Chapter 21
Stein calls me in the middle of the night. Men who negotiate wait for morning, not when the world is asleep.
I step into the living room before I answer, the phone already warm in my hand. The place is dark except for the spill of streetlight through the front window. Avery is asleep in my bed. Jonah is in the guest bedroom down the hall.
Pancake hasn’t moved from her spot at Avery’s feet, probably because Avery bribed her with whatever snack she wasn't supposed to have before passing out with a paperback open on her chest.
"Callum." He uses my first name like we're old colleagues. "We should talk. Just the two of us. No intermediaries."
I keep my voice low. "That was fast. Congratulations on the criminal justice speedrun."
The comment passes under him like it isn't worth acknowledging. "I think there's a version of this that works well for both of us, and I think you already know that, or you'd have talked to someone by now." He pauses. "Your warehouse on Surfside Drive."
I know what this is before he finishes the sentence. He wants a controlled room, even if it's my property, away from offices and records and anyone who might wander through. He wants me isolated and the setting to feel like his idea.
"Fine," I say. "One hour."
I sit with the phone in my hand for a moment, then set it down. The house stays quiet around me.
I stand there for a second, listening, then grab a jacket out of the hallway closet. I pull it on over my T-shirt, not bothering to change out of my flannel pajama pants.
I pull up the Surfside Drive security feed on my laptop. It's operational, so I close the screen.
On the way, I call Pham.
She answers on the second ring, already awake.
I give her the short version and hear papers move on her end before she says, "Callum, I need you to slow down.
We don't have time to get a wire on you, we don't have surveillance set, and if he's asking for a private meeting in the middle of the night, then he's already operating outside whatever pattern we've been tracking. "
"Exactly," I say.
"If we push this another two hours, I can have a full team in place. We can control the room instead of reacting to it."
I turn onto Surfside and tighten my grip on the wheel. "You think he's giving us more time after this? He was just arrested and knows pressure's building. If I don't show up tonight, he may disappear and then we've got nothing."
She doesn't answer right away.
"I don't need a wire," I tell her. "I'll keep my phone recording the whole time."
"That's not the same thing and you know it."
"No, but it's enough if he talks. And if he called me directly, then he wants something badly enough to risk the meeting."
Another pause. Then, "You really think this is the moment."
"I don't see how it isn't," I say.
I hear her exhale. "Fine. Go in, keep him talking as long as you can, and keep your phone on you. I'll have my team moving as fast as possible. We won't be far behind you."
I hate ignoring her advice. Pham's instincts are usually better than mine, but tonight I'm asking her to trust me anyway.
I arrive at the warehouse one hour on the dot.
The air outside hits colder than it should, carrying the faint metallic tang of old machinery. The building's mine so I know every entry point and every gap in the wall where the original contractor cut corners.
What I don't know is why there are two cars in the lot when Stein said "Just the two of us."
I can't see anyone inside the cars, but if they were security, they'd have gotten out when I pulled in.
Stein is standing near the north roll door, his shirt pressed, his posture easy.
I stop walking for exactly half a second before I continue, and I use that half second to decide what my face is going to do.
"Something wrong?" The tone lands light, like the answer won’t matter.
Before I turn my head, I feel two men step in close on my left and right, not touching, just there. Not the kind of men you bring to a negotiation. The kind you bring when you want the room to feel heavier than it looks. Neither of them looks like they came from his legal team.
Then I see Maureen Pike standing just beyond the man on my right.
For a second I forget what I decided my face was supposed to do.
I catch the exact moment she notices it too. Something ugly and satisfied flickers across her expression before she smooths it away.
And suddenly Avery's voice from the rooftop comes back to me. "Why are you somehow involved in both my fire code violations and my temporary billionaire housing situation?"
At the time, it sounded paranoid and half-joking in the way Avery says things when she's circling something she doesn't want to believe.
But why had Maureen cared so much about me leasing the pop-up space? Why had she connected the store's remediation work to Stein's offer in the first place?
Because she already knew who was behind both of them.
Nothing about this is what he said it was.
