Chapter 6 The first collection
Cains P.O.V
I got outside before Sable and I decided to leave her at the parking lot. I Needed to get something important done.
She was already pulling up something on her phone when I told her I needed two hours, and she looked at me which told me that she didn't fully approve of but had decided not to fight it
"You have just two hours," she said.
"Two hours."I repeated, nodding after her.
"And then we plan together, you're not allowed to do anything else without me approving it."
I didn't say anything to that and she scoffed and rolled her brown eyes at me.
The Ledger had Petch logged at two stars. He only had a small debt to pay.
Ellis Petch: mid-level logistics manager, Devereaux payroll, unremarkable in every visible way. He had a flat somewhere in the nicer part of the city, and a Tuesday morning habit that Sable's file had noted without knowing it was useful yet, coffee at a place called Daisys Cafe, alone at eight-fifteen without fail. He sat at the same table every week, read the same financial newsletter on his phone, and tipped exactly ten percent.
The next morning it was It was seven fifty-eight when I walked into the Cafe.
Petch was already there,he was round and soft around the middle, with a balding head.He was staring at his phone. He didn't look up when I walked in. He didn't look up when I crossed the room. He looked up when I pulled out the chair across from him and sat down, and then his eyes widened in shock
"What the-" he started.
"Ellis, Breathe. You're going to want to breathe for this conversation."
He breathed in loud heavy breaths with his eyes moving to the door and back like the exit was going to do something useful for him.
"You're dead," he said. Just above a whisper.
"You keep saying that like it's still true." I leaned forward with my elbows on the table, close enough that he couldn't look anywhere except at me. "You signed the transfe of forty thousand dollars, date-stamped the night of the fourteenth. You want to tell me you didn't know what it was for?"
His mouth opened and closed.
"I just processed what I was told to process," he said finally.
"I know." I kept my voice level. "That's the thing about men like you, Petch. You never pull the trigger. You just make sure the gun is loaded and hand it over and tell yourself that it has nothing to do with you." I watched him. "It has everything to do with you"
The coffee shop was half full with nobody paying attention to the two men in the corner. I'd picked the table on purpose.
"What do you want," he said. His voice had gone very small.
"From you? Not much." I reached into my jacket and put a USB drive on the table between us. He stared at it. "That goes to a journalist I trust, a woman who has been building a story about Devereaux financial movements for eight months and is missing one piece to make it publishable. Your name, your account numbers, the full transfer history." I let that sink in. "Or you walk out of here and you go straight to your office and you pull every shady document from the last six months and you put them on a drive and you leave it taped under the bench at the Park by noon today."
He was sweating visibly
"If Marcus finds out—"
"Marcus has bigger problems than you right now." I stood and picked up the USB and pocketed it. "Noon, Petch. And if I were you I wouldn't pick up the phone between now and then. Not to Marcus, not to anyone above you." I buttoned my jacket. "Not because I'm asking nicely. Because the people above Marcus are not likely to leave any lose ends and the first thing they'll do is to get rid of you."
I wwatched him digest everything i just said
He'd signed off on my death and slept fine every night since.He didn't look like he was going to sleep fine tonight.
"Noon," I said again, and walked out.
The Ledger pulsed the moment I hit the street.
Debt Two: Ellis Petch. Status: Collected. Evolution unlocked.
The shift was subtle and immediate: a sharpening at the edges of everything, like the world had been slightly out of focus and had just corrected itself. I stood on the pavement outside the cafe in the thin morning light and felt it settle into me.
I checked my watch. Eight twenty-three.
I had ninety-three hours left on the clock.
And Marcus Devereaux still thought I was dead.
I pulled out the burner and called Sable.
She picked up on the second ring. "That was not two hours."
"It took a short time, where are you?"
"Walking. I needed to move." Another pause. "Did you collect?"
"Petch. He'll have the flashdrive at the Park by noon."
She went silent for a moment. Then she said slowly "Cain. We said we were planning together."
"I am sorry, i had to plan quickly." I started walking. "We need to talk about Nadia. Tonight, not tomorrow."
"She won't meet on no notice."
"She will if it's me." I turned up the collar of the borrowed jacket against the wind. "Trust me on that one."
"I don't know enough about what she is to you to trust you on that."she said.
"That's fair," I said. "I'll explain it when I see you."
I hung up before she could tell me again that we were supposed to be doing this together.
She wasn't wrong. But the clock was running and I hadn't survived the river by waiting for anybody.
