Chapter 11 #2
I tell her the paper she found looks almost identical to Stein's acquisition schedules that I keep on the worktable at my Esplanade office. Same layout and breakdown of addresses, but with a more detailed timeline structure and projected turnover windows.
Her eyes narrow. "Projected turnover windows." She lets out a short laugh that doesn't sound amused. "That feels like an especially corporate way to describe ruining people's lives."
"Buildings already acquired. Buildings being pressured into sale.
Buildings targeted next." I shake my head once.
"Stein talks about neighborhoods the same way people talk about flipping patio furniture on Marketplace.
" I lean forward and brace my forearms on my knees.
"The difference between my map and Shane's is that this one goes further.
Future dates. Notes in the margins. Security details. "
She goes very still at that. "Shane's handwriting."
"It appears to be."
"What kind of security details?"
I choose every word carefully. "The original store. The pop-up. Notes about entrances, alarm panels, access points, delivery schedules."
Her face changes by degrees while she processes it, disbelief trying to keep pace with logic and losing ground.
"What does that even mean?" she asks quietly. "How is Shane connected to any of this?"
I don't answer fast enough.
"Does he know Stein?" Her voice tightens.
She laughs once under her breath, sharp and disbelieving.
"Because that would actually be incredible.
Apparently I've been accidentally running a bookstore for organized crime while recommending cozy fantasy to retirees.
" She looks away for a second, jaw flexing hard.
"Has he been lying to me this whole time while stocking shelves and making coffee like it's normal? "
"Avery."
"And why did you tell me to put the paper back?" She pushes off the arm of the couch and starts pacing once across the living room before turning back to me. "Why would I want him walking back into my store tomorrow like nothing happened?"
"Because if he knows we saw it, he'll disappear." I look at her. "And right now I'd rather have him where I can still see him walking into your store every morning." I stand when she stops moving. "And that can't happen before we can prove any of it."
Then I tell her about my meeting with Stein on Friday pretending I'm interested in buying up Harbor View with him and backing the downtown development project he keeps pushing through the city.
What I don't reveal is Shane's connection to Stein, on Pham's orders or that I'm working with Pham.
She's quiet through all of it and doesn't interrupt or ask clarifying questions. She takes it in before finally asking, "You've been investigating all of this. Were you just going to wait for everything to blow up in my face?"
"I was managing your exposure."
"Don't hide anything else from me."
"That was actually my entire personality for a while," I say automatically.
She doesn't smile.
Something in my chest tightens. "I won't."
"I won't." I'm lying, but there's no version of this that sounds better.
She looks at me for a long moment, the look that does not arrive at conclusions quickly, the one that weighs things, and then something shifts in her face underneath the decision she has been holding all afternoon, the expression she wears when she has stopped performing steadiness because she doesn't need to anymore.
She looks away first, toward the kitchen like there might be a version of this conversation happening somewhere else where her life still makes sense.
"I know this is probably not the healthiest response to organized crime," she says quietly, "but I really need you to tell me you're going to get Stein. "
"I'm going to get him."
The answer leaves me immediately, rough-edged and certain.
Something shifts in her expression at how fast I say it. Her breath catches almost invisibly before she looks away like she needs a second to recover from hearing me mean it that much.
She crosses the room. Her hand finds my jaw and she tips my face down toward hers.
I pull her in without hesitation, my hands in her dark curls, and she's already working the buttons of my shirt with a focused efficiency.
"This feels like a deeply irresponsible coping mechanism," I murmur against her mouth.
"I know," she says, tugging my shirt open. "Please don't ruin this by continuing to talk."
That tells me she's made a decision and isn't interested in being talked out of it.
We've been in a storeroom and on a rooftop. Those were both real and both chosen, but this is something different.
Her hands are at my collar, her home around us, the cedar smell surrounds us, and the quiet and the particular relief of not being at the edge of anything for once.
She's the one who reaches for my belt. I let her set the tempo, her hands and her pace, until she wraps her legs around me and then I take over, gripping her hips as I walk us down the hall to her bedroom.
I feel the tension that has been in her body and the careful steadiness of her voice all day finally come undone, listening to the sounds she makes when she stops managing herself. She says my name and it lands somewhere in me that hasn't been touched in a long time.
Afterward she buries her face against my shoulder.
A minute later she says, very seriously, "I think this officially makes you part of the bookstore loyalty program now."
I look down at her. "Do I get a free tote bag?"
"Don't be ridiculous," she murmurs, already half asleep. "Those cost extra."
I keep one hand pressed warm against the back of her neck long after her breathing evens out, not because I think she needs steadying but because I'm not ready to stop.
She is handing me not just her body but her trust. She'll be walking another full workday beside a man who may have helped burn two people alive, laughed at his jokes and directed his restocking with the same voice she uses for everything.
I lie in the dark with her breathing against my shoulder and the cedar smell and the quiet, and I know that something has changed between us tonight that won't go back.
My phone lights up on the nightstand. Pham's number. I take it on the first vibration, already moving, easing out from under her and into the hall before it rings again.
"Tell me you didn't tip off Booker," she says the second I answer.
I look back at Avery, at the door I just closed. "I didn't."
The pause on the other end lasts just long enough to feel wrong.
"Then we have a problem."
My grip tightens on the phone.
"He just changed his pattern."