, then shut it again as she realized she didn't know what to say. How does one begin such a conversation? Just casually delve into the espionage talk?

Matt raised his eyebrows at her silence. "You...do know I can still tell you're there even if you're being very quiet, right?"

Sarah's cheeks flushed. "I know that," she replied hotly. "I just didn't know how to—I mean...we're really going to talk about that stuff right now? In the middle of the lobby?"

"I thought you might prefer it this way, actually," he said. "But if you'd rather I come back later—"

"No!" she cut him off quickly. She assumed by 'later' he meant in the middle of the night, and probably in a different costume. "No. Uh...now is fine."

"Good." He didn't say anything else, and she took that as her queue to start talking.

"Right. Um...I don't really have much yet," she said, shifting nervously.

"Let's hear what you do have."

"Well, the company sent out a memo about all these new security policies: new passcodes, computer updates, cameras. But they ordered a bunch of new cameras that they didn't include in the memo. And all of the cameras on the fourth floor are being updated to these new high tech ones. But they weren't in the memo either."

"What's on the fourth floor?" he asked her.

"I don't know yet."

Matt's brow furrowed. "You think they're watching someone in the company?"

"That's my best guess. They said it's because they don't want any more security breaches like Monday night, but...I don't really buy it."

"Anything besides the cameras and computers?" he asked.

"No. Well, I mean, Ronan was being really weird today, like weirder than usual—"

"Ronan?" he interrupted her.

"Oh, um, Ronan Greenfield. He's my supervisor. Not a nice guy. You, um, you actually met him," she pointed out awkwardly. "He was the one who was, uh...shooting at you."

Matt's face was carefully blank, but she saw his jaw clench. "Yeah, I remember him. How's his arm?"

"Um...broken?" she said helpfully.

"Should've broken the other one too," he said darkly. For the first time since the conversation had started, Sarah could clearly see traces of the dangerous masked man beneath the lawyer's neatly dressed exterior.

"W-well, like I said, he's my supervisor," Sarah hastened, carefully sidestepping the subject of violence. She privately kind of enjoyed the idea of Ronan with two broken arms, but figured she probably couldn't be too far behind him on Matt's list of people whose limbs needed breaking, so maybe it was best to avoid talking about that. "He's usually in his office all day, or lurking around my desk. He doesn't really get called to chat with the—the higher ups very often. But today he was coming and going from meetings upstairs all day long."

"Meetings with who?"

"I...don't know yet." She hoped he wouldn't ask too many more questions that she didn't yet know the answer to.

Sarah hesitated, debating whether to tell him about Ronan's strangely good mood, but dismissed it. It would probably sound dumb when she said it out loud.

Matt seemed to sense her ambivalence. "Something else?"

"Just that Ronan seemed really, um...happy today? Which I know sounds totally irrelevant, but if you knew him...he's kind of sadistic. When he's in a good mood, it's generally not because great things are about to happen."

Matt nodded slowly. "Any ideas on what he's up to?"

"No. Not yet."

Matt appeared to be contemplating what she'd told him. She took those few moments of quiet to observe him. The difference between how he looked now and his nighttime attire was jarring, but the more she looked the more she could see bits of Daredevil in Matt Murdock. Things that you probably wouldn't notice unless you were looking for them: a few rough looking knuckles, the ghost of a fading bruise near his temple. A certain hard edge to his voice belying a much darker side than the one he showed during the daylight hours.

She glanced at her watch and noted that Mrs. Benedict had been gone for over ten minutes. She suspected the older woman was lingering in her apartment a good bit longer than necessary in order to give the two of them more time alone. So not the time for your weird, sneaky matchmaking, Mrs. B.

She looked back up at Matt uneasily.

"So, just to be clear," she said nervously. "You're...not actually coming back later, right?"

"Why? Planning on doing something you don't want me to know about?"

"No," she said quickly. Too quickly, she realized as he raised his eyebrows. "I'd just like to be able to—I don't know, go to the grocery store without constantly checking to see if you're behind me."

"The grocery store isn't exactly where I'm concerned you'll go when I'm not looking," he said dryly. "I'm thinking more the police station. Or Orion."

She chewed her lip, eying him warily. "I already said I wouldn't."

"I know what you said," he said simply.

"But you can't just—just stalk me because you're worried that I'll tell people you run around in a mask—" Sarah began frustratedly, but her words caught in her throat as Matt took a sudden step towards her. Even without the costume, his proximity made Sarah want to take a few steps back. She forced herself to stay where she was.

"Feel like keeping your voice down?" he said dangerously.

"What—you're the one who wanted to have this conversation in the lobby!" she whispered indignantly.

Matt continued speaking as though he hadn't heard her. "There are a lot of ways that I can make sure you don't share what you know. You don't like the idea of being watched? Get over it. Trust me when I say that you'd like the other alternatives a lot less."

Sarah shivered slightly at the implied threat. She could see her own wide eyed reflection in his dark glasses, which somehow were almost as intimidating as the mask.

The tense moment was interrupted by a dinging sound as the elevator doors opened and Mrs. Benedict shuffled out. Matt calmly stepped back to his original distance.

