Chapter 3
GRAYSON
Irun the number first.
Upstairs in the office with the door cracked so I can hear her breathing in the bedroom across the hall, I pull up the secure laptop and route the text through the tools I'm not technically supposed to still have.
The number's a burner. Of course it is. But the metadata tells me it pinged off a tower outside Revelstoke four hours ago.
Four hours.
Someone followed her into the province. Not up the mountain. Not yet. But close enough that the walls of this cabin feel thinner than they did an hour ago.
I call Marcus.
"Tell me."
"She got a text."
A beat of silence that sounds like a man going still.
"What did it say."
"Pretty little cabin you picked. Used her name."
"Fuck."
"Yeah."
"I'll pull strings. Get a second body up there."
"No."
"Gray."
"Second body means second point of failure. I don't know them. I don't know how they move. Send me intel and stay out of my way."
He breathes out hard.
"Copy. What do you need."
"Everything the paper's got on the politician's son. Every name associated. Financials on the laundering operation. Vehicles registered to any of them. Photos."
"On it."
"And Marcus."
"Yeah."
"She's not going back to Toronto Sunday. Not until this is cold."
"I'll handle the paper."
He hangs up.
I sit there a second. Hand on the desk. Listening to the old bones of the cabin settle.
I can hear her in the bedroom. Pacing. Bare feet on the floorboards, a slow oval, the kind of walk a person does when they're trying to think through something without letting it sit on them.
She didn't cry. Didn't flinch when I took the phone. Didn't argue when I told her to get upstairs.
That's the part that's doing something to me I don't have time for.
I knock once and push the door open.
She's at the window. Of course she is. Standing back from it about a foot, arms crossed, hip cocked. She's changed clothes. Leggings and an oversized tee that says something on the front I don't read because I'm trying very hard to be a professional.
"Curtain's drawn this time," she says without turning.
"I noticed."
"I'm a fast learner when somebody stops being a dick about it."
"I wasn't being a dick. I was being accurate."
"Accurate can be a dick, Mercer."
She turns.
I lean on the doorframe because walking further into the room with her looking like that feels like a tactical error.
"What's the plan," she says.
"You stay put. I work the phones. We don't leave the cabin until I know who sent that message and where they are."
"For how long."
"As long as it takes."
Her jaw sets.
"I have a story to file. I have sources waiting. I have a life, Gray."
"You have a death threat."
"I've had death threats before."
"You've had a man write you notes. You haven't had a man find your safe house in under twenty-four hours."
That lands. I see it land. A small flicker across her face, gone as quick as it came. She covers it with a tilt of the chin.
"So what. I sit in this cabin and do needlepoint while you grunt at the tree line."
"If that's what keeps you alive, yeah."
"And if I don't want to."
"Then I tie you to a chair."
It comes out of my mouth before I have a chance to stop it.
Flat. Low. The voice I used to use overseas when I wanted a room to understand I was done negotiating.
Her eyes widen just a fraction. Lips part. A flush climbs up her throat and I watch it happen in real time and I watch her know I'm watching it happen.
She recovers.
God, she recovers fast.
"Is that a threat or a proposition, Mercer."
"It's a contingency."
"Uh huh."
She's looking at me now like I'm not furniture anymore. Like she's reassessing. There's something in the way she holds her mouth, the slight smile that isn't quite a smile, that tells me I just gave her a piece of information I didn't mean to give.
I've met women like this. Not many, but enough. Women who hear the word tie and their pulse does something instead of panic.
I clock it and I file it and I put it somewhere I'm not going to look at again this trip.
"Ground rules," I say.
"Another round. Lovely."
"You don't answer that phone if it rings. You don't text unless I've cleared the number. You stay off the windows. And if I tell you to get low, you get low, and you don't ask me why until we're clear."
"And in return."
"In return I don't tie you to the chair."
Her mouth twitches.
"Tempting."
"Simone."
"Grayson."
Something about the way she says my full name does a thing to my chest I'm not equipped to handle.
"I'm serious."
"I can see that."
"Say it."
"Say what."
"Say you heard me."
She holds my eyes. A long second. Then she says, quiet, "I heard you."
"Good."
I push off the doorframe.
"Get some food. There's eggs. Bread. Something that looks like a tomato but is probably older than I am. I'll be downstairs on the phones."
"Gray."
I stop at the door.
"Thank you."
I don't turn around all the way. Just enough to nod once over my shoulder.
"Don't thank me yet."
Downstairs I set up a perimeter check schedule in my head.
Every ninety minutes. Full visual sweep of the tree line from the upstairs south window, the north corner, the rear deck.
I check the shotgun in the office, rack a round, set the safety, prop it behind the desk.
Lock the front and back doors. Wedge the back door with a chair, old habit.
Marcus texts a dossier to my secure line. I open it.
The politician's son has a name. Richard Hennessy Jr. Father sits on a federal finance committee. Money moves through three shell companies into the son's real estate portfolio. Simone had photos. Wire transfers. A source inside the accounting firm who went dark two weeks ago.
I scroll. I note vehicles. A black Escalade registered to one of the shells. A silver pickup registered to a known associate, ex-enforcer out of Montreal named Luc Tremblay. Tremblay's the one I watch for. He's the one who'd come for her.
I memorize the plate numbers.
I'm ten minutes in when I hear her in the kitchen. Bare feet on hardwood. The click of the fridge. The soft sound of a woman who's trying to pretend she's fine.
I get up.
She's at the stove in the leggings and the tee, braids pulled over one shoulder, a pan in her hand and two eggs on the counter. She doesn't look up when I come in.
"You want some."
"No."
"You need to eat, Mercer."
"Later."
"Now."
She cracks a third egg into the pan without asking.
I watch her a second. The small economy of her movements. The way she salts without measuring. The way she stands with her weight on one hip, relaxed, in a cabin she got a threat delivered to an hour ago.
Stubborn like our mama, Marcus said.
Stubborn like she'd cook breakfast in the middle of a firefight if she was hungry.
I sit down at the counter because I'm supposed to be maintaining energy and because sitting down gives me something to do with my hands that isn't watching the line of her neck.
She slides a plate in front of me. No comment. Just eggs and toast and a fork.
Then she sits across from me with her own plate and eats like we're not hunted.
I eat too.
Quiet kitchen. Forks on plates. A woman across from me I've known for three hours who already feels like a problem I'm going to fail.
I take a bite.
She smiles at the wall like she's won something.
Maybe she has.