Chapter 13 Marble Run
MARBLE RUN
DOMINIC
The Lamb and Flag in Covent Garden smelled like old wood and spilled ale. I found Cal tucked into a corner booth, his laptop open and his fingers moving across the keyboard with the focused intensity of someone who'd made himself oblivious to everything else in the pub.
Almost oblivious.
His eyes flicked up when I was still three tables away, clocked me, and returned to the screen like I wasn't worth interrupting his work for. I slid into the booth across from him uninvited.
“You're late,” he said without looking up.
“You didn't give me a time.”
“I said afternoon. It's nearly five.” His fingers kept moving. “Though I suppose for someone who just stands around looking threatening, time's more of a suggestion.”
“I had an actual job. Someone needed protecting.” I flagged down the server and ordered a Guinness, then got a proper look at him.
Purple bloomed along his jawline, disappearing beneath his collar. Fresh enough to still be swollen.
My chest tightened. “What happened to your face?”
“Which part?” Cal's mouth curved without humour. “The eyes? Can't do much about those. The bruise? Tuesday.”
“Who hit you?”
“Someone who didn't appreciate being followed.” He finally looked up properly, those mismatched eyes meeting mine with a challenge he was daring me to pick up. “Why? You planning to do something about it?”
“Planning to figure out whether you're compromised.”
“Christ, you sound like a security briefing.” He returned to his laptop. “I'm fine. Still working. That's all that matters.”
The server brought my drink and I took a long drink, using the time to look at him properly. More bruises visible now that I was looking for them — one on his temple, partially hidden by hair. Defensive marks on his knuckles. A stiffness in the way he held himself that suggested ribs.
“How bad?” I asked.
“Bad enough that it hurts. Not bad enough that I stopped.” His jaw tightened fractionally. “I've had worse.”
“That doesn't make me feel better.”
“Wasn't trying to. I was telling you the truth.” The laptop beeped and Cal's attention snapped back to the screen, eyes scanning whatever had appeared. “Finally. File three's finished.”
“What files?”
“Harrow's communication records. Calls, texts, emails — everything from the past eighteen months. Should tell us who he talks to, who he pays off, who he threatens.” His fingers flew across the keyboard, opening folders, cross-referencing data.
My hand tightened around the glass. “How did you get Harrow's records?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yeah. It matters.”
Cal's eyes lifted to mine and something shuttered behind them. “I got access to his phone. Downloaded everything.”
“How?”
“Creative problem-solving.”
“Cal.”
“Dom.” He mimicked my tone perfectly, unhurried and deliberate. “I got what we needed. That's what counts.”
“How. Did. You. Get. It.”
The silence stretched out between us. Cal's jaw worked like he was chewing on words he didn't want to say, and then something in his expression shifted and went hard.
“I fucked him,” he said flatly. “Went to his house. Let him do whatever he wanted. Got what I needed while he was distracted.”
The words landed like fists. Something built behind my sternum, narrowing my vision at the edges.
“You did what?”
“You heard me. I'm not repeating it.” Cal's gaze stayed level despite the tension vibrating through his shoulders. “It worked. We have the files. It's done.”
I set the glass down carefully, controlled, because the alternative was throwing it across the room. “You let Harrow touch you.”
“I let him do more than that.” Cal leaned back, arms crossing over his chest. “And before you start with the moral speech, it was necessary. Harrow's paranoid. His security is airtight. The only way to get close enough was to be someone he wanted, someone he thought he owned.”
“There had to be other ways.”
“There weren't.” His voice hardened. “I tried everything else. Surveillance, hacking, sources. All of it failed because Harrow has money and power and thirty years of experience not getting caught. The only thing he's vulnerable to is his own appetites. So I used them.”
My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against the table. “You put yourself in danger.”
“I put myself in a situation I controlled. Had exits, had contingencies.” Cal's eyes flashed. “Don't confuse calculated risk with stupidity. I knew what I was doing.”
“You let a predator tie you up.”
“I let a target think he had power while I took what I needed.” He leaned forward. “Those aren't the same thing. But apparently you're too rigid to see the difference.”
I stared at him. At the bruise on his jaw that suddenly made a sickening kind of sense. At the defensive marks on his knuckles from fighting his way out afterward. At the tension in his shoulders that spoke of things he was pretending hadn't touched him.
“You're not a tool,” I said.
