“Final recommendations.”
I smiled.
“You sound relieved.”
She laughed.
“I am.”
I opened the report.
It contained months of careful work.
Interviews.
Document reviews.
Technical findings.
Procedural recommendations.
And examples of where the agency's existing safeguards had succeeded or failed.
I looked up.
“Good work.”
Priya smiled.
“Team effort.”
I nodded.
“Exactly.”
For a moment, she hesitated.
Then asked something I'd been avoiding.
“Do you ever think about leaving?”
I looked toward her.
“The agency?”
She nodded.
I considered the question.
There had been days when I wanted to resign.
Days when I was tired of being recognized in airports.
Tired of reporters asking whether I'd been frightened.
Tired of people turning the orange gown into a symbol that seemed to belong to everybody except me.
I had built my career around service.
But service had begun to feel inseparable from danger and public scrutiny.
I looked toward Priya.
“Sometimes.”
She nodded slowly.
“Would you?”
I thought about Zora.
My mother.
The team in the operations room.
The analysts who refused to accept unsupported conclusions.
The deputy who preserved the recording.
And the nurse who had spent years trying to be heard.
Then I answered.
“Not yet.”
Priya smiled.
“Good.”
I looked toward her.
“But I intend to be better about going home.”
She laughed.
“I'll believe that when I see it.”
I raised one eyebrow.
“That's reasonable.”
We both laughed.
For the first time in months, it felt easy.
A year after the traffic stop, another scholarship gala was held in Annapolis.
The invitation arrived in the spring.
The organizers wanted me to speak again.
This time, the invitation included a personal note from Naomi, the student who'd asked whether I had ever doubted myself.
She had graduated from high school.
Received an engineering scholarship.
And been accepted into a university program focused on electrical systems.
She wrote that our conversation the previous year had stayed with her.
Not because I seemed fearless.
Because I'd admitted that doubt was normal.
At the bottom of the letter, she added:
I hope you'll come back. There are more girls who need to hear that.
I stared at the page for several minutes.
Then placed it beside the original gala invitation.
For a moment, I remembered the orange gown.
The midnight road.
Devlin's laughter.
The gravel beneath my identification card.