Page 17 of The Words Beneath the Noise

“That's not as comforting as you think it is.”

“No.” Her mouth twisted in something like a smile. “I suppose it isn't.”

I grabbed my coat and scarf and walked out into the cold, needing air, needing space, needing to be somewhere my face didn't have to perform anything for anyone.

But Finch's words followed me into the snow. Twelve men. Because someone thought their irregularities didn't matter.

He wasn't just being difficult. He was trying to prevent another disaster, another failure, another stack of telegrams sent to families who'd never see their sons again.

It didn't make the interrogation less awful. Didn't stop the shame of being singled out, the frustration of my face betraying me by going blank instead of innocent.

But it made Finch something other than a monster.

Just a man. Doing an impossible job. Trying to keep people alive in a world determined to kill them.

I understood that, even if I hated being on the receiving end of it.

I stoodoutside Hut X trying to remember how to breathe. The sky had gone dark, proper night falling with the weight of winter, and snow drifted in lazy spirals past the shaded lamps.

I couldn't go back to my billet. Couldn't sit alone in that cold room with nothing but my thoughts and the Black Book and the endless loop of Finch's suspicion playing behind my eyes. I needed people. Noise. Something to drown out the silence in my head.

The Rose and Crown was a fifteen-minute walk from the estate, a small village pub that served watered-down ale and tolerated the strange civilians who appeared at odd hours speaking in codes and looking like they hadn't slept in weeks. It wasn't much, but it was somewhere other than here.

I started walking.

The pub was half-full when I pushed through the door, a welcome blast of warmth and noise after the frozen silence outside. A fire crackled in the hearth. Voices murmured in the comfortable cadence of people who weren't carrying state secrets. The smell of pipe smoke and old wood wrapped around me like a blanket.

I ordered a half-pint of whatever they had and found a corner table, settling with my back to the wall. The beer was terrible, flat and lukewarm, but I drank it anyway because holding something gave my hands purpose.

I'd been in the pub for twenty minutes, watching the room without really seeing it, when a familiar figure appeared in the doorway.

Sergeant Hale.

He stood there for a moment, scanning the room with that automatic assessment he carried everywhere, and when his eyes found me in my corner, something shifted in his expression. Not surprise, exactly. More like irritation.

He crossed to the bar, ordered something, and then walked toward my table without asking permission.

“This seat taken?”

“Would it matter if it was?”

“Probably not.” He sat down across from me, setting his pint on the scarred wood. “Didn't expect to find you here. Thought you'd be hunched over your desk pushing papers around.”

“Didn't expect to be here.” I took a sip of my terrible beer. “And they're not papers. They're intercepts. Each one represents lives.”

“I know what they represent.” His voice had an edge to it. “I've seen what happens on the other end of your intercepts.”

The words landed like a slap. I set down my glass, fingers tightening around the base.

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“Meaning you sit in your warm hut with your pencils and your patterns, and somewhere out there, men are bleeding in the snow because of the decisions that come out of this place.” He took a long drink, eyes never leaving mine. “You ever think about that? When you're cracking your clever little codes?”

Heat flooded my chest. The unfairness of it, the sheer bloody arrogance.

“Every single day.” My voice came out sharper than I intended. “Every intercept I decode, I know exactly what it means. Convoy routes that will be attacked. Troop positions that will be bombed. I translate death into coordinates, Sergeant. Don't presume to lecture me about consequences.”

“Then why do you look so surprised when I mention it?”