Chapter 4 ⊰ 4 ⊱ Personal Effects

⬩ 𝓚eegan ⬩

The apartment has everything a person needs and nothing a person has.

A bed. A table. Two chairs nobody sits in. A kitchen I use for coffee and nothing else. The walls are bare. There’s no mail on the counter, no shoes by the door, no evidence that anyone has been here long enough to leave a mark.

That’s the point.

I learned early that personal effects are liabilities. You carry something that matters and someone will find it, use it, hold it over you. So I stopped carrying things that matter. The apartment is a base of operations. Nothing more.

I’m at the table with guns laid out in front of me—broken down, each piece cleaned and waiting. It’s routine maintenance, something I do on a schedule whether or not it needs doing. The rhythm of it settles something in me that nothing else does. Cloth, solvent, bore brush. The same order every time. I don’t have to think about it. That’s why I do it.

The problem is that when I don’t have to think about something, my mind goes where it wants.

And apparently where it wants to go is her.

She’s not what I expected.

That’s the thing I keep running into. I’ve had a hundred targets. I’ve read a hundred files. I know what a 23-year-old looks like on paper—the habits, the social patterns, the predictable shape of a life that hasn’t accumulated enough scar tissue to get interesting yet. I wasn’t expecting much beyond the logistics of the job.

Then she asked me if I was enjoying the view.

Without looking at me. While failing to light a joint. With the complete unbothered energy of someone who had nowhere more important to be, and knew it.

I run back through what she gave me. The way she read me—street criminal, suits you—delivered like an observation rather than a provocation. The shift after two hits, that whole other person underneath the first one. The laugh I didn’t see coming. The invitation for a drink that was both completely casual and, if I’m honest about it, not casual at all. She said she needed friends. She said it lightly enough that I was supposed to take it as a joke.

I don’t think it was entirely a joke.

I set down the cloth and pick up the barrel. Run the brush through.

She’s 23. I remind myself of that when I need a data point that keeps things in proportion. She’s Cade Sinclair’s half-sister, a grad student, new to the city. She doesn’t know what I am or why I’m here. She lit a joint at the bottom of her brother’s front steps because she needed the chemical assistance to walk inside. Whatever she is, she’s not a threat. She’s a job.

Jobs don’t have to be complicated. 

I’ve worked to keep this one uncomplicated, and I intend to keep it that way.

What I don’t like—what I haven’t liked from the beginning—is the shape of this assignment. Jobs on women are rare in my world. The mafia goes after men almost exclusively; it’s cleaner, less attention, fewer complications. When the order is a woman, there’s always a reason that goes beyond the tactical, and those reasons tend to make things messy.

David’s reasons are personal. I knew that going in. I don’t need to know the details to understand what personal means in this context.

The phone rings.

I know who it is before I look. There’s only one person who calls this number, and it isn’t Levi.

I let it ring once more, then I pick up.

“Keegan.” David’s voice is the same as it always is—measured, precise, the voice of a man who spent decades making sure people listened when he spoke. He’s been out of prison for a couple of weeks and already sounds like he’s running something again.

“David.”

“I want an update,” he demands.

“I’ve made contact.” I keep my voice flat, informational. “It went as planned.”

A pause. “Good. Then you’re ready to move.”

“No.”

The silence on the other end is the kind that comes from a man who isn’t used to that word. I wait through it.

“I’ve been patient,” he says. The measured tone frays slightly at the edge. “I need this handled.”

“I understand what you need.”

“Then—”

“I’ve spent six years earning your son’s trust.” I set down the barrel. “I made contact two weeks ago. Moving tonight would be sloppy, and I don’t do sloppy. Neither does Levi.”

“Levi isn’t the one who—”

“David.” I say it once, quietly. “You brought the request to Levi. Levi assigned me. I report to Levi. This call—” I pause, let it sit. “—is a courtesy I’m choosing to extend. It isn’t a chain of command.”

Another silence. Longer this time.

“I want it done,” he says.

“It’ll get done.” I pick up the barrel again. “When I’m ready. Not before.”

He tries one more time—something about timing, about variables outside his control, about what happens if this drags on. I don’t engage with any of it. There’s nothing there worth engaging with.

I hang up.

Set the phone back on the table. Pick up the cloth. Go back to the gun.

That call doesn’t change anything. 

That’s what I tell myself, and it’s mostly true. My loyalty isn’t to David—it was never to David. He’s a means of access, nothing more. I move when Levi tells me to move, and Levi hasn’t told me anything yet.

But David being impatient means David being unpredictable. A man who escaped federal prison and has nothing left to lose starts making decisions that aren’t careful. If he decides to stop waiting and handle this himself, the whole operation gets complicated in ways that Levi won’t forgive and I can’t afford.

I need to be close to her.

Not for the job—the job can wait. For the same reason you position yourself before a move, not during it. Control requires proximity. If David acts before I’m in place, I’m not in control of anything.

I reassemble the first gun. Start on the second.

She’s working at the smoke shop tonight. I’ve had her schedule for weeks now. The shop closes at eleven; she usually closes alone on Thursdays. It’s a twenty-minute drive.

I’m not going there because of her. I’m going there because David is unpredictable and I can’t afford the mess.

I tell myself that, clearly, once.

Then I think about the way she said Keegan. Like she was deciding whether the name was going to suit me. And I put the gun down, grab my jacket.

Two weeks since the Sinclair estate. She’s crossed my mind twice since then without invitation. Two isn’t a pattern. 

Data points don’t mean anything until they form one.

I tell myself that too.

I head for the door.