Chapter 32 Ryder
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Ryder
I meet Jenson in a place that still smells of old blood, no matter how many times they mop it.
The diner sits forty minutes away from the storage unit, tucked beside a service station with two dead vending machines and a flickering OPEN sign that should’ve given up years ago.
It’s the kind of place men pick when they don’t want to be remembered.
Bad coffee, worse pie, no one asking questions unless they’ve got a death wish or a cop’s pension.
I park where I can see the highway and the front door both.
Old habits.
Older sins.
Inside, the waitress glances at me once and decides I’m not worth the conversation. Smart woman. I take the back booth, the one with a mirror behind the register that gives me a partial view of the entrance if I angle my head right.
Jenson is late by seven minutes.
Not enough to mean anything.
Enough to irritate me.
When he finally walks in, he looks as if hell carved itself into a man’s shape.
Leaner than I remember. Beard rougher. Left shoulder stiff, an old injury making a season out of him.
He sees me, hesitates, then comes over with the kind of caution men learn when they’ve survived too much to waste themselves on pride.
“Ryder.”
“Jenson.”
He slides into the booth opposite me and looks at the coffee with intent.
“You still drink that swill?” he asks.
“I still meet men who make me need it.”
That gets the smallest curve of his mouth.
Doesn’t last.
The waitress drops a mug in front of him. He waits until she’s gone, until the cook in the back slams something metal and the truckers near the window laugh too loud about nothing, before he reaches inside his jacket and puts a thick manila envelope on the table.
I don’t touch it yet.
“What am I looking at?”
“Proof,” he says. “Enough of it to tell you I’m done pretending Cole’s just posturing.”
My hand settles on the envelope.
Paper.
Photos.
Maybe a drive if he’s smarter than he used to be.
“Talk.”
Jenson leans back and scrubs a hand over his mouth. “He’s not trying to scare you anymore. He’s committed.”
“I figured that out when he sent men to a storage unit instead of showing up himself.”
Jenson’s mouth tightens. “If he wanted you dead, Rye, you’d be dead. That wasn’t the play.”
I go still.
“That was pressure,” he adds. “Close enough to hurt. Not enough to finish it. He wanted to see how fast you move, who you protect first… how messy you get when it matters. Look.”
That gets my attention sharper than it was already.
I open the envelope.
Photos first.
Benjamin Wren stepping out of a black SUV behind a warehouse three towns over. Time stamp from last week. Another of him standing with Cole near the loading dock, heads bent close in conversation. In the third, they’re shaking hands.
Working together.
Fuck, I knew it. Or at the very least, I had a funny feeling…
Benjamin appears to be the kind of man who thinks evil doesn’t count if he does it with polished shoes and an attorney.
Cole is a blade somebody left in the rain too long.
Still dangerous.
Still useful.
Meaner for the rust.
Together, they could really be a bomb.
Under the photos are copies of bank transfers. Amounts high enough to turn my mouth hard. Shell company names. Land holding groups. One highlighted line tying back to one of Benjamin’s development entities.
I flip to the next page.
Property correspondence.
Preliminary acquisition language.
One clause is circled in red ink.
Subject property transfer contingent upon suspension or revocation of current operating licenses and distressed sale conditions.
The Hollow.
Benjamin isn’t just trying to choke us.
He’s waiting to buy the body once it drops. With the help of Cole.
Fuck.
“He paid him,” I say.
Jenson nods. “Not just for information. For pressure. For spectacle. For anything that makes you look like exactly what this town already fears you are.”
I keep reading.
Messages printed from a burner thread. No names, but I know Cole’s rhythm when I see it. Short. Surgical. Never more words than he needs.
Council angle is working. Keep heat public.
Need one more incident tied close to property. Not enough damage to trigger full investigation. Enough to reinforce concern.
Hayes won’t run. Push attachment.
Once sale goes through, balance clears.
Push attachment.
My fingers still on the page.
Aurora.
Jenson watches my face too closely. “Yeah. That line caught my attention too.”
The waitress appears at the edge of the booth and asks if we need anything. I shake my head once. Jenson asks for pie. She leaves.
I go back to the papers.
There’s a typed summary clipped to the back, Jenson’s work by the look of it.
Bullet points. Times. Places. Names of men who carried messages between Cole and Wren.
A meeting at a private hunting lodge. Cash handed over through an intermediary who also does security contracts for Wren’s ranch.
Enough structure that this wasn’t improvised. This has been building.
“How long?” I ask.
