32. Huck
HUCK
The Tahoe eats miles. My hands are tight on the wheel, the highway sliding under us in long gray ribbons. The sun is lowering fast, bleeding out into the Pacific, the light turning copper and red like the whole sky’s been cut open.
Wesley’s next to me, phone taking up his sight, his eyes sharp behind the reflection of code and numbers. He hasn’t looked up in twenty minutes. He’s muttering now, curses clipped and low, his fingers stabbing the keyboard like each strike is a punishment. “Son of a bitch.”
I glance at him. “What?”
“I should’ve seen this sooner.”
“Seen what ?”
He finally looks up, eyes burning, face lit by the glow of his screen. “David’s funding Friedburg’s new film.”
I grip the wheel tighter. “The one Bailey just got the lead in?”
“Yeah. It’s his money. All of it funneled through shell corporations. Friedburg’s just the face. David’s been pulling strings since day one.”
My gut goes cold. Bailey, smiling when she got the role. Bailey, glowing when she talked about the script. Bailey, walking straight into a trap.
“This was never about the film,” I mutter.
“No.” Wesley snaps the laptop half-shut, his jaw tight. “This was about her. About pulling her into his net. I should’ve caught it. I should’ve?—”
“Stop.” My voice cuts sharp through the cabin. “Beating yourself up doesn’t get us closer.”
His chest rises fast, his hands clenching. He wants to argue, but he doesn’t. He just stares out the windshield, watching the light fade.
The Tahoe roars as I push it harder, weaving past a sedan, sliding back into the lane with inches to spare. I chew the inside of my cheek, my blood running hot. David’s been laughing at us. At her. Every move we thought was hers, her victory, her climb back up—he was behind it, waiting.
There’s a reason he’s been so smug from the start.
It makes me want to put my fist straight through his chest. Instead, I push the speedometer higher.
Wesley’s leg bounces, heel thudding against the floorboard in a jittery rhythm. His fingers twitch like he wants another chance to dig, to find more, to make sense of the thing he thinks he should have caught days ago.
I don’t say anything at first. Talking won’t help him right now. The guilt’s eating him alive, and words don’t chase guilt out. Action does. But the silence gets heavy, filling the cabin until it grates.
“You’re gonna break your damn kneecap if you keep bouncing like that,” I mutter.
“I need to break something .”
“Not you.”
He snaps his head toward me, eyes sharp, voice sharp too. “You don’t get it, Huck. This was sitting in the open. The shell corporations weren’t even that deep. I should’ve traced them weeks ago. Instead, I let her walk right into his trap.”
“You let her?” I bark out a humorless laugh. “Since when do you control Bailey? She doesn’t let anybody steer her. She wanted that part. She took it.”
“Because it was offered,” he spits. “Because I didn’t see that David was holding the strings. He set the table, and I let her sit down.”
“Stop acting like you’re the only one who missed it. None of us saw it. Not Sean. Not me. And you know why? Because we wanted her to have it. We wanted her to win.”
Wesley slumps back against the seat, his jaw tight, his eyes flashing with something bitter. “That doesn’t excuse me.”
I glance at him. His face is lit by the dashboard glow now, shadows cutting deep into the lines of his cheekbones. He looks wrecked, like every ounce of control he prides himself on has been stripped bare.
“You ever think,” I say slowly, “that maybe David planned it that way? That maybe he counted on us wanting it for her so much we wouldn’t look too close?”
Wesley doesn’t answer. His silence says enough.
I weave us past a truck hauling lumber, the boards rattling in their straps, then slide back into the lane. Driving hard clears my head. Everything narrows to numbers. Distance, speed, angles. Numbers don’t lie the way people do.
Wesley exhales hard, scrubbing a hand over his face. “I hate that he’s still ahead of us. I hate that he’s always one move in front.”
“Then we catch up,” I say. My voice is flat, heavy with the promise in it. “That’s what we do.”
For a while, neither of us speaks. The road curves, the cliffs looming higher, the ocean now just a smear of dark on our left. The sky deepens into navy, streaked with the last red veins of sunset. I flip the headlights on, the beams slicing through the dim.
My hands stay locked on the wheel, my body leaning into the turns.
The Tahoe isn’t meant to be fast, but I make it fast. The tension in the car hums like another engine.
Wesley keeps muttering under his breath, words I don’t always catch—bits of code, fragments of finance, curses aimed at himself, at David, at the world.
I let him. Everyone’s got their coping mechanism.
Mine is speed and violence. His is blame.
The dot on the map ticks closer. The hour shrinks to half, then less. The shadows outside deepen. The road gets narrower, the trees thicker. I roll my shoulders back, refocus, let the silence sharpen me instead of weigh me down.
“Almost there,” I say finally, voice steady.
“Half a mile,” Wesley says, eyes on the tablet. His voice is calmer, that brittle calm he builds when the math finally lines up. “Sean’s dot is stationary.”
“And he hasn’t said anything. Maybe David’s just there to talk.”
