21. Athena
ATHENA
Back at the Airbnb, Maya opens the door before I knock. One look at my face and she steps aside without a word. Ivy is asleep in the bedroom with her bunny under one arm and one sock half off, and the sight of her nearly undoes me more than the meeting did.
“Well,” Maya says quietly, once the door shuts behind me. “You look like you either won or started a war.”
“Both,” I reply, slipping the flash drive out of my pocket and setting it on the counter like it could bite.
Maya glances at it then back at me. “Tell me.”
I do.
I tell her about Meredith’s face when I said degree.
I tell her about the shell company, the fake credentials, the sealed complaints, the off-system emails, the way she started shaking once she realized I wasn’t bluffing.
I tell her about the folder, the notes, the flash drive, and the way Cindy’s name sat behind every rotten little choice like a hand at the small of the back.
Maya leans against the counter and listens with her arms folded. She doesn’t interrupt until I get to Nate’s message, then her eyes sharpen. “The warehouse,” she repeats. “Come alone. That man really thinks he’s in a crime movie.”
“He thinks he’s smarter than he is,” I say. “That’s been his whole brand for years.”
Maya taps one nail against the countertop. “You are not going there without backup.”
“I know.”
She quirks a brow at me. “You say that very calmly for someone who has historically shown questionable romantic judgment.”
I stare at her.
She lifts both hands. “I’m being supportive. Rudely, yes, but still.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. It vanishes quickly, though, and I reach for my phone. “David’s lieutenant friend. I need him now, not eventually.”
Maya nods once. “Good. Start there. Then call Daniel and tell him not to let Nathan climb out of bed and play hero with an IV hanging out of his arm.”
That part doesn’t need repeating. Nathan would absolutely drag himself into checking out of the hospital early and try to handle this personally if he knew the details too soon. I don’t like keeping anything from him, not anymore, yet I’m not turning his hospital room into a command center either.
I call David first. He answers on the second ring like he’s been expecting it. “I met Meredith.”
“And?”
“She folded.”
His silence is impressed enough to almost count as praise. “Tell me everything.”
I pace the length of the small kitchen while Maya listens from the doorway and the refrigerator hums too loudly. I give him the short version first, then the useful version. The flash drive. The notes. The shell company. The internal interference. Nate’s message. The warehouse.
By the time I finish, David’s tone has gone flat and efficient. “Good,” he says. “Now stop moving.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’re about to start improvising,” he says. “Don’t. I’m looping in Lieutenant Sweeney now. You’re going to send screenshots of Nate’s messages, a photo of the flash drive, and anything Meredith put in writing. Then you are going to sit on your hands for twenty minutes while adults do paperwork.”
My grip tightens on the phone. “I am an adult.”
“Debatable under stress.”
Maya, the traitor, laughs into her sleeve. I shut my eyes briefly. “Fine.”
“Good,” David says. “And Athena?”
“What.”
“Do not go to that warehouse alone and decide midway through that you can out-sass a violent idiot into submission.”
I swallow. “I wasn’t planning to.”
Even from this end of the line, I can picture him rolling his eyes at me. “You were absolutely planning to.”
He hangs up before I can defend myself. Maya steps back into the kitchen and holds out her hand. “Phone.”
I sigh give it to her.
“That easy?” she asks, startled.
“I’m growing,” I say, with a flap of my hand.
She opens my messages, forwards the screenshots to the number David texts over, then hands it back. “I’m proud of us. Look at this. Healthy use of law enforcement.”
I lean against the counter and let my head tip back for a second. “I hate all of this.”
“I know.” Maya’s voice softens. “Still. You’re ending it.”
That steadies me more than I expect. Twenty-eight minutes later, my phone rings from a Boston number.
“Ms. Hale,” a man says. “Lieutenant Sweeney. David briefed me.”
His voice is calm, middle-aged, tired in the competent way that reads as real rather than sloppy. I move into the hallway so I don’t risk waking Ivy and keep my own voice low.
“Thank you for calling.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” he says. “I’ve reviewed the texts, and I’ve got a detective already on the fraud and assault angle. If Mr. Clarke can identify Nate through the footage once he’s in shape to do it, that helps. Meredith’s materials help more.”
I rest my shoulder against the wall. “And the warehouse?”
“We’ll cover it,” he says. “You’ll go. You’ll appear alone. You will not actually be alone.”
I close my eyes. “Are you sure that’s the best play?”
“It is if he wants to talk,” Sweeney replies. “Men like him talk when they think they still have control.”
He isn’t wrong. “There’s a chance Cindy comes too,” I tell him.
“We’re counting on it.”
