"You okay in there?"
The room was still vibrating from Maya's scream when Mateo's voice came through the door, heavy with concern that she couldn't afford to deserve. She could hear him breathing on the other side of the thin wood, could picture him standing in the hallway in whatever he slept in—probably just boxers and a t-shirt, hair messy from being woken up by her nightmare.
Think. React like Alex would. Normal teenage boy having a bad dream.
Maya choked down the panic clawing at her throat, forcing her voice to sound steady despite the way her hands shook against the tangled sheets. "Yeah. Just a dream."
The pause that followed lasted too long. Long enough for someone to process that what they'd heard didn't match what they were being told, long enough for suspicion to take root and grow into something dangerous.
"Didn't sound like just a dream."
His voice was different now—not the casual concern of a dormmate checking on noise, but the focused attention of someone who'd noticed details that didn't fit together. Maya could practically hear him thinking through what he'd heard: the raw terror in her scream, the way it had torn out of her throat like something being ripped apart.
Boys don't scream like that. Not about dreams.
Maya gripped the sheets tighter, knuckles going white with tension. If she opened that door, if he saw her like this—sweat-drenched, trembling, eyes probably red from unshed tears—he'd know something was fundamentally wrong with Alex Rivera's carefully constructed story.
"Go back to bed, Mateo," she muttered, forcing steel into her voice that she didn't feel. The tone she'd practiced in mirrors, lower than natural, rougher around the edges.
But his footsteps didn't retreat. Instead, the shadow under her door remained perfectly still, like he was settling in for a longer conversation. When he finally spoke again, his voice was quieter but somehow more penetrating, like he was speaking directly into her ear instead of through inches of wood and institutional metal.
"You don't make sense, Rivera."
The words crawled under Maya's skin like insects, carrying implications that made her stomach drop into her shoes. Because this wasn't Mateo being suspicious—this was Mateo being certain. This was the tone of someone who'd been collecting evidence and had finally assembled enough pieces to see the picture.
How long has he been watching? How much has he figured out?
He'd always been observing her. On the field during drills, noting how she moved differently than the other boys. In the cafeteria, cataloguing the way she held her fork, the pitch of her laugh, the subjects she avoided in conversation. In the library, studying her reactions to questions that shouldn't have been threatening.
But now, in the middle of the night with the weight of her nightmare still pressing against her ribs like broken glass, his voice carried a different quality. He wasn't mocking or testing anymore. He was stating facts he'd already verified in his own mind.
"You don't talk like the rest of us. You don't move like us." There was a pause, and Maya could practically hear him organizing his thoughts, building his case like a prosecutor preparing for trial. "Even now—your voice."
Maya's breath stuttered. The pitch had been climbing without her realizing it, stress and exhaustion eroding the careful control she maintained during daylight hours. Too soft. Too high. Too close to the girl she used to be before Agent Chen had taught her how to bury Maya Castellanos under layers of masculine performance.
He's been listening to me this whole time. Recording every slip, every mistake.
"And your frame," Mateo added, almost to himself now, like he was working through a puzzle he'd been solving for weeks. "You're slight, even for soccer. Too slight."
Maya closed her eyes, fighting the urge to look down at her own body. Even under the compression shirts and carefully chosen clothes, even with the muscle she'd built through training, she was still fundamentally built differently than the boys around her. Narrower shoulders, different hip structure, hands that were too small despite her height.
All the things I can't change. All the things that give me away.
The silence between them grew heavy, suffocating, filled with truths neither of them wanted to speak out loud. Maya could hear her own heartbeat, could feel sweat cooling against her skin, could taste the metallic fear that reminded her too much of that night in Chicago when everything had fallen apart.
This is it. This is how it ends.
Then, through the thin wood of her door, Mateo's whisper slipped in like a knife sliding between ribs:
"You're not who you say you are, are you?"
The question hung in the air like smoke from a fire that was about to consume everything Maya had worked to build. Not an accusation exactly, but something worse—an invitation for her to confirm what he'd already figured out.
He doesn't know what I'm hiding, but he knows I'm hiding something.
Maya's throat closed completely. Every response she could think of sounded like a lie, because they were all lies. Alex Rivera was a lie. His background was a lie. His entire existence was a carefully constructed fiction designed to protect a witness who'd seen too much and lost everything.
But she couldn't say any of that. Couldn't explain why she woke up screaming about gunshots and blood, couldn't tell him about the family that had been erased to protect cartel secrets, couldn't admit that she was living in a witness protection identity that depended on no one—absolutely no one—discovering the truth.
Say something. Anything. Deny it.
But the words wouldn't come. Because Mateo was right, and they both knew it, and pretending otherwise would only make things worse.
Through the door, she heard him shift his weight, settling against the wall like he was prepared to wait as long as necessary for an answer. His breathing was steady, patient, determined.
"I can help you," he said finally, and the gentleness in his voice was somehow more terrifying than any threat could have been. "Whatever you're running from, whatever you're afraid of—I can help."
No, you can't. No one can help me. That's the whole point.
Maya pressed her face into her pillow, muffling any sound that might escape. Because help was exactly what she couldn't accept, trust was exactly what she couldn't afford, and Mateo Herrera was exactly the kind of complication that got witnesses killed.