Chapter 7 The woman in room twelve

Cains P.O.V

I decided to call Nadia from a payphone.

Not because I didn't have a burner But Nadia Serrano was the kind of woman who would not pick if she knew i was the one calling her. The payphone was outside a laundromat on the street three blocks from the Park, and I made the call at eleven forty-three while watching a man in a green coat collect his dry cleaning and argue mildly with himself about whether he needed fabric softener.

She picked up on the third ring.

"This number isn't in my contacts," she said.

"No."I replied flatly.

There was silence for like 15 seconds. "You're supposed to be dead, Cain."

"So I keep hearing."

"Marcus told half the city you ran with his money. The other half thinks that you drowned in the river." Her voice was exactly what I remembered. "So which version do I believe?" She asked

"Neither. Can you meet up with me.?"

Another pause, before she finally said

"How bad is it?"

"Bad enough that I'm using a payphone."

"Come to the hotel downtown, you know the one i mean, ask for Room twelve. Give me two hours."

She hung up before I could answer, which was also very Nadia.

I had the flashdrive from the Park by noon. Petch had come through, he taped it under the bench exactly where I'd told him. I pocketed it, walked out of the park, and stopped at a place called Bella's that smelled like fried onions and coffee beans and had a handwritten menu board that hadn't been updated since at least 4 weeks ago.

I sat at the counter and ordered eggs and toast and ate slowly, savouring the food and thinking of my next plan.

The stitches across my chest pulled every time I reached for the mug. I let the food digest and watched the street through the window and let myself have ten minutes of not thinking about anything that mattered.

It was harder than it sounded. The Ledger sat at the edge of my vision with Marcus's name at the top of it, patient and glowing, and every time I looked at it I thought about the river. About the cold. About Marcus's face in the moment before he pulled the trigger, the way he just didn't care.

I pushed the plate back and paid and left.

Sable was waiting for me outside Rook's building when I got back. She was leaning against the wall with her coat collar up and her arms crossed and the particular look on her face of someone who has been waiting long enough to make a point of it.

"You collected the flash drive without me," she said.

"I'm sorry, i had to."I apologised.

"I told you we were doing this together." She pushed off the wall. "That was the agreement."

"The agreement was for planning, I needed to move before he did." I held the door open. "Come inside. I need to shower and change before we go anywhere near Nadia Serrano and I currently smell like meat and onions and coffee beans."

She looked at me for a moment and Then she walked past me through the door without another word.

Rook was out. He'd left a note on the kitchen table that said back by four and a clean shirt folded on the table that was two sizes too big but clean, which was all I cared about. I showered for longer than I meant to and stood in front of the bathroom mirror afterward and looked at the stitches across my chest. They were holding. The bruising around them had gone from purple to the greenish-yellow which meant that it was healing.

I got dressed and came out to find Sable sitting at Rook's kitchen table with the Petch drive in her hand and her laptop open, already working.

"Six months of evidence" she said, without looking up. "He wasn't just processing payments. He was routing them. There are three companies in here I've never seen before." She paused. "This goes deeper than the operation."

"How much deeper?"

She looked up then. "Deep enough that when this surfaces, it won't just be Marcus going down." She held my eyes. "This connects to Aldric directly. There is a paper trail with account numbers, and everything."

I sat across from her. "Then we protect it. Nothing moves or leaks until we're ready to use it."

"Agreed." She closed the laptop. "Now tell me about Nadia."

So I told her. Not everything but enough to make her understand. I told her That Nadia and I had known each other before the Devereaux years. That she was sharp enough to be dangerous and sassy enough to be useful, and that the thing that made her valuable was also the thing that made her unpredictable.

Sable listened with her arms crossed and her expression carefully neutral. When I finished she said"And you trust her."

"I trust that she always knows which way the wind is blowing and she positions herself accordingly." I stood. "Right now the wind is blowing toward us."

"That's not the same thing as trust."

"No," I said. "It's better."

The Hotel was a quiet, expensive place downtown. I smiled at the receptionist and asked for room twelve. She directed me and i made my way up the stairs. I found the room and i knocked, Nadia opened the door looked at me first. Then at Sable, who had come in behind me.

"You brought someone," she said.

"She's with me."

"I can see that." She stepped back and let us in, and I watched her stare at Sable trying to read her. "Sable Voss," she said, like confirming something she already knew.

Sable didn't visibly react. "You know my name."

"I know most names worth knowing." Nadia sat in the chair by the window. "Sit down, both of you. You look like you've been through something."

"We have," I said.

"Then talk."