Chapter 14
"Am I in danger right now?"
A mover wheels a hand truck past the back door while Shane argues good-naturedly with another guy about whether the reading chairs should go in first or last. Outside, the moving truck sits open to the alley, half the pop-up already packed into the back.
The tape gun sticks halfway down the seam of the box. I press harder until it gives with a loud rip.
Callum steps in beside me like he was waiting for an opening. Callum steps in beside me like he was waiting for an opening. "Lower the volume, homicide podcast host," he says quietly.
"Answer me," I shoot back, already reaching for another strip of tape because my hands need something to do.
Callum takes the tape gun out of my grip before I can decide the next logical thing to tape is my own mouth, which is not a solution. "Not in the way you mean."
"That isn't a reassuring sentence," I say, grabbing a stack of paperbacks and dropping them into the box without checking the section. "Try again."
"Stein wants the property transferred legally or abandoned voluntarily," he says.
Shane appears in the doorway carrying one side of the romance display table with a mover on the other end.
I step back automatically. "Watch the walls," I tell them. "If you scratch the paint before I get the landlord to approve the final walk-through, I could lose my security deposit."
"You didn't pay a deposit," Callum remarks.
"True. Though I still hope to get something back," I joke.
They maneuver the table past us.
The second they're outside again, I look back at Callum. "Continue your terrifying explanation," I say.
"That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever called one of my meetings," Callum says, setting the tape gun down. "Stein laid out his vision for Harbor View."
I push a book down until the spine bends, then fix it, because I’m not an animal. "Let me guess, an Al Capone-themed amusement park?" I shove another paperback into the box harder than necessary. "Nothing says casual meal like a redevelopment threat."
Callum watches me for a second. "You’re doing the thing where you joke when you’re pissed."
"Avery."
"Tell me I'm wrong."
He watches me for a second, then lowers his voice further when another mover passes the doorway. "He said the properties in the path have been ‘softened' and talked about your block, saying that your business is the last holdout."
I pause with my hand on the next box. "Softened isn't a real estate word," I say.
"That's what I thought."
"Right." I hold out my hand for the tape and move on to the next box. "So I must be a problem to be solved."
"A variable to be managed," he says.
"That sounds expensive," I mutter, reaching for another strip of tape. "Love that for me."
Outside, I hear the movers slide another bookshelf into the truck. Shane calls something back that gets drowned out by the lift gate dropping into place.
Callum shifts closer to me, shoulder brushing mine for half a second. His gaze drops to my hands, to the way I'm folding the tape over itself hard enough to wrinkle the cardboard. "Keep taping," he says quietly.
I keep taping and labeling boxes.
He mentions Kellerman, Danny Ruiz, and Cora Mbeki again, pieces of the conversation we've been having in installments for the last couple weeks.
I check the books in one of the boxes and press the flaps down, listening.
He confirms Stein’s planned takeover of Port Hueneme and his vision for Harbor View Drive.
A piece of fuzz clings to the front of Callum's shirt. I brush it off without thinking.
His eyes flick down to my hand. "Careful," he says quietly. "People will talk."
"Apparently they already are."
I reach for another stack of books. "The fact that we don't have a true downtown is a topic that has been on every Port Huenemean's mind since the beginning of time."
This time he’s not rationing it. It’s survivor’s guilt converted, brick by building permit by acquisition, into empire-building as atonement.
I hear him say it all and think about the version of this man who spent the last six years unable to prove something he knew, and about the way that kind of knowledge sits in the body. He knows exactly what that feels like.
A mover pushes a dolly stacked with sealed boxes toward the back door. I point to the boxes I was prepping. "These are all taped and ready to go," I tell him. He nods and disappears through the doorway, and the second the lift gate starts whining again, I look back at Callum.
Then I ask the three questions I need answered.
"I need to ask again if I'm in danger right now."
"No," he says. "Stein wants the property and you're more useful to him intimidated than harmed."
"So when I let the deadline for his offer pass at midnight tonight, that's when the intimidation starts. Got it."
"Avery, I'm not—"
"Is Stein going to be arrested after this? For the harassment. For the fire inspection intimidation."
