Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 49385 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49385 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
“Duke?” I ask.
“Don’t burn it,” he says. “Let’s learn. Take Magnolia, then cut through the mural alley. I’ll scoop his face on the east cam.”
We do. Subaru slides past like he’s just coincidentally also into murals. I log tiny details. He’s not filming us; he’s scanning. The eyes move like a man looking for someone else.
Back at the apartment, I park two levels down and nose-out, because front bumpers belong to people who think cars start every time. The garage air tastes like cold iron. In the dust near our spot, there’s a faint shoe print that isn’t mine—Vibram chevron, small pebble embedded near the toe, recent enough to hold edges. Someone stood here and watched the stairwell. It’s not a panic button, but it’s a data point. I take the point and add it to the map.
Upstairs, wedge, chain, blinds. I set the radio on the dresser face up and pull the go-bag to the foot of the bed. The storm warning pings again, louder. I pivot from tail math to blizzard prep without changing gears. Sandbags, but for weather.
“Checklist?” Melanie asks, because she knows me now.
“Checklist,” I say. “Charge everything. Water jugs topped. Towels, spare blankets staged. Car fueled, scraper by the door, boots and gloves ready. If power hiccups, we keep one room warm, we don’t open the fridge unless it’s a prize-winning moment, and we use your cinnamon-roll code to tell me if you’re okay without broadcasting ‘panic.’”
She half-smiles, half-worries. “I love how romantic you make a disaster sound.”
I was going to make a joke. I don’t. “I want you comfortable,” I say.
Her eyes soften. “Then I already am.”
The phone buzzes again.
DUKE: Subaru stuck around after you parked but didn’t follow you inside. He did a slow drift past the north entrance, then got out of sightlines to take a call.
GUNNER: Mercer’s still at Kipling. Didn’t move all morning. Two coffees. One burrito. Man’s predictable in the ways that matter.
DUKE: Here’s the thing—we’ve got frames of Subaru Guy watching Mercer last night, not you. Third player may be shadowing the shadow.
I pace the tiny kitchen, picture lines on a board. Subaru’s not hunting; he’s herding. He’s interested in what Mercer’s interested in. Which might be us. Or might not.
“Red herring,” I mutter.
“Excuse me?” Melanie says, folding laundry like it’s going to argue.
“Third guy might not be the danger,” I tell her. “He might be following Mercer. He could be an investigator hired by someone we don’t hate. He could be a rival contractor trying to poach a client. He could be exactly what he looks like—a problem. We don’t assume. We ask.”
She points at the sticky notes. “Look at you following the rules.”
I look at her. “I’m learning.”
Flurries start in earnest, fat flakes that make the world quiet and treacherous. The sky pushes down. A plow ghosts by and the street takes it personally. My palm itches to be outside solving the map, but my chest pulls toward the woman who’s leaning against the counter with a hand on the small of her back.
“Go,” she says finally, reading me before I read myself. “Do the watch. I’ll call Amelia to come hang out. You’ll know more if you look, and you’ll only stand here and stare at the window like a caged wolf otherwise.”
“You’re getting good at command,” I say.
“I’m adapting to my audience,” she deadpans, and I huff out a laugh that shakes some of the static loose.
Fifteen minutes later, Amelia breezes in with a bag of oranges, a battery pack, and a lecture about electrolytes. I brief her fast—storm, wedge, candles not near curtains, gingerbread means I don’t knock, I break—and she salutes me with a clementine.
I take the truck because ground clearance is a love language. Roads are already slick, and my hands do that micro-correction dance they learned on mountain passes at 3 a.m. Kipling Motor Lodge wears snow like guilt. I park three buildings down, under a camera that works, and walk the last stretch on the windward side so my tracks look like a delivery guy who changed his mind.
Mercer’s curtains are open an inch. Rookie move unless he wants me to see him acting like a civilian. TV glow, the lean of a man who thinks he has time. Subaru’s nowhere in the lot. Not in sightlines. That means roof or angles, or he’s smarter than us. I circle slow, let the wind cover my steps, and find the cleanest proof: fresh prints on the stairwell steel, water drops under the access hatch, a cigarette butt still warm under snow on the parapet even though no one “smokes” anymore. He took the roof to watch door lines.
“Roof rat,” I murmur into my sleeve.
Duke ghosts by at street level, checks his watch for no one. We don’t wave. We don’t need to.