"Callum," Stein says again, the same way he said it on the phone. "I appreciate you coming. Shall we go inside?"
"We can talk out here."
His expression doesn't change. He glances at one of the men, the movement so slight most people would miss it. The men subtly reposition, their attention sharpening on me. It's not a threat yet, but it's the shape of one.
"Inside," Stein says, pleasantly. "I prefer it."
I look at the door, then at Stein, then at the men beside me. I run the math on what happens if I refuse and it's not looking good.
I unlock the warehouse.
The north side of the building is open floor. I drag my fingers along a cold metal rack as I pass. Inside smells of concrete, old lubricant, and has the particular dry cold of a space that holds heat badly.
I use this section for equipment storage, lease documentation filing, the things that need a room and don't need a window. The overhead lights are industrial, slow to warm. They cast everything a flat gray while they work up to full brightness.
Stein walks in like the building belongs to him, which I suppose is the point. Maureen and the men follow us in.
Stein pauses just inside the warehouse and looks around. "Do you have somewhere we can sit," he says.
I point down the corridor. "The conference room is this way." I don’t wait to see if he agrees. I lead them past the storage racks to a room near an office and push the door open.
Stein ignores the chairs and sits on the edge of the table without being invited to. He looks around the space with the specific satisfaction of a man cataloguing what he intends to acquire.
"Let me be direct," he says. "I'm going to build Harbor View. The block will clear." He looks at me. "I'm offering you a place in it."
"You couldn't have said all this on the phone?"
"A partnership stake in the development. Your Harbor Walk interests converted at assessed value with a percentage of the yield on top. It's a generous offer."
"And if I don't take it."
He picks up a loose bolt from the work table and sets it back down.
"Then I think questions get asked about past transactions.
I think associations get drawn you'd prefer weren't." He says it like he's reciting a line he uses often, delivering it as neutral information with a hint of regret, as if none of it is personal.
Pike steps forward. She's dressed for a meeting, not a warehouse, and she knows it, which means she didn't know this location until recently. "What Marvin is trying to convey," she says, "is that redevelopment moves forward with or without individual stakeholders. The question is who benefits."
I glance at her, then back to Stein, letting my eyes hold for half a second longer than necessary before I shift them again, a quiet question I don't give voice to.
She tilts her head at me. "You have interests there too. They deserve a return."
I watch her deliver it without breaking cadence, smoothing coercion into something that almost passes for recognition. If I weren't sure she'd been behind every pressure point for the last four weeks, the forum post, the Star column, the gala photo, I might even find it convincing.
"I'm not partnering," I say. "And I'm not selling."
Stein looks at me for a moment. "You're sure?"
"I'm sure."
Stein gives a small nod to the man on his right. The man doesn’t look at him, just reaches into his pocket and sends a quick text without breaking his posture.
"Are the authorities closing in on Harbor View, in your assessment?"
He wants to know what I know and if I've talked to anyone.
I let a beat pass. "I'm a property developer. I don't have any idea about what law enforcement might be doing."
He watches me the way he watched the room when he walked in, taking inventory of every reaction he might be able to use. I don't move. I keep my weight even, my hands loose at my sides, and I give him nothing to read.
Maureen steps in again. "The concern," she says carefully, "is that you always seem to be standing in the right place when certain conversations start happening at the city level.
Planning, permits, fire code compliance.
" She pauses. "Add in the fact that you used to be a firefighter and people might start wondering how those things keep aligning in your favor. "
"Reasonable questions," I say. "But like I said, I'm a property developer."
Stein's mouth moves in a way that might be a smile. He looks past me at the south wall, just briefly, and then looks back. It's not a look at the architecture. It's a look at a location.
My attention snaps to him before I can stop it.
"How far will you go," he says, "to protect the bookstore woman?"
He says it like it's a casual addition to the conversation, but it's not. It's the third prong of what he came here to test, and he saved it for last because he thought it might land differently than the others.
"That's a dramatic way to describe a woman who mostly argues with me and reorganizes bookshelves like she's fixing a public safety issue," I say.