Chapter 5
Ideveloped a system for working in the storage unit.
Laptop on the left. Printouts on the right.
Coffee in the exact center, enough distance between both elbows, because I'd already knocked one cup onto a shell company diagram, and Will had looked at the coffee stain like I'd personally insulted his research.
The system was excellent. Airtight. The one variable I hadn't accounted for was Will Steele's forearms.
He'd started rolling up his sleeves on day two.
Just folded the cuffs back, twice, neat and precise, like everything he did.
It shouldn't have registered. It was a practical decision in a cramped, poorly ventilated concrete box.
I was a professional. I had spent a decade training my brain to notice patterns in data, not in the musculature of my colleagues' arms.
My brain, apparently, had other ideas.
The storage unit had become our world, a ten-by-fifteen concrete box stuffed with evidence, bad takeout containers, and the particular tension that comes from two people pretending very hard that the room is bigger than it is.
My domain was the folding table on the left, covered in financial printouts, shell company diagrams, and a laptop that had seen better days.
Will's domain was the wall, where his web of red string and photographs grew more intricate by the hour.
The space between our domains was approximately eighteen inches.
I discovered this on day two, when I reached for a file box at the same moment he turned from the wall. My shoulder connected with his chest, and I stumbled backward with all the grace of a newborn giraffe.
"Sorry," I muttered, face burning. "Tight quarters."
"Noted." His voice was dry, but his eyes flickered with what might have been amusement. "Try not to assault me again."
"I make no promises."
After that, we developed an unspoken choreography. He'd step left when I needed the file cabinet. I'd lean right when he reached for the printer. Our movements became a careful dance, always aware of where the other was, always maintaining that crucial sliver of distance.
The problem was that awareness didn't come with an off switch.
I'd catch myself tracking his movements the way I tracked numbers: automatically, constantly, without deciding to.
The way he planted his feet when he was thinking, weight slightly forward, like he was always ready to move.
The way he held a pen, not writing, just turning it between his fingers while he stared at the wall, and his hands were distractingly capable-looking, which was not a thought I needed to be having about a man holding a pen.
I started keeping a mental tally of how many times per hour I looked at him instead of my screen. The number was professionally embarrassing. I stopped counting on day three.
I learned his tells without meaning to, though.
The way his brow furrowed when he found a particularly damning connection, a photograph of a smiling politician at a fundraiser for one of Reeves's shell companies, a memo that showed exactly how deep the corruption ran.
I didn't have a name for the expression he made, but it was the opposite of the cold mask he showed the world.
It was hot. Focused. It made the hair on my arms stand up, and I told myself that was concern about the case.
But there were other tells. Softer ones.
His phone would buzz with a specific tone, gentle, almost musical, and no matter how deep in concentration he was, he'd stop.
Mid-sentence, mid-thought, mid-reach for a document.
He'd pull out his phone, and the change was instant.
Not dramatic. Just a loosening, like someone had turned a dial from ten to seven.
The tension in his shoulders would ease.
His expression would soften, just slightly.
"Nicole?" I asked the third time it happened.
He glanced up, something guarded flickering across his face before he nodded. "She's trying to convince me that her basil plant is finally thriving. I have my doubts."
"Photographic evidence?"
"Grainy and unconvincing." But he was almost smiling as he typed his response, and I looked away quickly because watching Will Steele almost smile did something to my chest that I was choosing not to investigate.
On the afternoon of day three, we had our first argument that had nothing to do with the case.
It started because of lo mein.
We'd been ordering takeout from the same Thai place for three days running, which was fine, except Will apparently had opinions about noodle dishes that he'd been suppressing with visible effort, and I'd made the mistake of suggesting we try the Chinese place two blocks over.
"Their hygiene rating is a C," he said, not looking up from his laptop.
"How do you know that?"
"I looked it up."
"You looked up the hygiene rating of a restaurant I mentioned thirty seconds ago?"
"It took five seconds. The information is public." He typed something. "The Thai place is an A."
