Chapter 16
Marcus heard Jude out without interrupting, which was how Nate knew he was taking it seriously. Marcus interrupted everyone. It was how he thought.
They were in the back room, the three of them, door closed.
Ghost's wall had grown another row since yesterday: six new pins, two new strings, one name in red that hadn't been there a week ago.
Marcus sat across from Jude with his hands flat on the table and listened to Jude describe two years of shows.
The venues, the promoters, the pattern of who Rand stayed to talk to after sets and who he didn't. Jude was precise.
He'd been up since five pulling it together in a notebook Nate hadn't known he was keeping, and he laid it out like the setlists he wrote. Nothing wasted, everything in order.
When Jude finished Marcus looked at Ghost.
"Cross-reference the venue list against the timeline and what Jude already gave us," Marcus said.
"Already running it." Ghost didn't look up from the laptop.
Marcus looked back at Jude. "The promoter you mentioned. Kasey Vance. You said Rand stayed after every show at venues she booked."
"Every one. He'd tell me to go get the car. Sometimes I'd be waiting forty-five minutes." Jude's voice was level. He'd had a day to sit with what that meant. "She's in Detroit. Books six or seven venues on the circuit. I've got her number in my phone."
"Don't use it yet."
"I know."
Marcus nodded once, short. "You did good bringing this." He said it plain, no performance in it, and got up and went to the wall with Ghost.
Jude watched him go. Then he looked at Nate, just briefly, and Nate gave him the small nod that meant yes, that was right. Jude looked back at the table.
"Vance is the seam," Ghost said. He had a new window open, the venue list down the left side, dates down the right. "Every disappearance in the last eighteen months, the ones we can place at a show, they all fall within seventy-two hours of a Vance-booked event. Every one."
Nate pulled a chair to the wall.
They worked through the morning.
Ghost had the Windsor contact now, a name from Easton's prison grapevine that had taken three weeks and two intermediaries to verify.
He put it on the board without ceremony: Milo Varga.
Mid-level. Not the top of the chain but high enough to hold Rand's marker and set the timeline.
Ghost had a phone number, a registered Windsor address that was almost certainly a front, and a partial financial trail linking to two accounts Rand had been moving money through.
"Varga's been pushing the pace," Ghost said.
He was at the board with a marker, circling, connecting, his handwriting small and exact.
"Rand owes him. The debt's been climbing since the embezzlement got unwieldy.
He's been stealing from the band to pay Varga and it hasn't kept up.
So Varga tightened the schedule. More kids, faster. That's why the gaps closed."
"How close is Rand to defaulting?" Nate asked.
"He already has, technically. Varga's been patient because Rand's been useful.
The venue access, the cover, the front-of-house credibility.
" Ghost tapped the board. "That's gone now.
Jude's gone, the band's not booking, the credibility evaporates.
Varga's going to want what he's owed in some other currency. "
Nate looked at the board. Rand's name sat at the center of it, three lines out: to Varga through four intermediaries, to the venues through Vance, to six red-ended faces. Three lines. Three different years of the same operation.
"He'll try to give Varga something," Nate said. "Buy himself more time."
"Yes," Ghost said.
"What's he got left?"
The room went quiet for a moment. Ghost pulled the cap off the marker and put it back on.
"Jude," Zain said from the corner. He'd been there the whole time, sleeves up, phone face-down on his knee.
"Rand's got Jude. To Varga, Jude's a commodity with an established value.
Known face, small family in the city who'd make noise fast enough.
" He paused. "Rand's been selling strangers to pay his debts.
If the strangers run out, he uses what he has. "
Nate kept his face still.
He was good at it. Marcus had taught him, and he'd had med school and the military before that, and he used it now the same as he used it for everything else: because the work didn't stop for what you felt about it.
What he felt was cold. A fury that'd burn the building down if he let it.
He didn't let it. He tucked it away and looked at the board.
"When?" he asked.
"Soon. He reached out to Varga's people two days ago through an intermediary. We intercepted it. He made an offer. Varga hasn't answered yet."
"He will."
"Yes."
Nate looked at the board a moment longer. Then he looked at Marcus, who'd been watching him from the corner with the stillness he got when he was deciding something.
"He's in this house," Nate said. Not a question, not an accusation. Just the fact on the table so everyone in the room knew he knew they knew it.
"He is," Marcus said. "And he stays here. Nobody leaves without a crew member until this is closed." He held Nate's eyes. "You knew what you were bringing in when you brought him here."
"I did."
"Then act like it."
Not a rebuke. Marcus saying I trust you, now do the job. Nate had been on the receiving end of that long enough to know the difference.
"What do we know about Varga's window?" he said. Back to Ghost. Back to the board.
***
He told Jude that night.
Not everything. Enough. Jude was at the kitchen table with the notebook open, working on something else now, a page of lyrics with three lines crossed out for every one that stayed. He closed it when Nate sat down.
Nate told him Rand had made an offer. Didn't say what the offer was. Watched Jude's face work through the math without being given it, which was faster than Nate expected, and then go still.
"He was going to sell me," Jude said.
"He tried to."
"To pay Varga."
"Yes."
Jude looked at the closed notebook. His thumb moved on the cover, back and forth, once. Nate had seen that before, in the war room when Ghost was walking him through the faces. He didn't say anything now either.
"Okay," Jude said.
"Okay?"
"I mean-" He stopped. The thumb stilled. "I'm not surprised. I think I've known, somewhere, what he was capable of. I just didn't have a word for it yet." He looked up. "What happens now?"
"We move fast. Ghost thinks Varga responds within seventy-two hours. When he does, we'll know what shape the operation takes."
"And Rand?"
"Rand's going to try to deliver. When he tries, we'll be there."
Jude nodded slowly. His jaw was set the same as it'd been when he read three years of embezzlement at the kitchen table. Not bravado. Not performance. Just where Jude was now, on the other side of two years and a board full of faces and a man who'd tried to sell him.
"I want to know when it happens," Jude said. "I'm not asking to be there. I just want to know."
"You'll know."
Jude reached for his pen. Opened the notebook. Not ending the conversation, Nate thought, just needing something in his hands.
"Go do your job," Jude said quietly. "I'll be here."
Nate stood. Put his hand briefly on the back of Jude's neck, warm, and let go.
He went back to the work.