“You’re smarter than that,” Wesley mutters.
I am. But I won’t give in to fear either.
We drop onto a frontage lane that runs along the bluffs.
The air changes—colder, sharper, eucalyptus resin cutting through salt like menthol.
Ahead, through the trunks, I catch a spill of light thrown up from somewhere big.
That’ll be the mansion. I ease off the gas, coast, let the engine quiet so the night can tell me things.
“There,” Wesley says, pointing. A break in the trees. I nose the Tahoe into it and kill the lights.
We move. Doors shut with gloved palms. I swing around the nose of the truck and stop dead when I see it—hood low, stance familiar even in shadow, paint dusted in pollen.
Chief’s jeep.
Wesley tilts his phone to me. “His dot hasn’t moved in nine minutes. He’s settled.”
“Or stuck.” I let that sit a second, taste the copper in my mouth. Either way, he’s on the grounds.
We kit up without talking. Sidearms sit where they always sit. Knives where they always are. Comfort items. We leave the Tahoe and the jeep swallowed by trees. The ground underfoot goes from duff to gravel to a packed dirt track that mule-kicks dust when you step wrong. We don’t step wrong.
The wall arrives out of the dark like a cliff—stucco pale where the last of the sky brushes it, ironwork at the main gate throwing filigree shadows. It’s tall. It wants you to feel small. Good walls do.
We stay off the gate. Gates are theaters. Cameras point there first. We drift left, following the curve, hugging the jacaranda and bougainvillea that clutch at the stucco like too much jewelry. The iron spikes along the top throw little black teeth against the sky.
We move again. The wall bows where it follows a garden bend. Eucalyptus lean in. Their lowest branches graze the stucco like fingers. There’s a spot where the bark is smooth from a thousand breezes—and from one set of boots. I touch it. Fresh scuff. Sean.
Wesley sees it too. He gives me a quick nod. “He came this way.”
I scan the angle. “We go up here.”
He crouches, laces his fingers. I plant my boot.
He boosts. Pain flakes down my arm, bright and mean, but I ride it.
The stucco gives enough texture to climb if you’re stubborn, and I am.
I catch the top, find iron, haul myself to a straddle.
The spikes whisper against my pants. The garden breathes cool air up into my face—wet grass, turned earth, faint chemical tang from fountain lights.
I scan inside.
Spanish revival tastes. Big. Fountains to the right, a terraced lawn to the left, flagstones in a geometric fan that leads toward the main house like a tongue. Low path lights flicker under lavender and rosemary.
I slide flat and raise two fingers for “hold.” Wesley breathes so quietly I only know he’s there because I can feel it. No sounds. Just the night. No guards. We drop on the inside one at a time. Knees bend. Boots kiss flagstone and hold. No clatter. No bark.
The garden goes from postcard to maze. The house blooms warm, all those arched windows lit up like a ship in a storm. Music murmurs somewhere—a string quartet recording or the rich man’s idea of culture. Staff cross and recross the far terrace with trays that flash silver.
Wesley tilts his jaw toward the right, toward the deeper landscaping where the path lights go sparse and the rosemary hedges rise. It’ll give us cover to the side yard, and from there to the terrace supports.
I nod. We start to move.
We go low and slow. Closer now, the house breathes. I can hear the fountain on the lower terrace gurgle and the faint, wet slap where it overflows into the runnels. Somewhere a radio crackles—a staff channel, not security. Someone laughs at a joke and then smothers it, remembering where they are.
Wesley stops again and touches my elbow. His lips barely move. “Sean?”
I glance at his tablet, shielded with my palm. One dot. Inside the grounds, off the main axis, closer to the trees than the house. Not moving. Watching. “He’s here. Eastern quadrant. Maybe a tree.”
Wesley’s eyes cut toward a darker smear of eucalyptus to our right. “That’s him.”
“Then we’re where we should be.”
We tilt that way, hugging the rosemary until the scent oils our sleeves. The ironwork on a side balcony looms above like lace. I can see the main doors now, under the grand arch. We’re not rushing that door. We’re not stupid.
We angle along the hedge line, toward where the terrace’s edge breaks into a stair that drops to the lower garden. There’s a service court beyond, a curve of stone where deliveries land. Fewer eyes, fewer microphones, more choices.
The lower garden opens ahead—long beds, clipped hedges, a strip of lawn that would swallow a soccer field.
The fountains down here are smaller, the water louder.
There’s a break in the wall where a service gate leads to a narrow lane kissed by darkness.
If we need to exfil fast with bodies, that’s our way.
I mark it. I always mark the way out before I mark the way in.
We’re close enough now to hear voices without binoculars. Friedburg, jovial and oily. And David, warm and poison-sweet, the way he gets when he thinks he’s the smartest predator in the room.
Wesley’s hands flex on the fore-end of the shorty. My knife feels heavier at my hip, like it knows its job. I breathe in through my nose and hold the air where it can steady my hands.
“Ready?” Wesley whispers.
“Always.”