"The Thai place gives me the same pad see ew every time.
I want lo mein. Specifically, I want lo mein from the place with the C rating, because my college roommate and I used to eat there at two in the morning, and it was the best lo mein I've ever had, and I don't care if the kitchen has questionable practices. "
He looked up then, and his expression was so genuinely baffled that I almost laughed. Like the concept of choosing food based on sentiment rather than sanitation data was a language he didn't speak.
"You want substandard noodles because of nostalgia."
"I want excellent noodles that happen to come from a place that maybe doesn't mop as often as you'd like."
"Lindsey."
"Will."
We stared at each other across the table, and the absurdity of it hit me all at once: two people investigating a human trafficking ring, surrounded by evidence of monstrous crimes, locked in mortal combat over Chinese food.
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it, sharp and unexpected, and his expression shifted from baffled to something else. Something I couldn't read.
"Fine," he said. "Order the lo mein."
"Really?"
"If you get food poisoning, I'm not pausing the investigation."
"Noted. Your compassion is staggering."
"I'll have the kung pao chicken." He turned back to his screen. "Extra spicy."
"You like spicy food?"
"Is that surprising?"
"I had you pegged as a 'plain grilled chicken, no seasoning' type."
The look he gave me could have frozen the lo mein mid-delivery. "I'm going to pretend you didn't say that."
The lo mein, for the record, was transcendent.
I ate it sitting cross-legged on the floor because the table was covered in documents, and Will ate his kung pao chicken at his end of the table, and at one point, he reached over and stole a noodle from my container without asking, which was either a declaration of war or the most intimate thing that had happened between us. I couldn't decide which.
"Verdict?" I asked, watching him chew.
"The noodles are adequate."
"Adequate. Right."
"The hygiene situation remains concerning."
"But the noodles are adequate."
He didn't answer, but he stole a second one, and I let him, and we went back to work, and something about the evening felt different after that.
Warmer. Like we'd passed some invisible checkpoint that had nothing to do with evidence or trust or the case.
Like we'd just been two people arguing about dinner, and that was allowed.
By day five, we had a pattern, a horrifying, undeniable pattern. But patterns weren't proof. They were circumstantial, deniable, the kind of thing expensive lawyers could explain away with corporate complexity and plausible ignorance.
"We need a direct link," Will said, pacing in front of his wall of connections. "Something that ties Reeves personally to the transfers. Not his companies. Him."
"His signature would be nice. Maybe a memo that says 'please continue trafficking humans on my behalf.'"
"I'll add it to the wish list."
I rubbed my eyes, exhausted. We'd been at this for eight hours, fueled by gas station coffee and the last of the kung pao chicken, which Will had apparently been saving and which I'd eaten while he was in the bathroom.
He hadn't said anything about it. He'd just looked at the empty container, looked at me, and hid something away behind those blue eyes.
"Tell me about Bates," I said, partly to take a break from the screen and partly because the question had been nagging at me. "The FBI agent. Why him?"
Will stopped pacing. For a moment, I thought he wouldn't answer.
"Three years ago," he said finally, "I was building a case against a hedge fund manager named Morrison. Insider information scheme. He was using it to bankrupt small medical supply companies, then buying their patents for pennies. Destroyed six businesses. Put four hundred people out of work."
"Charming."
"He had a deputy mayor in his pocket, and three members of the city council." Will leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "The evidence I'd gathered was compelling but wouldn't survive scrutiny. I needed someone inside law enforcement who would actually investigate instead of burying it."
"And Bates was that someone?"
"Bates was newly assigned to financial crimes. Ambitious, but not yet cynical. I fed him one thread, anonymously, and watched to see what he'd do with it."
"And?"
"He pulled it. Kept pulling until the whole thing unraveled.
By the book. Every warrant, every subpoena.
Morrison went to prison for twelve years.
" Will's expression was unreadable. "When the case closed, Bates never publicly credited the anonymous tip.
But he left a channel open. A signal that he knew where the evidence had come from, and he understood why. "
"So he's your inside man."