"Sorry, sorry! I'm ready to go now!" the elderly woman said, waving her reading glasses in her right hand. "Took me a while to find them. You know what makes it harder to find your glasses? Not having your glasses on! It's a catch twenty-two. Chickens, eggs. So, what did you two talk about?"

Matt attempted to give Mrs. Benedict another charismatic smile, but Sarah could see that it was strained.

"Just work stuff, mostly," he said.

Sarah stared hard at him, knowing he couldn't see it. She hated how every conversation with him ended with her hands trembling and her heart racing, yet somehow he could still casually switch from intimidating to charming on a dime.

"Well, it was nice to meet you, Sarah," he said. "I'm sure I'll see you soon."

Mrs. Benedict gave Sarah a knowing look, clearly interpreting Matt's comment as a flirtation and not the warning Sarah knew it to be. She didn't respond, just yanked the door to the stairwell open angrily and hurried up the stairs, leaving a mystified Mrs. Benedict to follow Matt out the front door.

➳

Later that night, Sarah was just getting out of the shower when she heard a text message buzz through on her phone. The hot water had helped to ease some of her stress from both her workday and her encounter with her least favorite vigilante. She grabbed her phone from the nightstand and glanced at the screen to find a text from Lauren, her long-time best friend.

[WHAT ARE YOU DOING TOMORROW NIGHT?]

Sarah raised her eyebrows at the all-caps before responding.

[Why are we shouting?!]

Lauren's reply came back quickly. [You barely respond to my texts anymore, so I figured all-caps was the best way to get your attention. Dinner with me and Greg tomorrow night?]

Sarah frowned guiltily at her friend's response. She knew that Lauren was right; Sarah had been growing more and more distant from her friends over the past months. It had started with her trying to avoid their concerned questions about why she had quit her dream job, and why she never wanted to talk about her new one. Why she was always exhausted and in a bad mood. And it had devolved into almost complete avoidance of everyone she knew.

Sarah hesitated before responding. She had just had what was probably the most stressful week of her life, and she knew Lauren would be able to tell something was off as soon as she saw her. She always could. And she would be full of questions that Sarah couldn't answer. She was exhausted just thinking about how many lies she would have to tell her friends now.

[I'm so so so sorry], Sarah texted back. [I have to go over to my dad's tomorrow night.] Now she felt twice as guilty; once for avoiding her best friend, and once for using her father for a lie. She wasn't actually going to see him until Tuesday, but she knew it was the quickest way to get Lauren to accept her excuse.

Lauren's response was short: [:( :( :(]

Sarah sighed, replying: [Don't hate me. We'll go out next Saturday! Seriously.]

[Promise?]

[Pinky promise. Wherever you want.]

[Don't lie to a pregnant woman, Sarah. Being lied to could make me go into premature labor and hemorrhage to death.]

Sarah smiled at her friend's theatrical response.

[Okay, well let's just hope the baby doesn't inherit your drama queen genes, or Greg will leave you both.]

[Rude. I'm going to hold you to your promise. Next Saturday!]

Sarah set her phone down and sighed heavily, leaning against her pillows. She was still only wearing a towel, and she knew she was getting her sheets all wet.

Standing up, she padded over to her dresser to find her pajamas and frowned when she caught sight of herself in the mirror. With half of her paycheck going to her father's debt, her standard of living wasn't quite as high as it used to be. She could barely afford to pay the rent and her bills, much less stock her kitchen with tons of food, and it was beginning to show just slightly. She had always been slender, but now her collar bone was sticking out just a little too much, and her cheeks were a little more hollow. The stress of her job made her look slightly paler, emphasized the tired circles under her eyes. Maybe not anything that a stranger would notice, but she could.

She scowled at herself, then quickly grabbed her pajamas out of the drawer and stepped out of sight of her reflection.

➳

The next morning, Matt Murdock repressed a groan of pain as his alarm clock went off. Slamming a hand down on it to turn off the monotone female voice informing him of the time, he laid still in bed for a few moments longer.

He had spent the night before taking down a group of Irish thugs who had been collecting protection money from a string of shop owners on 114th, bleeding their finances to the point of near bankruptcy. He had dropped down on the five of them as they exited a bar they'd just put the lean on with the owner's cash in their hands. During the brawl, one of them had caught the vigilante hard in the shoulder with what he suspected was a baseball bat, and another had badly bruised some of his ribs. Overall, nowhere near the worst condition he had ever woken up in. But it didn't make getting out of bed any more pleasant.

However, the memory of the men neatly tied up and waiting for the arrival of the police helped dull the pain somewhat, as did the echo of the bar owner's surprised words of gratitude when Matt had handed him his money back and told him his establishment would be safe from now on.

Heaving himself out of bed, he made his way to the shower. Foggy would be there in about half an hour to go over some files for a custody case they were working. Their number of clients had been slowly increasing in the few months since Fisk's arrest, and when Matt had suggested they might want to spend part of Saturday catching up on paperwork, Foggy had reluctantly agreed. He had refused to meet at the office, however, insisting that it would feel too much like a work day.

Matt had just pulled a clean shirt back over his head when he heard a knock. As soon as he opened the front door he could sense Foggy scanning him for injuries.

