Chapter 18 · The Name on the Screen

"Say that again," I said, "and I press harder."

Levi's jaw locked. Sweat cut a line down from his temple, past the corner of his mouth, dripping off his chin onto the gurney paper. My thumb sat flat on the last strip of tape, right over the panel I'd folded into the gauze. Dirty blood.

His blood. Sealed under white cotton like it was nothing. The isolation hold hummed around us, clinic-cold, recycled air scraping the back of my throat, the dead door magnets still dark on the frame where the alarm had killed them twenty minutes ago.

"You don't get to decide what's under there," he said through his teeth. "That's evidence tampering, Ortega. That's federal."

"So's a lifetime ban you signed off on before you ever looked at my file." I dug the thumb in another half inch. His whole side flinched, the muscle jumping under my hand like something alive and pissed off. "Funny how the rules only matter when they're mine."

"Get your hand off me."

"Sit still and I will."

He didn't sit still.