9. Sabine #2
"Shell companies." I'm already typing. The database loads, and I enter the name, and the screen fills with data, and my fingers move across the keyboard with the speed and precision of someone who has spent over a decade turning chaos into columns.
"He'll be running his operations through shell companies.
Layered LLCs. Probably registered in multiple supernatural jurisdictions to exploit the regulatory gaps between human and non-human tax law.
The enchantment trade alone would require specialized equipment storage, which means commercial real estate, which means lease agreements, which means public records. "
Jagger gapes at me. His mouth is slightly open. One of his tusks catches the light.
"There." I spin the laptop so he can see the screen.
"Three LLCs registered to a holding company called Varek Maritime Solutions.
Filed under the Non-Human Commercial Activities code.
The registered agent is a goblin named Dretch Finwhistle who also appears as the signatory on seventeen other shell entities, all of which trace back to a single tax identification number that was issued six years ago to...
" I click twice more. "Korvan Blacktide.
And Varek Maritime Solutions currently holds the lease on four commercial properties, three of which are in the eastern dock district, but the fourth.
" I tap the screen. "The fourth is a warehouse at 1847 Greywater Lane.
Industrial zone. Off the main grid. And the utility payments on that property are triple what the other three generate combined, which means whatever he's running out of that location requires significantly more power, which means it's either a manufacturing center for enchanted product or it's his base of operations, and either way, it's the address you need. "
The silence in the apartment is absolute.
Even the Snarbo has stopped whimpering and is staring at me with all eyes wide and unblinking.
Jagger looks at the screen. Then he looks at me.
Then he looks at the screen again, and when he looks back at me, his expression has changed entirely.
The flat professional calm is gone. In its place is something I have never seen on his face before.
Something open, unguarded, almost stricken in its intensity, and if I had to name it, if someone put a gun to my head and told me to label the emotion currently written across the face of this enormous, terrifying, beautiful Orc, I would say it looks like awe.
"You did that in four minutes."
"Three minutes and forty seconds." I close the laptop halfway. "I'm very good at my job."
He doesn't move. He stands there, filling up my kitchen with his impossible size, his runes still illuminated but softer now, shifting from that angry red to something closer to deep gold, and his eyes are fixed on my face with an intensity that makes my lungs forget their primary function.
Then he reaches out and gently, so gently, closes the laptop the rest of the way.
"1847 Greywater Lane. Thank you. Stay here."
"I just told you I'm coming with you."
"No. You're not."
"Jagger."
"Sabine." He leans down, and his face is suddenly very close to mine, and I can see every detail of the runic tattoos that trace along his jaw and up across his cheekbone, delicate lines that glow warm amber in the dim kitchen light, and his breath smells like green tea because I got him hooked on it last week, and his eyes are a deep, dark gold that is, quite frankly, unfair.
"You are the most terrifyingly competent person I have ever met.
You just dismantled a crime lord's entire financial infrastructure with a laptop and a VPN in less time than it takes me to lace my boots.
But where I'm going is not a spreadsheet.
It's not a database. People will try to kill me, and I will let them try, and I will not let them succeed.
But I can't do that if I'm worried about you. "
"I can..."
"You can do anything. I know that." His hand comes up, and his fingers, enormous and rough and impossibly gentle, brush a strand of hair away from my face, and the touch sends a jolt through my entire nervous system that has no business being as devastating as it is.
"But not this. Not tonight. Stay here. Stay safe.
Let me handle the part that involves violence, and when I come back, you can handle the part that involves making sure he goes to prison for tax fraud, which honestly might be worse. "
He straightens. He moves through the apartment with a speed and efficiency that transforms the space around him, pulling weapons from the duffel bag in the corner, strapping blades to his forearms over the gleaming runes, checking a short, brutal-looking sword with his thumb.
He goes to each window and presses his palm against the glass, and the runes on his hands flare bright white, and I feel something settle over the apartment like a heavy blanket, a pressure in the air that makes my ears pop and the Snarbo sneeze.
"Ward glyphs." He pulls on his leather jacket. "Nothing gets in. Nothing. Not even a DMI inspector."
"Jagger, please don't do this alone."
He stops at the door. His hand is on the knob, and his back is to me, and I can see the outline of every weapon strapped to his body beneath the leather, and the back of his neck is glowing so bright they cast shadows on the wall.
"Lock the door behind me."
He steps into the hallway. The door closes.
And then I hear it. Something shoved against the doorknob, like a chair.
From the outside. And finally, the low, resonant hum of an outward-facing ward glyph being pressed into the door.
The magic was designed to keep the city out, but it was the heavy, physical object that trapped me inside my own beige, perfectly organized, suddenly suffocating apartment.
I grasp the doorknob. I twist. It doesn't move.
I pull. Nothing. The external ward glyph pulses faintly through the wood, securing the perimeter against the outside, but the physical obstacle on the inside is stubbornly immovable.
I slam both palms against the door and shout his name, but the hallway beyond is already silent.
He is gone. He has locked me in. And Korvan Blacktide is waiting at 1847 Greywater Lane.
I lean my forehead against the door. The wood is warm from the glyph. The Snarbo pads up behind me and presses its horrible, lumpy body against my ankles, all his eyes blinking up at me.
"I found that address," I whisper to no one. "I found it, and he locked me in."
The Snarbo whines.
I turn around. My laptop is on the kitchen island, half-closed, glowing faintly.
And I am not the kind of person who sits and waits.
I have never been the kind of person who sits and waits.
I am the kind of person who tracks down every last cent of a missing fortune through seventeen layers of corporate fraud, and I am not going to stand here in my cardigan and my flats while the only person who has ever folded my laundry without being asked walks into a death trap alone.
I pluck up my phone. I open my contacts. And I start making calls.