Chapter Three #2
Rowan looked at the closed laptop in front of her, at the eight hundred and twelve dollars she could confirm and the unknown amount she couldn't, at the framed liquor license on the wall with her name on it, the one thing in this entire district that was hers and hers alone, and understood, with the particular clarity that came from watching a problem outgrow her ability to solve it by herself, that Walt wasn't wrong. She hated that he wasn't wrong.
"Fine," she said. "But it happens on my terms, in my building, on my schedule. I'm not handing my books over to anybody, including him, without conditions."
"I wouldn't expect you to," Walt said, and there was something almost like respect in it, the particular respect of a man who'd watched her build something out of nothing and had never once doubted she'd protect it fiercely when it mattered. "Write your terms. I'll make sure they're honored."
He left the way he'd come, unhurried, and it was just the two of them again in the gold early light of the Yard's front room, Rowan and Cole and eight hundred and twelve dollars sitting between them like a live wire neither of them wanted to be the one to touch first.
"I'll write the terms tonight," Rowan said, mostly to the closed laptop, because it was easier than saying it to him directly.
"You'll get them tomorrow. And Cole." She made herself look up, made herself hold his eyes the way she hadn't let herself do in longer than she wanted to admit.
"This is about the money and the login and whatever the Vultures are or aren't doing.
It's not about anything else. I need you to understand that going in, because if you're doing this thinking it buys you something back, we're going to have a problem before we even start. "
"I know exactly what it is," he said, and something in his voice told her he meant it, or was doing a very good impression of a man who did, and she genuinely could not tell, standing there in the same gold morning light that had once meant nothing but ordinary Tuesdays, which version of him she was looking at.
He left not long after, and the Yard filled up with the ordinary noise of a Wednesday, Jonas arriving late and apologizing for it, a produce delivery, a phone call from a bride-to-be asking about pricing for a fall wedding reception Rowan didn't have the bandwidth to think about yet.
She got through the day the way she got through most days lately, one task in front of the next, and if her hands weren't quite as steady as usual behind the register, nobody who didn't already know her well enough to notice would have caught it.
She sat down to write the terms that night at her kitchen table above the storage building, the same table where she'd lost an hour to security footage the night before, and found that putting boundaries into actual sentences was easier than she'd expected, maybe because she'd been rehearsing the shape of them for seven months without knowing it.
Access limited strictly to the vendor portal and the specific accounts affected.
No access to payroll, no access to the general ledger, no access to anything beyond what's necessary to trace and close the breach.
All work happens during business hours, on-site, with either Jonas or myself present.
All findings get reported to me directly and in writing before anyone else, including Walt, hears them.
This arrangement ends the day the breach is closed, full stop, no extensions, no exceptions.
She read it back twice, added a line about access logs being reviewed weekly by a third party neither of them controlled, because if there was one thing the last week had taught her it was that unwatched access had a way of outliving its usefulness, and then she sat with the finished document for a long time before she let herself close the laptop.
Deb called around nine, the third time in two days, which was becoming its own kind of pattern.
"You didn't call me back after the Vanessa thing," Deb said, no preamble, the particular tone she used when she'd been waiting all day to check in and had run out of patience for waiting politely.
"I've been picturing you locked up there stewing in silence, which, knowing you, is exactly what happened. "
"I've been busy. There's a security problem at the Yard.
Somebody's been pulling money through Vanessa's old login.
" Rowan said it plainly, because there was no soft way to say it and she'd stopped trying to find one for Deb a long time ago.
"Walt wants Cole to help me trace it. I wrote up terms tonight so it doesn't turn into something it's not. "
There was a pause on the other end, the particular pause Deb did when she was choosing her next words with unusual care. "How do you feel about that? Working with him again, even for something like this."
"I feel like I have eight hundred dollars unaccounted for and a business license I'm not willing to gamble on principle.
" Rowan pulled her knees up onto the kitchen chair, made herself say the rest of it, because Deb was the one person she didn't have to perform composure for.
"I don't know how I feel about it beyond that.
I know I don't trust him. I know some part of me noticed he was telling the truth this morning and I hated that I noticed, because noticing feels like the first step toward something I'm not ready to walk toward again. "
"Nobody's saying you have to walk anywhere," Deb said, gentler now. "You can fix a security problem with a man without it meaning anything about the rest of it. Those are two different rooms, Ro. You're allowed to be in one without unlocking the other."
"I know." Rowan looked at the terms document still open on her screen, at the line about business hours only, the line about no exceptions, the small, deliberate architecture of a woman making very sure she knew exactly which room she was standing in at all times.
"I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget that. "
"Smart girl," Deb said again, the same thing she'd said about the string lights two days ago, and Rowan let herself laugh, short and real, the first honest laugh of a long day.
"I'll send you the terms if you want to read them. Tell me if I'm being unreasonable."
"You built a six-figure business out of a grain silo in eleven months, Ro.
You've never once been unreasonable in your life.
Overly precise, maybe. Unreasonable, never.
" A pause, softer. "For what it's worth, I think writing it down was the right move.
Not because I think he's going to break it.
Because I think you needed to see it in your own handwriting, proof you're the one setting the terms this time instead of just living with whatever happens to you. "
Rowan sat with that for a second after they hung up, the phone dark on the table, the terms document still glowing on her laptop screen, and thought that Deb, as usual, had found the true center of it faster than Rowan had let herself.
It wasn't really about the eight hundred dollars, or even about Cole.
It was about proof. Proof, in her own handwriting, that whatever came next in this building, she was the one who got to decide the shape of it.
She saved the document, closed the laptop, and went to bed without checking the security footage a second time, which felt, in its own small way, like the first real progress she'd made all week.