Chapter 46
VI
We spend the next hour building out our plan, and somewhere in that hour I notice something I've never felt in this room before.
I'm running it.
Not sitting in on yet another meeting. Not taking notes while the guys decide. Running shit. I lay out the order things have to happen in, and the guys listen, and then they do the thing that still catches me off guard every time. They go along with what I’m saying.
Let me repeat that.
They go along with what I’m saying.
I don’t want to gloat, so I continue. "We pull the firm apart in two places at once," I say.
"I keep working the documents. Fischer's signature is the thread that climbs from the shell companies up into the firm, and the deeper I go, the more of them I can name.
That part's mine. Nobody reads this paper faster than I do anymore. "
"No argument," Armen says.
I keep waiting for the “but.” It doesn't come.
"Second, we need somebody who knows the firm from the inside, or close to it.
Somebody who was there before everything fell apart.
" I look at Rogue. "We already have her.
Alice flagged the firm in the first place.
She knows more than she's said. She always does.
I want to go to her today, if she'll see me. "
"I'll take you," Rogue says. No hesitation, no checking with anyone else first.
"Third." I turn to Sting. "The firm doesn't operate out of Rothwell anymore. Whatever's left of them moved when the city did. I need to know where they landed, and I need it quiet. No noise."
Sting nods.
It's Rogue who says the hard part out loud, because somebody has to.
"You understand what we're walking into.
" He's not arguing, just making sure it's on the table.
"These aren't Fischer. They're not even Voss.
These are the people who sent a man into our building to trade for your father's location and then disappeared without a trace.
They don't lose. As far as I can tell, they never have. "
"I know." And I do. I've thought about it more than any of them realize, lying awake with my father's papers and the cold fact that while Dad’s gotten closer to them than anyone, it’s left him hiding for life.
"Which is why we don't go at them head-on.
We don't kick the firm's door in and announce ourselves.
We take it apart quietly, one signature at a time, until we've got so much that the people at the top can't make it disappear no matter who they pay.
By the time they realize we're coming, it's already everywhere. "
I tap the folder.
"My father went at them alone, in the open, and they buried him for it. We do the opposite of everything he did, except the part where we don't quit."
Nobody disagrees. Even Sting's mouth does something that, in poor light, you might mistake for approval.
And that's it. I gave three people three jobs and not one of them looked to anyone else to see if it was really okay. A few months ago I'd have softened every sentence into a question. Do you think maybe we should…? What if we tried…? Now I just say the thing, and shit happens.
I head for the east stairwell to clear my head before we leave for Alice's.
That's when I round the corner by the old food court and nearly walk straight into Mara and Kade.
Kissing.
Not a careful, deniable, maybe-that-didn't-happen kiss, either. Mara's got both hands fisted in the front of Kade's jacket and Kade's got one hand in her hair, and they are extremely busy, and they have clearly forgotten that the Rot is a building other people walk through.
I stop. They don't notice me, which says how gone they both are.
I think about the look that passed between them the night we got back, the one Rogue thought I didn't catch. I think about how long Mara's spent pretending she hadn't noticed Kade, and how long Kade's spent pretending he hadn't noticed her right back.
I raise one eyebrow at nobody, since neither of them is looking.
And I keep walking.
I don't say anything. Don't giggle, don’t clear my throat, don't make a joke, don't give Mara the satisfaction of catching me see her.
There'll be time for that later, and I intend to enjoy every second of it.
For now, my oldest friend is happily sucking face with a cute guy in a dead mall, and after everything we've been through, that feels like a small miracle I'm not about to make a mess out of.
Good for her. Good for both of them. In a place built out of everything people lost, the two of them found something. I know how that is.
I take the stairs up to the landing with the window over the loading dock, the one that's become a thinking spot for more than just me, and stand there a minute looking out at the gray day.
I'm tired in a way sleep won't fix, the kind that comes from a day that’s held a lifetime in it.
My father found, then gone again in the space of a few hours.
A whole new shape to my life, decided out loud in front of four men who didn't blink.
But underneath the tired, there's something I haven't felt in longer than I can remember.
I'm not waiting anymore. Not for rescue, not for permission, not for the other shoe to drop. I came here with nothing but a dead father and a stubborn refusal to believe it. Now I've got a plan, a family, and the first real shot anyone's had at the people who fucked up Rothwell.
Behind me, a footstep. Unhurried, deliberate, one I'd know anywhere by now.
Armen.
"You got a minute?" he says.
Always.