Marcus met them in the courtyard.Aron Jackson stood beside the car with his hands clasped behind his back and the posture of a man delivering a report he already knew wasn't going to be satisfying.Bane Cross stood a few feet away, wiping his hands on a cloth with the relaxed patience of someone who had just come from a long day of unremarkable work."Fabio Pendleton was operating under a figure referred to only as the butler," Aron kept his voice level. "That's the only name he gave up before it stopped mattering.The phone number we pulled from his contacts traces back to Five-River Province. It's already disconnected. Same pattern as the last one. Whoever's running this knows how to close a door behind them the second it's been used.""The trail ends there for now," Bane added, folding the cloth and tucking it into his belt.Marcus's expression didn't shift. He looked past both of them toward the car parked at the edge of the courtyard, walked over, and opened the trunk.He looked

The private room was quiet in the way rooms get when the worst of an evening has been survived and the people left inside it are finally allowed to stop moving.Low light caught the glasses on the table and the wine Marcus poured reflected the gold tones of the lamps above them.Marcus raised his glass toward Anna Harris."The bridge was meant for me," his voice was steady and his eyes met hers without flinching. "The dart in your leg happened because you were sitting in a car someone else wanted to destroy. That's on me. I'm sorry."Anna looked at him for a long moment. Whatever she was measuring in that look seemed to come back with an answer she could work with, because she picked up her glass without argument, matched his pour exactly, and drank with the practiced ease of someone for whom drinking was not an occasion but a trained discipline."Apology accepted," Anna set the glass down with a clean tap against the linen. "But I'm keeping a list, and you're on it.""You always had

Sheridan Isolde had the table's full attention now and the bourbon had loosened the part of his brain that usually kept the honest things behind a gate."Anna Harris was the one I couldn't get," Sheridan turned his glass slowly between his fingers, staring at the empty doorway like he could still see her moving through it. "Four years at that university. I went through every girl in our program who was worth the time and most of them who weren't. My track record didn't include many refusals. You understand what I'm telling you. I wasn't the kind of man who had to chase.""But she made you chase," one of the contacts grinned."She didn't even let me start," Sheridan's jaw tightened with the old frustration of a wound that had healed wrong. "Every approach I made, she treated me like I was furniture that had accidentally started talking. Like I was a fly buzzing near her food that didn't warrant the energy of swatting. Four years of that. Four years of watching every other man in the bu

The three contacts surged forward immediately, spreading around the table in a semicircle that cut off the exits."You're going to pay for that shirt," the first contact jabbed a finger toward Marcus's face. "That's a six hundred dollar shirt you just ruined.""You've got two women at this table and you're sitting here acting like you own the building," the second one stepped closer. "How about you apologize to Mr. Lake and we talk about how you're going to make this right? Starting with the women joining us downstairs.""An apology and the women's company for the rest of the evening," the third one folded his arms across his chest. "Or we take the cost of everything in this room out of your face."Sheridan Isolde stood behind all of them with his eyes locked on Anna Harris and a smile forming on his mouth that had nothing to do with shirts or apologies.Quinn Hartford sat perfectly still. Her hands had not moved from the tablecloth. Her face carried the cold, indifferent composure of

Her movement was calm and measured and carried none of the panic that the overturned furniture and the groaning men on the floor might have justified.She stepped between Sheridan and Anna's wheelchair and stood with her shoulders square and her chin level and the cold, indifferent expression of a woman who had heard enough.Sheridan turned his attention to Quinn as if a new item had arrived on the menu."And who are you?" His eyes moved over her face and then down and then back up with the evaluating attention of a man placing a price on something he intends to purchase. "You're with the husband? The wine-pourer? You look like you could do significantly better than what's sitting at that table."Quinn's expression did not change."Tell you what," Sheridan leaned in slightly, the predatory smile back on his face, reassembled from whatever spare parts his ego had left."Come downstairs with me. Bring your friend. I'll put both of you up at the Grand Meridian for a week. All expenses. T