He Came Back Running (Maya and Mason) novel Chapter 200

Chapter 200

+15 Banus

Chapter 200

Zara’s POV

I had been watching Mason for three days.

Mason’s methodology, operating in Maya’s space, producing exactly the question he had described.

Information that makes someone who trusts completely start thinking about whether they should.

He had not told me.

He had moved, and I had learned about it through my own monitoring, and he had said the less you know, the safer you are when I called, and I had received the explanation and filed it alongside the growing list of things Mason had told me and the shrinking list of things Mason had shown me

inde Mason

The ratio was becoming uncomfortable.

He left his building at ten-forty.

I had been parked on the adjacent street since nine-fifteen….

His car pulled out

I followed at two vehicles’ distance.

The distance Mason had explained to me once, in a different context, as the difference between surveillance and being noticed.

The café was on the other side of the district…. I parked on the parallel street.

Walked to the corner.

Looked through the window…..

Mason was already seated.

The table he had chosen had the positioning of someone who had arrived early and had selected the sight lines. Wall behind him. Entrance visible. The corner that would appear, to anyone scanning the room, to contain an unremarkable man drinking coffee

I had sat in exactly that position when I met with my own contacts.

I watched.

The woman arrived at ten-fourteen.

I did not know her

Mid-forties, and she sat.

They talked.

I could not hear through the window. I could only read.

The posture of their conversation had the structure of a negotiation rather than a reconnection….

Mason’s hands, flat on the table

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Chopter 200

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Her hands, less settled.

The assessment on her face.

Then Mason’s hand moving.

The huge envelope sitting on the table….

I watched her look at it.

Watched her calculate.

Watched her reach what looks like a decision….

She picked up the envelope.

Tucked it into her bag.

Stood.

Said something.

Mason smiled.

She left

I pressed my back against the wall of the adjacent building.

Let her pass on the pavement.

She walked without looking left or right…..

I looked through the window.

Mason at his table.

Picking up his coffee……

I stood on the pavement and ran it.

A woman I didn’t know.

An envelope.

A meeting Mason had not mentioned, had not planned to mention, had not consulted me about in any form.

The less you know, the safer you are.

Not a protection.

A management tool.

I had never been his partner.

……not an equal. Not someone whose agreement mattered, whose input shaped the plan, whose access was genuinely the thing he needed alongside his own capacity.

A contingency….

Someone to take the fall if a fall was required

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Chapter 200

Someone whose knowledge was managed precisely to the level that kept her useful without making her dangerous… who knew enough to have motive and not enough to have defence.

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The envelope woman.

Whoever she was, whatever history she had with Mason had been identified and was now deploying…. that was the real plan. That had been the plan when he said I want to use what we both have. My access was the secondary instrument. The thing he had already set in motion was the primary one.

I had been telling myself I was the junior partner.

The junior partner was still a partner.

What I was, standing outside a café window watching Mason drink coffee, was something simpler.

A contingency

A pawn.

I turned and walked back to my car.

Did not start the engine immediately.

Alex.

I thought about his face when I had appeared in his hospital room.

I know in my heart the only thing standing in-between I and Alex is Maya. The reason why I agreed to Mason’s partnership… and I can’t do this alone… Mason’s father had not been in touch with me since Alex was admitted in the Intensive care unity of that hospital, throughout his unconsciouness. And now he’s awake. I guess Maya has won his father’s heart as well.

All I have now, is being in the shadows of Mason’s plan…. Violence not as an option any more, the lesser I know the better… those where Mason’s words regarding our new plan.

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