"That's not my call but I have to trust the authorities will do their job."
"And, the paper with Shane's notes..." I watch his face. "Does it mean he's being investigated too?"
"That's also the arson unit's jurisdiction."
Then I say what I've been thinking since I found that page near the restock box.
"I gave him my keys. He knows my coffee order. I told him about my dad's signed first edition. The Lahiri, the one that's not for sale. I told him about it because he asked and because I trusted him with the store, and I—"
"That's not your failure," Callum says. "That's his crime."
The tape slips crooked under my hand.
I smooth it back down against the cardboard a second too late, feeling the heat of the words settle somewhere low in my chest before my brain catches up enough to argue with them.
He says it not as comfort or reassurance, but as a correction.
I sit with that when my phone buzzes against the counter.
I know before I look at it that it's an alert from one of my news feeds, like when the city inspector wasn't here to browse and the way I knew the courier envelope from Stein Properties was going to cost me something.
I know it the way this whole last month has taught me to know things. Not from information, from timing.
The Ventura County Star alert reads, Charity Gala Companions or Something More? Influence, Access, and the Future of Port Hueneme.
The photo is from the gala. Callum's hand at the small of my back. Both of us composed and unguarded. Before there was an "us."
A comment at the bottom is from Maureen Pike: "I think the timing of her building's clean inspection speaks for itself."
I'm reading it on my phone and he's reading it on his. There's a half-second where neither of us says anything.
I huff a laugh that isn’t one and set the phone down hard. "So that’s the angle," I say, already picking it back up like I might have misread it. "I sleep my way to a clean inspection and a redevelopment reprieve.
Callum goes still beside me. Not frozen. Focused. The muscle in his jaw jumps once before he looks away from the screen like he's deciding how much damage he's allowed to do about it."
His jaw tightens. "That’s not what it says."
"It’s exactly what it says," I say.
I scroll, thumb too fast, and stop on the photo again. His hand is at my back and my face is turned toward him like I agreed to it. "They just dressed it in a tux and an evening gown."
"Avery—"
"No, say it," I cut in. I set the phone down, square it with the edge of the counter, then move it again because it’s not straight. "Influence, access, timing. Translation: I'm trading proximity for outcomes."
He exhales through his nose. "I’ll call the editor," he says.
"Don't," I say. "I handle my own press."
Something shifts in Callum's expression. Brief. Sharp enough that I catch it anyway.
He looks at me.
"I've been a publicly discussed woman a lot lately," I tell him. "I can handle this."
He doesn't argue. This is one of his better qualities.
The article wasn't really about the article, it was about making every win look suspicious.
The inspection, the reopening, Callum.
Like the only explanation for anything good happening to me was that somebody else had arranged it.
I pick up my phone, open Notes, and type: Call the Star. Letter to the editor. Maureen Pike by name. I save it and set the phone face down so I don't watch myself decide to do it now instead of later.
By the end of the day, the movers have cleared out all the furniture from the pop-up and roughly half the inventory.
The reading chairs, front tables, shelving, café stools, and the espresso machine are packed into the truck alongside enough boxes of books to start making the original store look alive again.
I lock up the pop-up just after nine. My shoulders ache, my hands smell like cardboard and dust, and by the time I get home, kick off my shoes, and fall face-first into bed, I'm practically asleep before my head hits the pillow.
The next morning starts with the sound of the truck backing up to the ramp behind the original store.
Moving back into the store takes the whole morning. The truck empties box by box, shelf by shelf, the organized chaos of the pop-up dissolving back into the familiar geometry of my actual store. There's something almost hallucinatory about watching it reassemble.
By lunchtime, the plan is for Shane and the movers to head back to the pop-up for the rest of the inventory while Callum and I stay behind to keep shelving and reorganizing.
I mull that over while I unpack boxes, then again while I rebuild the register counter, and then again while I watch Shane carry an entire stack of hardcovers like they weigh nothing. Whether I can trust him. Whether I ever actually knew him.
At the end of the day, I decide I have to.
Maybe not with everything. Maybe not with whatever connection exists between him and Stein and Pham's investigation and the page I found tucked near the restock box.
But the books are different.