Votive at Blackridge

Corin gave a small laugh. It sounded too loud in the chalet. “You’ve known me four days.”

“Four days, two false alerts, one attempted departure from a controlled transit zone, and a request to stop beside a roadside shrine because you thought someone had left an encrypted message in a candleholder.”

“It was an encrypted message.”

“It was a parking receipt beneath a candleholder.”

“It had numbers.”

“Most receipts do.”

Corin pointed his spoon at him. “You let me investigate it.”

“I let you conduct a controlled drill.”

The memory opened with rain striking the windshield of their previous vehicle, hard enough to turn the highway into grey glass. It had been their first roadside assignment together: a quiet transfer between towns, no press, no campaign staff, no obvious tail.

Corin had spotted the shrine beneath an overpass and insisted the candleholder was familiar.

Shohei had pulled over two hundred metres away.

“You have three minutes,” he had said. “You walk only where I can see you. You keep your phone on. If I say return, you return.”

“You’re letting me go?”

“I am turning your bad idea into a procedure.”

Corin had dashed through the rain anyway, coat flaring behind him, then stopped when Shohei’s voice came through the earpiece.

“Left shoulder. Blue sedan. Do not look at it.”

For the first time, Corin had understood the difference between being indulged and being protected. Shohei had not mocked his instinct. He had made room for it, measured its risks, and refused to let it become a grave.

Back in the chalet, Corin set down his spoon.

“You knew there was someone in that sedan.”

“I suspected.”

“And you still let me run toward the shrine.”

“I moved you where I could cover you and identify the vehicle.”

“You could have simply told me no.”

“You would have gone anyway.”

Corin looked at him across the battered table. “That is offensively perceptive.”

“It is my profession.”

“No. Your profession is glaring at doors and confiscating phones.”

Shohei ate another bite of stew. “You talk when you are afraid.”

The words found their mark with surgical precision.

Outside, snow struck the shutters in quick, dry bursts. Corin lowered his eyes to the dark beans in his bowl.

“I talk when I’m bored too.”

“I know.”

“Do you know everything?”

“No.” Shohei’s answer came without drama. “I know enough to keep looking.”

The radio cracked. A voice surfaced through the static, too broken to understand, then vanished.

Shohei stood at once and reached for the console.

Corin followed him with his bowl still warm in both hands, listening to the failing mast scrape its message into the winter.

The radio gave a long metallic cough, then a sequence of clipped tones.

Shohei bent over the console and changed frequencies with careful, economical movements. “That is a file header,” he said. “Not a live call.”

Corin set his bowl on the counter before it could fall from his hands. “From whom?”

“The relay recognizes your archive key.”

A progress bar crawled across the console’s small cracked display. Snow worried at the shutters. The stove ticked as its iron heated and cooled.

Then Evan Dacre’s voice filled the room.

“Corin. It’s Evan. They found out about the dispatch tables. I started the transfer, but I need you to listen—don’t use my name until you have every ledger. Quade’s people have access to the rescue routes. They know where vehicles go when the cameras aren’t there.”

A sound like tires skidding over gravel cut through the recording.

Evan made one sharp, frightened noise.

“I’m on Granite Road. Someone hit—”

Metal shrieked. The recording ended.

The console clicked again. A second file opened automatically: a county crash notice, stamped twenty-three minutes after Evan’s message. Single-vehicle accident. Vehicle recovered below the east embankment. Driver deceased.

Corin stared at the blue light on the radio panel until it blurred.

For nearly two weeks, he had kept a small, stupid hope alive. Evan had gone underground. Evan had burned his phone and found a motel under a false name. Evan had decided survival mattered more than testimony.

Instead, Evan had died trying to give Corin the proof.

“His name was Evan Dacre,” Corin said. His own words sounded distant, as though someone else had taken possession of his mouth. “He audited the emergency-rescue subcontractors. He found invoices for crews that never existed, helicopters that never flew, shelters that were never built.”

Shohei did not reach for him.

That restraint broke something open.

Corin put both hands on the counter. The wood felt cold through his palms. “He told me he was afraid. I said that was sensible. I said we would make a plan.” His laugh failed before it became laughter. “Apparently, I was very good at plans.”

“The people who forced him off that road made the choice,” Shohei said.

“You cannot know they forced him.”

“I know the timing. I know the route data. I know your threat message mentioned snow covering mistakes.”

Corin shut his eyes. Tears came anyway, hot and humiliating. He hated crying in front of people. Cameras had taught him that grief became a product the moment another person decided how it should look.

Shohei crossed to the kettle, filled it from a bottle, and set it on the stove.

The movement pulled Corin into another night.

A hotel corridor had been packed with reporters after Corin’s documentary footage first aired. Microphones had crowded the doors. Someone had shouted that he was a fraud. Someone else had shouted that he was brave. Both accusations had made him want to disappear.

He had made it into his room with Shohei behind him, then stood in the middle of the carpet unable to remove his coat.

Shohei had taken off his own jacket, set a paper cup of tea on the table, and sat on the floor beside the sofa.

“You don’t need to tell me what to do,” Corin had said.

“Good,” Shohei had replied. “I did not bring instructions.”

“You brought tea.”

“Tea is permitted.”

Corin had stared at him. “Are you staying there?”

“For as long as you want company.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I leave.”

No pressure. No demand for a confession. No attempt to turn Corin’s distress into a problem Shohei could solve. He had simply remained nearby until Corin finally sat down and drank the tea.

Back in the chalet, the kettle began to rattle.

Shohei poured water into two chipped mugs, then placed one within Corin’s reach. “Do you want me beside you?”

Corin looked at him.

“I can stay there,” Shohei continued, indicating the far end of the room. “I can sit with you. I can touch you if you ask. You decide.”

The care in it hurt almost as much as the recording.

“I want you beside me,” Corin said.

Shohei pulled out the chair across from him, then stopped before sitting. “Before I do that, we need to be exact.”

“Of course we do.”

“I am responsible for your safety. That does not give me permission to decide what you want, and it does not disappear because you are upset.” His face held the same composure it had at Exit C, but Corin saw the effort beneath it. “If you are asking for anything because you want to stop feeling this for an hour, we wait.”

Corin considered the mug between his hands. Steam dampened his knuckles.

“I am terrified,” he said. “I am grieving. Neither makes me unable to know what I want.” He lifted his eyes. “I have wanted you since you blocked that exit at the depot. I wanted you at the roadside shrine. I wanted you when you made stew out of canned beans and acted as though cumin was military equipment.”

Shohei’s mouth changed by a fraction.

“But,” Corin said, “I do not want to be handled because I am sad. I do not want you to think I will regret this because Evan died.”

“You might regret it.”

“I might regret breakfast. That is not the same as being incapable of choosing.”

Shohei sat down at last. “If we cross this line, you can stop me at any point. You do not have to explain why. If danger returns, protection comes first. When the pass opens, we speak to Lachlan about the detail and whether it needs to change.”

“Agreed.”

“And there is no debt between us.”

Corin’s throat tightened. “Agreed.”

Shohei waited.

Corin set down his tea. “Kiss me. Then ask again.”

Shohei removed his holster, secured it in the lockbox beside the patrol cot, and checked the radio once more. Only static answered. Then he came back.

His hand settled against Corin’s jaw.

“May I?”

“Yes.”

The kiss began slowly, with none of the hungry impatience Corin had expected from himself. Shohei’s mouth was firm, then gentler when Corin opened for him. Corin tasted tea and smoke from the stove. He caught the front of Shohei’s shirt in both hands and pulled him closer.