Chapter 34 : "Trust Me"
Twelve hours until the death window.
I found Sam at his usual spot—a waterfront bar with cheap beer and a view of boats he could no longer afford. He was working through a basket of fried shrimp and watching a fishing charter unload its catch, probably reminiscing about a life that didn't involve gunfights and explosives.
"Pull up a chair," he said without looking at me. "You look like you need a drink more than I do."
"I need something else."
He turned then, reading my face the way only someone with decades of intelligence experience could. Whatever he saw there made him set down his beer and give me his full attention.
"This is about tomorrow," he said. It wasn't a question.
"Tomorrow, I need you to be somewhere specific at a specific time. I can't tell you why. I can't explain the context. But I need you there, and I need you armed and ready to move."
"That's a lot of 'can't' without a lot of 'why.'"
"I know."
Sam was quiet for a long moment. The charter boat finished unloading, tourists posing with marlin that would end up in someone else's kitchen. The normalcy of it felt surreal—ordinary people living ordinary lives while I planned to tear a hole in the fabric of the timeline I remembered.
"You've been weird since you showed up," Sam said finally. "Helpful, but weird. Learning things you shouldn't be able to learn. Knowing things you shouldn't be able to know. I've seen a lot of strange stuff in my career, but you..." He shook his head. "You're something different."
"I can't explain that either."
"I'm noticing a pattern." He picked up his beer, took a long drink, and set it back down with deliberate care. "I don't know what you are, Sheldon. Part of me thinks you're some kind of asset from a program I've never heard of. Part of me thinks you're running a long con that's going to burn us all. And part of me—the part that's kept me alive this long—knows you haven't lied about wanting to help us."
"I haven't."
"I know. That's the problem." He smiled, but there was no humor in it. "If you were lying, I could handle that. Liars are predictable. But you're telling the truth about the important things and hiding something else entirely. That's harder to read."
I didn't respond. There was nothing I could say that wouldn't make things worse.
"Where do you need me?" Sam asked.
The question hit me like a physical blow—not because of its content, but because of what it meant. Sam Axe, career intelligence officer, decorated Navy SEAL, man who'd survived thirty years in a business that killed most people within five—was offering trust without evidence.
The hardest kind of trust. The kind that gets people killed.
"Warehouse district. Fortieth and Meridian. There's a building across from the old cannery—I need you on the third floor with a clear sightline to the east entrance."
"What am I watching for?"
"Someone who's going to die if you're not there."
Sam's expression didn't change. "That's specific."
"It's all I can give you."
Another long silence. The bar noise faded to background static while Sam processed the request, weighing it against everything he knew about me—which was simultaneously too much and not nearly enough.
"I'll be there," he said. "What time?"
"Fourteen hundred. Be set up by thirteen-fifty."
"And if Michael asks where I am?"
"Tell him it's personal. Tell him you're meeting someone from your Navy days. Tell him anything except the truth."
"Lying to Mike." Sam's voice was flat. "That's not something I do."
"I know. I'm asking you to do it anyway."
He finished his beer in silence. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet—not angry, just resigned.
"You know what happens to people who make me regret trusting them?"
"I have a pretty good idea."
"Good. Because if someone dies because of something you didn't tell me—if this goes sideways because you're playing games I don't understand—I won't need Michael to handle you."
"I understand."
Sam stood, dropping enough cash on the table to cover both our tabs. "Thirteen-fifty. Third floor. East entrance." He looked at me one last time. "Don't make me regret this."
He walked away without looking back.
I sat alone at the table, watching the charter boat head back out for another run, and wondered how many people I was asking to trust me with their lives.
Michael found Sam that evening at Carlito's.
I wasn't there—I'd stationed myself across the street, using the ambient awareness passive from Surveillance Level 10 to read the conversation through their body language. It wasn't the same as hearing words, but it told me enough.
Michael was suspicious. He'd noticed Sam's changed demeanor—the careful way he was avoiding certain topics, the tension in his shoulders that suggested he was keeping a secret. Michael Westen didn't miss details like that. He'd built a career on reading people who were hiding things.
Sam deflected. I could tell by the casual way he waved his hand, the deliberate relaxation of his posture, the body language of someone trying to look natural. "Personal errand. Nothing operational."
Michael didn't buy it. His eyes narrowed—I saw it even from this distance, the fractional tightening that meant he was filing information for later analysis. But he didn't push. Whatever Sam was hiding, it wasn't an immediate threat to the team.
Not yet.
The conversation shifted to operational matters—tomorrow's continuation of the Sarah Harker extraction, timing and logistics that didn't involve me. I watched them discuss plans that didn't include the intervention I was running parallel to everything else.
Two operations happening simultaneously. One visible, one hidden. One sanctioned by the team, one built from trust I hadn't earned through normal channels.
My phone buzzed. A text from Sam: I'll be there. Don't make me regret it.
Twelve hours had become eleven. Then ten.
The countdown continued, and everyone I cared about was moving toward a moment they didn't fully understand.
I hoped I understood it well enough for all of us.
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