
The air between us turns solid, something with weight and edges. My jaw locks until my molars ache.
"Are you following me?" The words come out serrated, sharp enough to cut us both. "There's a word for that, Spencer."
"I'm standing in a parking lot." His voice stays maddeningly level. "You're the one who looks like she's about to run."
Three seconds he holds my gaze—long enough for my heartbeat to relocate to my ears, long enough for every rehearsed excuse to dissolve.
"I hope everything's in order." His voice drops half a register, and the words carry a weight that has nothing to do with insurance. He steps back, giving me the door, and the space he occupied holds his warmth for a full breath after he's gone.
He doesn't believe a single syllable. It's written in every controlled line of his body—the jaw that didn't soften, the eyes that tracked my bag instead of my face.
Spencer doesn't need proof. He assembles conclusions from silences, and mine just detonated.
But he lets me go. That part makes my hands shake on the steering wheel the entire drive home—not that he caught me, but that he chose not to close the trap. Spencer Wallace is three moves ahead, and I just hand-delivered every piece he needed to a courier's office in a napkin.
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