“Six weeks that I can prove. Longer, probably.”
“Why bring it to me now?”
He laughs once, humorless. “Because I’m tired.”
I look up.
Jenson holds my gaze, then drops it to his coffee.
“Cole’s not cleaning up a mess anymore, Rye.
He is the mess. Used to be there were lines.
Ugly ones, but lines. You’d tell him no kids, no civilians, no fire unless it was absolutely necessary.
He’d bitch, but he’d follow the order.” He swallows.
“Now he does things just to watch what they break.”
I say nothing.
He goes on because he needs to. “He’s got two new boys who think he’s a prophet because he laughs after violence. One of them bragged about the bar fire like it was clever.”
My hands flatten on the table.
Jenson notices. Keeps talking anyway. Brave or stupid. Might be the same thing.
“He said the town council pressure was pretty, but fear lands better when people can smell smoke.”
I fold the papers back into the envelope one page at a time so I don’t put my fist through the table and make us a story.
“Why are you really here?”
Jenson’s eyes sharpen. “Because losing Marcus should’ve been enough.”
The diner noise keeps going around us.
Forks.
Murmured conversation.
Truck engine out front.
But that sentence cuts through all of it.
I don’t move.
Don’t blink.
Don’t give him anything.
He leans in. “You walked after that because you thought if you went legitimate, if you built something clean, maybe his kind of damage wouldn’t follow.
Cole took that as betrayal. Fine. That’s on him.
But this?” He taps the envelope. “This is him trying to recreate the same grave over and over until you climb into it yourself.”
The waitress brings the pie. Neither of us looks at it.
I speak carefully because if I don’t, I’ll speak dangerously. “You think he’ll stop at the town?”
“No.”
“You think he’ll stop at the woman?”
His silence is answer enough.
My chest goes cold and methodical.
“Who else has copies?”
“You and me.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
Jenson exhales. “One more. Safe hold.”
“Anyone know you met me?”
“Not unless they’ve got eyes on the diner.”
I glance once at the mirror, then the window. “Assume they do.”
His mouth twitches. “You were always optimistic.”
I gather the envelope and slide it into my jacket. “What do you want for this?”
Jenson stares at me as if I’ve insulted him. “I want Cole done.”
“You’re asking me for clean or final?” I ask.
He doesn’t flinch. “I’m asking you to stop waiting for him to become less dangerous than he is.”
That, at least, is honest. I stand. He does too, slower.
We look at each other across the booth, men standing on opposite sides of a grave neither of us dug alone.
“If he knows you talked,” I say, “leave wherever you’re sleeping tonight.”
“I already did.”
“Leave farther.”
He nods once.
I head for the door, then stop without turning back. “Jenson.”
“Yeah?”
“If this gets back to him before I’m ready—”
“It won’t.”
I believe him enough to leave.
Outside, the air hits hard and cold. I stand beside the truck, the highway humming low in the distance.
Benjamin Wren wants The Hollow.
Cole wants me ruined in public, broken in pieces, with enough witnesses to make it look like justice.
And Aurora…
Push attachment.
I get in the truck and drive back with my jaw locked so tight I taste blood where I bit the inside of my cheek without noticing.
By the time I get back, the storage unit looks grimmer than ever. It really has become a piece of my life I don’t even recall anymore. Weird.
I go in, shut the door, and spread everything across the desk for everyone to see.
Photos.
Transfers.
Property language.
Messages.
Under the yellow lamp light, it all looks uglier.
More real.
Benjamin took money to help engineer our failure. Cole is feeding the town a version of me that makes it easier to bury what I’m trying to build. And every step I took thinking I was moving us toward safety, just handed him time to get clever.
But it’s only Zane who joins me. “Everyone else is asleep. You’re late back.”
I nod. “I know, but I had to get this.”
Zane’s gaze drops to the papers. “This from Jenson?”
“Yup.”
He comes closer. Reads fast. His face goes still in that dangerous way it does when the rage goes underground.
“Wren,” he says flatly.
“Paid well for it.”
“And contingent sale.” He taps the clause with one finger. “He means to strip the place cheap after the licenses fail.”
“Yeah.”
Zane reads the message thread next.
Push attachment.
His jaw sets. “So he does know about her.”
“He knows enough.”
Finally, Zane asks, “What are you going to do?”
There are ten answers to that.
Nine of them end in blood.
I look at the photos again, Benjamin’s careful handshake, Cole’s half smile.
“I’m going to finish this.”
Zane studies me for a long moment. “That’s not what I asked.”