“Everything's a tool if you're willing to use it.” He held my gaze, steady and unapologetic. “My face, my skills, my body. All of it. I don't get the luxury of limits when I'm trying to catch someone who's been untouchable for decades.”
“There are always limits.”
Cal laughed, short and humourless. “Are there? Where were the limits when your sister died and the case got closed inside a week? When witnesses forgot what they saw? When evidence disappeared?” His voice went colder.
“You want limits? Fine. But they only work when everyone follows them. Harrow doesn't. So neither do I.”
“That's not—”
“That's exactly how it is. You're just too idealistic to admit it.” His laptop beeped again and he glanced at the screen, expression shifting. “File seven's done. Calendar appointments.”
“I don't care about his bloody calendar.”
“You should. According to this, Harrow's got a private meeting at the British Museum in forty minutes. A donor event, closed. Just him and whatever parasites he's courting.” Cal started packing up his laptop. “Which means we can observe him. Maybe get close enough for more intel.”
“We're not done talking.”
“Yeah, we are. Nothing left to say.” He stood and slung his laptop bag over his shoulder. “You don't like my methods. I don't care. We both want Harrow destroyed. So either come with me and help, or stay here being judgmental. Your call.”
He turned to leave. I grabbed his arm and stopped him.
Cal's eyes dropped to where my hand circled his bicep, then lifted to my face. “Let go.”
“Not until you listen.”
“I've listened. You're pissed because I fucked someone for information. You think it's degrading or whatever middle-class sensibility you're operating under.” His voice went flat. “I don't need your judgment. I need you to decide whether you're actually serious about this or just posturing.”
My grip tightened. “If we're doing this together, you tell me first. Before you do something like that.”
“I don't answer to you.”
“You do if we're partners.”
“Partners means equals. You treating me like I need managing isn't partnership.” Cal pulled against my grip. I didn't let go. His eyes flashed. “I said let go.”
“Not until you agree to keep me informed.”
“Or what? You'll throw me around in a pub? Show everyone what kind of man you are?” But his pulse was racing under my fingers, his breath gone shallow.
I forced myself to release him and stepped back, put distance between us before I did something we'd both regret.
“I'm trying to keep you alive,” I said.
“I've kept myself alive fine without you.” Cal adjusted his bag, his face carefully neutral now. “But fine. You want updates? Next time I need to fuck someone for intel, I'll text you first. Make sure you approve.”
The sarcasm was armour. I recognised it because I used the same defence.
I reached out slowly and touched his jaw where the bruise bloomed darkest. His skin was warm under my fingers and he flinched slightly before going very still.
“Does it hurt?” I asked. My voice came out rougher than I'd intended.
Cal's eyes had gone wide, uncertain in a way I'd never seen on him before. “It's fine.”
“That's not what I asked.”
“Yeah,” he said after a moment. “It hurts.”
I traced the edge of the bruise with my thumb, careful and slow, and heard his breathing hitch.
“You're really not letting this go,” he said.
“No.”
“Even though it pisses you off.”
“Especially because it pisses me off.” I held his gaze. “You're right that we need those files. Right that you probably had to do something unconventional to get them. But you're wrong if you think I'm fine with you walking into situations where you might not walk out.”
“That's not your decision.”
“It is if we're partners.”
Something shifted in his expression, a quick recalculation behind those mismatched eyes. “You're serious. About working together.”
“Yeah.”
“Even knowing I'll do things you won't.”
“As long as I know beforehand. As long as we talk through options instead of you making calls alone.” I paused. “And as long as you accept that I'm going to fight like hell to keep you from having to do those things in the first place.”
Cal's mouth curved slightly. “You're going to be disappointed a lot.”
“Probably.”
“And pissed off.”
“Definitely.”
“But you're still in.”
“I'm in.” I gestured toward the door. “Now are we going to this museum, or are you going to keep testing me?”
Cal grabbed his coat. “Museum. We need to move. Event starts in thirty-five.”
We left the pub and stepped out into a grey London evening, rain threatening but not yet falling. Cal set a quick pace toward the Underground.
“What's the plan?” I asked.
“Harrow will be in the private galleries. A donor event means light security, mostly watching the art.” Cal's eyes had already gone distant, running scenarios. “We go in through the service entrance, blend with catering, observe. If an opening for closer approach presents itself, we take it.”
“And if we're caught?”
“We improvise.” He glanced at me. “You any good at that?”
“Good enough.”
“That's not reassuring.”