"You don't look completely awful," the blond lawyer said by way of greeting.

Matt grinned tiredly. "Good morning to you too, Foggy."

Foggy brushed past him, balancing a stack of files and a bag of what smelled like bagels.

"I don't know how I feel about this paperwork on a Saturday thing. Karen gets the day off, but we have to work? Seems like we're getting gypped."

Matt chuckled. "If you really want Karen to come here and make us coffee, I'm sure she would."

He knew Foggy was making a face. "I'll pass. I really think that her coffee might be a subtle attempt to try and kill us and take over our lucrative establishment."

Once the bag of bagels had been opened and the paperwork spread out, the two of them settled into a routine: Matt running his fingers over the Braille copies of the files while Foggy sifted through his own, both making comments when necessary. After about an hour of this, Foggy leaned back in his chair and stretched, eyeing Matt.

"So...how's your crazy spy deal with the secretary going? Have you been to see her yet?"

Matt lifted his head up from where it had been bent over papers for the last hour. "Sarah? Yeah. I saw her yesterday."

"And was she excited to see you?"

"Ah...not so much."

Foggy sighed and shook his head. "Seems like a dangerous game. Relying on someone who not only works for a criminal front, but actually refused to stop working there when given the option. That's not a normal response, you know."

"I don't get the impression that she's works for them because she loves it," Matt said.

"But she won't actually tell you why?"

"No. But they have something on her. I think."

"So, that something could be that she...murdered someone. Or that she, I don't know, used to deal meth to fourth graders," Foggy speculated.

"Are fourth graders really a big demographic for meth?"

"Not the point, Matt! Them being bad guys doesn't make her a good guy. Just because you suspect she's not crazy about working there, doesn't mean she's not crazy, period. This could all be a huge trap."

Matt sighed in exasperation, even though he knew—beneath the extreme exaggeration—that Foggy was right. She could very well be planning to stab him in the back with this agreement they had made. She had sounded honest enough when he had listened to her heartbeat, but his lie detecting skills weren't completely foolproof, especially when the person in question's heart rate kept going up and down from fear anyway.

"Maybe it is a trap. I don't really know," he admitted. "But it's not like I can just leave her alone. Not with everything she knows. And if I have to drop in to keep tabs on her occasionally, I might as well get some information in return."

Foggy grumbled noncommittally and shuffled his papers. Neither of them spoke for a few minutes, but Matt could tell Foggy wanted to say something. He waited patiently until the other man finally piped up.

"So, when you 'keep tabs' on her, what exactly are you doing? Hiding in her shower and listening to her make dinner at night, or...?"

"What? No," Matt said, laughing at the image his friend painted. "I mean, there's no way for me to know what she's doing all the time. But if I'm already out and I'm within listening distance, I...focus in on her apartment. Just for a minute. To make sure she isn't in there planning a trap with her coworkers or something." He grew more sober again. "I don't—I don't actually go out of my way to follow her around. I just...need her to think that I do. So she'll keep quiet."

Foggy was silent for a minute. "Those are some interesting mind games you're playing with her, Matt."

Matt sighed. "I...yeah. I know. But I don't really have any other option. At least not until I know if she's trustworthy or not, and who knows how long that could take? She's not easy to read."

"Sounds pretty stressful for her in the meantime," Foggy said, and Matt could hear a note of sympathy in his voice. "Never knowing when your costumed ass is going to be lurking around."

"Are you on her side now? Just a minute ago you were accusing her of being a murderer who sells drugs to children," Matt said.

"And that possibility still stands!" Foggy argued. "I'm just saying...Daredevil's a scary dude. I don't think I'd want to be in her shoes."

Matt had no argument for that. He rubbed the bridge of his nose tiredly. "It's just...complicated."

"It always is. I'm telling you, man," Foggy said, leaning back in his chair and shaking his head, but there was a slight smile in his voice now. "Beautiful women. Questionable morals. Every time."

"You have no way of knowing if she's attractive," Matt argued. "You've never seen her."

"Neither have you!" Foggy countered. "But if you can figure out when a woman is beautiful without seeing her, then so can I. Besides, I just know. You're predictable, Murdock."

Matt smiled weakly, trying to keep his mind off his own questionable morality over the past week. Such thoughts could wait until he had time to visit Father Lantom. For now, he had a custody case to focus on.

➳

Sarah's weekend—not including her encounter with Matt on Friday—was a surprisingly calm one. Yes, she spent much of the weekend nervously anticipating an unannounced visit, but to her surprise she had been blissfully left alone by both sleazy coworkers and menacing vigilantes. The pleasant uneventfulness of her weekend made it especially unpleasant to walk into work on Monday and immediately have Ronan's sneering face appear at her desk.

"We're needed upstairs," he informed her. She furrowed her brow in confusion.

"Me too? Why? By who?"

"I don't know," he answered sweetly. "Maybe they just need someone in a skirt to make us coffee while we do actual work. Come on. It's on the third floor."

Sarah ignored his lewd remark and followed him into the elevator. When they reached their floor, Ronan led her to an office with a closed door. He knocked, and they heard a voice inside tell them to come in.