That pulls a little nod from me. Sweeney keeps going.
“You’ll wear an audio transmitter. We’ve got enough to justify it.
One-party consent isn’t the issue when there’s a warrant and an active violent felony in motion.
We’ll have units staged, plainclothes inside the perimeter, marked cars out of sight until needed. ”
I breathe in slowly. “And if he runs?”
“Then he runs into people who are faster than he is.”
I finally smile. “Good.”
He pauses. “Ms. Hale?”
“Yes.”
“You do exactly what we tell you. No freelance heroics.”
That wipes the smile clean off. “Understood.”
When I hang up, Maya is waiting in the doorway with two mugs of tea and the face of a woman who already knows the answer. “Well?”
“We’re doing it,” I say.
Her eyes narrow. “Officially?”
“Officially.”
She hands me a mug then tips her head toward Ivy’s room. “And him?”
I look past her, toward the dark bedroom door and the other room beyond it in my mind, the hospital room where Nathan is likely sleeping badly through pain medication and sheer stubbornness.
“He doesn’t need this tonight,” I say.
Maya studies me for a beat, then nods. “Fair.”
We’ll tell Ivy in the morning. Then I’ll fill Nathan in and hope he doesn’t lecture me to death.
The next morning, Ivy eats dry cereal at the little table by the window, listening with that unnerving stillness she gets when she knows the adults have stopped pretending.
I tell her Nate the bad guy wants to meet, and the police are going to be there, and I tell her that means I am not going into anything blind.
Ivy lifts one shoulder. “So it’s a trap?”
“Sort of.”
“For him,” she clarifies.
I point my spoon at her. “That part, yes.”
She seems satisfied by that. Maya appears in the kitchen doorway with coffee and mutters, “I’m adopting her if you mess this up.”
“Noted,” I say.
The day crawls.
I spend part of it at Beacon Harbor with Nathan, keeping my face steady while he studies me too closely. He knows something is moving. He’s injured, not stupid. He reaches for my hand once while Ivy is drawing quietly in the chair beside his bed and says, very softly, “What are you doing?”
The question slides under my skin. I squeeze his fingers and answer with the only truth I can safely give him. “Cleaning up.”
His gaze sharpens immediately. “Athena.”
I lean down and kiss his forehead before he can keep going. “Rest,” I murmur.
He doesn’t like that answer. I can tell. He lets me go anyway, but only after making me promise I’ll come see him in the morning.
By six fifteen that evening, I’m standing in a borrowed jacket in a parking lot two streets over from the Armoire Warehouse while Detective Morales clips a transmitter under my shirt and checks the wire twice.
“Don’t touch it,” she says.
“I won’t.”
She straightens and looks me in the eye. “You let him talk. You do not escalate, and you do not get clever.”
That almost makes me laugh. “You haven’t met me.”
“Oh, I think I have,” she says dryly. “That’s why I’m saying it.”
Sweeney stands near an unmarked SUV with a paper cup in one hand, scanning the loading docks with a face carved from indifference. He tips his head once when Morales steps back.
“You’re good to go,” he says.
I look at the warehouse, at the darkening sky, then at the officers I’m not supposed to notice. “If Cindy’s here?”
“She won’t leave clean.”
That has to be enough. I text Nate from the edge of the lot.
Athena: I’m here.
His reply is immediate.
Nate: Come to the side entrance.
I show the message to Morales. She nods once and touches her earpiece. “Go.”
So I go.
The side entrance is half-lit, the metal door propped open with a broken crate, the concrete around it marked with tire stains and old rain. It smells like dust and oil and stale fabric. My heartbeat is loud enough to feel in my throat, yet my steps stay steady.
Nate is waiting just inside.
For a second, time does something ugly. He looks older, harder around the face, meaner in the eyes, and yet there’s still a flash of the boy I wasted years on in the set of his mouth.
Then he smiles and the flash dies. “You came.”
His voice still has that smug little curl that used to make me want to throw things.
“You said come alone,” I reply. “I assume the ego boost is part of the decor.”
His smile widens, brittle and false. “Still mouthy.”
“Still violent.”
His face changes instantly, and for the first time since I stepped through the door, I know I was right to come. Guilty people always hate being named fast.
He takes a step closer. I stay where I am.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.
“Really.” I tilt my head. “The hoodie was a nice touch. Retro. Very ‘look what you made me do.’”
His mouth twitches. His hands stay visible, yet I know better than to trust that. “You think a hoodie convicts me.”
“No,” I say. “I think you convicts you. You’ve never been able to shut up once you start feeling sorry for yourself.”
His eyes flash. “Careful.”