27. Dante #2
Addison's office is the same as it's always been. Team photos on the walls. The desk that's more paper than surface. The coffee that's always too strong.
"Adrian said you needed to talk," Addison says. Direct. No preamble.
"My father was in town last week."
"I know. Talia mentioned a dinner."
"The dinner was a recruitment pitch. My family wants me back. The NHL career, they see it as a front. Something they can use." I pause because the rest of it sits under my tongue like a confession with teeth. "I've been handling it alone. For years."
Addison leans back and studies me. Same eyes as Talia. Dark, steady, missing nothing.
"I know what it means to build something clean over dirty money," he says.
He picks up his coffee, then sets it down without drinking.
"I grew up around it. My father's business wasn't the kind you talk about at career day." His eyes stay on mine. "That's all I'll say about that. But I hear you."
"How do you keep the two things separate?" I ask. "The clean and the rest of it."
"You build the clean things bigger," he says. "The program. The team. The life. Big enough that the dirty money doesn't get to own all of it."
He looks down at his coffee. "My father still calls me," Addison says. "Twice a year. Christmas and my birthday. He's eighty-three. We talk about hockey for ten minutes and hang up."
"Managed."
He picks up the coffee and takes a sip. "The people in your house are worth more than anything your father is offering."
"I know that."
"Then act like it."
I leave his office at 4 PM with my jaw tight and Wednesday closer than it was when I walked in.
Friday, 6 AM.
My phone buzzes.
Only data waits in the encrypted message.
David Ashford.
Current address: 47 Prospect Street, Unit 3B, Briarcliff.
Driving a silver 2019 Honda Accord, plate confirmed.
Daily routine: leaves the apartment at 8 AM. Coffee at Dunkin' on Main.
Walks the campus perimeter between 9 and 11 AM via the arboretum path, no security checkpoint on the eastern access, which is how he avoids the flagged entrances.
Returns to the apartment.
Leaves again at 3 PM. Drives to a location near the Chronicle building. Parks on Waverly Street, three blocks north, out of range of campus parking enforcement.
Walks to a bench with a sightline to the Chronicle's main entrance. Sits for approximately forty-five minutes.
Returns to vehicle. Drives back.
Every afternoon, he sits on a bench three blocks from the Chronicle, with a sightline to the entrance, for forty-five minutes.
He's watching her.
Every day, while the legal system schedules hearings and campus security monitors entrances he's learned to avoid, David Ashford watches her.
He walks the arboretum path without a checkpoint.
Parks on a street that isn't campus property.
Sits on a public bench that violates no law.
Finds the gaps between every system we built to stop him and settles inside them.
The information is on my screen, obtained through my father's illegal contacts.
Richard could use this in Wednesday's hearing to demonstrate ongoing surveillance and harassment. Maya doesn't know I have it.
Maya said: show me every text before you read it. Full visibility. No locked drawers.
I'm holding an encrypted message on my phone that I've already read.
The data waits on the screen. I can send it through Marco, have him strip out where it came from, and Maya never has to know.
I stare at the screen.
The phone presses into my palm. The walk down the hallway takes ten steps. Every one of them gets counted.
Maya is getting dressed. Cole is tying his shoes on the edge of the bed.
Both of them look up when I appear in the doorway.
"I need to tell you something," I say. "Both of you. Right now."
Maya's hands go still on the hem of her shirt. Cole's fingers freeze on his laces. Her eyes go to my hand around the phone. Cole's go to my face.
"I made a call," I say. "Wednesday night. 2 AM. Not to Marco. To someone worse. Someone outside anything you agreed to. I had a man I've never met surveil David Ashford for two days."
Cole's laces fall from his fingers.
I hold out the phone with the data on the screen.
"He sits on a bench three blocks from the Chronicle every afternoon. With a sightline to the entrance. He watches you leave. He's been doing it every day."
Maya crosses the room and takes the phone from my hand.
The second she starts reading, her jaw tightens. Her eyes narrow. Her thumb stops moving on the edge of the phone. Cole is behind her in two steps, reading over her shoulder with one hand braced against her back. His fingers spread against her shirt and stay there.
"You went below the terms," Maya says, looking at the screen.
"Yes."
"Below the men I agreed to. Below the rules I set."
"Yes."
She looks up from the phone. Her eyes lock on mine, the same eyes from the kitchen, from the morning she recited Marco's text from memory. For one breath, she holds me there before her gaze drops back to the screen. Her thumb moves once along the edge of the phone and stops.
The phone shifts in her grip until her knuckles go white. She opens her mouth, closes it, then opens it again. The first version of the sentence dies before it reaches air.
Her gaze drops to the data on the screen.
The bench. The sightline. The forty-five minutes. The arboretum path that avoids security. The three blocks north that avoids parking enforcement.
"Send this to Richard," she says. Her voice isn't steady. She makes it steady by the second word. "Now. Every detail. The address, the routine, the bench, the sightline. All of it."
She hands me the phone.
"Maya—"
"We still have to talk about the call. The rules you broke are still on the table.
We are going to have that conversation and it's going to be bad.
" Her jaw tightens. "But right now, a man is sitting on a bench watching me leave work every afternoon, and I have five days until a hearing, and this information makes the case airtight.
So send it to Richard. Then we'll deal with you. "
I send it standing in the bedroom doorway, forwarding the encrypted data to Richard's secure email through Marco's intermediary, the information laundered just enough to be legally usable.
Richard will have it in minutes.
Maya watches the screen. Her breath comes through her nose, measured, deliberate.
"You broke the terms," she says.
"I know."
"The door I told you about. The one that closes when someone takes my choices away."
"I remember."
"It's staying open today because I need the information and the timing matters." She holds my eyes. "But the door moved. It's closer than it was. The next time you go below the terms, the next time you make a decision about my safety without my voice in the room, it shuts."
"I understand."
"Do you?"
"I know why I'm still standing here. The data."
"That's exactly right."
She turns, grabs her bag from the chair, and leaves the room.
Cole stands near the foot of the bed, his shoes tied, his eyes on me.
"Not Marco," he says quietly. "Someone deeper in your father's world."
"I know, Cole."
"You used it. For her. Without asking."
"Yes."
He crosses to me and puts his hand on my chest, palm flat over my sternum.
"The information is good," he says. "It might end this."
His hand presses. Holds. Then drops.
He follows Maya downstairs. Their footsteps move through the hallway.
The front door opens, then shuts.