Chapter 28 : Cataloging Inconsistencies
Michael was watching me again.
Not the casual awareness of a teammate, the ambient attention that came with working together. This was different. Methodical. The focus of someone building a case.
I'd caught him doing it three times in the past week—reviewing operation reports with my name highlighted, comparing timelines of my presence with mission outcomes, noting coincidences that shouldn't have happened.
The episode nine job had been too clean. I'd known it even as the dice settled on double sixes. Michael Westen didn't believe in luck, and what had happened at Chen's compound looked exactly like what it was: improbable events bending toward a desired outcome.
Now he was cataloging.
Carlito's was quiet on Tuesday afternoons. Sam and I had the back booth while Michael nursed a beer at the bar, ostensibly checking his phone but actually watching us in the mirror behind the bottles.
"He's doing it again," Sam said, voice pitched low.
"I know."
"Any idea what he's looking for?"
"Evidence that I'm not what I say I am."
Sam snorted. "Join the club. Fi and I have been in that club since day one. He didn't start building files on us until year three."
"Year three?"
"There was an incident." Sam's voice was carefully neutral. "Someone close to him turned out to be compromised. He got burned—I mean before the burn notice, different kind of burned. Since then, he's paranoid about everyone."
I filed that away. The show had hinted at Michael's trust issues, but the specifics had never been clear.
"He's watching me like a target," I said.
"He's watching you like an unknown." Sam took a long drink. "There's a difference. Targets get eliminated. Unknowns get analyzed until they become knowns."
"And if the analysis doesn't give him answers he likes?"
"Then you have a problem." Sam met my eyes. "Look, I've worked with Mike for years. He's not going to move against you without proof of actual betrayal. Right now he's just... cataloging. Trying to make sense of something that doesn't fit his models."
"That's supposed to be reassuring?"
"It's supposed to be honest."
Across the bar, Michael's reflection caught my eye in the mirror. He wasn't even pretending not to watch anymore. Our gazes met—his analytical, mine carefully neutral—and held for a three-count before he looked away.
The file was growing thicker every day.
I bought the next round without being asked.
Not as a bribe—Michael couldn't be bought with beer—but as an acknowledgment. We both knew what was happening. The pretense that we didn't was wearing thin, and I'd rather operate in uncomfortable honesty than comfortable deception.
The bartender delivered the drinks. Michael accepted his with a nod that meant nothing and everything.
"You know I'm watching you," he said quietly when I passed the bar.
"I'd be disappointed if you weren't."
"You're not worried?"
"I'm always worried. It keeps me sharp."
His expression didn't change, but something in his posture shifted—a fractional relaxation that suggested my response had been correct, or at least interesting.
"The Chen operation," he said. "Guard shift changed early. Power flickered at exactly the right moment. Target's phone rang at exactly the right time."
"Lucky."
"Lucky." He tasted the word like it was rotten. "Three statistically improbable events in a fifteen-minute window. All breaking in our favor."
"Sometimes the universe cooperates."
"The universe doesn't cooperate. People cooperate. Systems cooperate. The universe just exists, and the things that happen in it either follow patterns or they don't."
"And you think I'm a pattern you haven't identified?"
"I think you're a pattern I can't identify." He finished his beer and stood. "When I figure it out, we'll talk."
"I'll be here."
He left without looking back. Sam appeared at my elbow a moment later, watching Michael's departure through the front windows.
"That could have gone worse," he said.
"Could have gone better."
"With Mike, 'not worse' is the best you get." He clapped me on the shoulder. "He'll figure it out eventually. He always does. The question is what he does with the answer."
I didn't have a response. The Probability Dice sat heavy in my pocket, a reminder that the universe didn't cooperate—I bent it, and Michael was close to understanding that.
Seven days until the finale window. Seven days to figure out how to save someone while a spy was building a case against me.
The clock was ticking louder now.
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