Chapter 12
ROGUE
I find Armen and Sting in the operations room. I give them the short version.
"There's something else," I say.
They wait.
"I finally placed what's been nagging at me about this guy. It's not that I know him. It's that I know the type." I lean against the doorframe. "The stillness, the patience, the way he pivoted to a cover story of being lost without missing a beat. That's not instinct. It's practice.”
"He's not winging it, you’re saying," Armen says.
"Exactly. He has a plan and the resources to run it.
Whoever sent him isn't reacting to what happened with Fischer in the last couple days.
This started before then. They're not rattled, they're not improvising.
They've been running this quietly for a while and we just became visible to them.
" I pause. "Which means we have some catching up to do. "
Nobody argues with that.
Yeah, I know this type of man because I know one of them worked on my father.
The infuriating politeness. The endless patience.
The way the man sat across from him and suggested, very reasonably, that the complaint he'd filed with the city might not be worth pursuing.
There were no threats, at least no obvious ones, and certainly none that my straight-dealing father picked up on.
Dad was cut from different cloth than bastards like this.
As a result, there was just not much you could push back against. In the end, it was a calm, pleasant conversation between two businessmen.
In fact, before the guy left, my dad handed him his business card and offered him a free service for the motorcycle he claimed to have.
Yeah, like that asshole had a motorcycle.
Not long after, the shop burned down. Dad never saw it coming.
The guy snooping around the Rot operates the same way. Different context, same methodology, same money behind it. The kind of money that doesn't get loud. It just gets things done. Burns shit down.
"We move up the timeline," Armen says. "We go after Fischer's people before this guy finds what he came for."
"All right."
"How long do we have?"
"Days. Maybe less. He'll regroup, change approach, and come back. We don't want to be here when that happens."
Armen turns to the whiteboard. I take that as my exit, and Sting falls in beside me in the corridor, before peeling off toward the east corridor.
I keep walking. That's when I see her.
Vi’s camped out in the dingy room off the main corridor she's claimed as a workspace, door open, sitting cross-legged surrounded by her father's notes. She's got a pen in her hand and she's reading something. She hasn't noticed me, and for a second, I just watch her.
It's not even eight in the morning and I can see she's been at this for a while by the way the papers are arranged, regrouped, and spread out again in that crazy system of hers. Her hair is gathered on top of her head, and there’s a coffee stain on the front of her white T-shirt.
She’s never looked better.
My body registers all this with an enthusiasm that is inconvenient, given the hour and the operational crisis we are currently managing.
Great. Just great. I do not need to be getting a goddamn erection right here, right now. Like a horny teenage boy, I will it to go away.
I redirect my thoughts to how Vi has no business being as steady as she is. She came into the Rot carrying more than most people here, lost more than most people who stay, and last night, was thrown into a tizzy by a casual remark Fischer made. And she still shows up.
I didn't expect that. I didn't expect her.
I've been in the Rot long enough to know that most people eventually crack after they come in.
Whatever they were holding together before they arrived, this place finds it and presses until something gives.
Vi's pressure point is obvious—her father and the years of carrying his story with nowhere to take it.
And yet, she keeps her shit together, moving forward, working, stubborn as the Rot itself, and not missing a thing. I know what that’s like, carrying a thing for years with nowhere to set it down. But I don't tell her so. Some things you keep in the back room.
I didn't plan to stop in the doorway. I definitely don't plan what happens next.
I step into the room and my hand finds her shoulder. One brief contact. Her flesh under my palm, warm through her shirt, and she goes still for a second.
I continue on my way.
"Rogue."
I stop but don't turn. She doesn’t have to tell me what’s on her mind. "We're moving the timeline up, Vi," I say. "I'll tell you more when I know more."
A pause. "Okay," she says. Just okay. No argument, no demands, no pushback. She trusts me, or is acting like she does, which I think is a step in the right direction.
Once out of sight, I stop, my hand still warm from her shoulder. My cock continues to run its own inconvenient commentary on the situation while my brain attempts to reassert its authority.
Brain loses.