Hazel had been in the sitting room when Alan came looking for her, and when he suggested they talk, she had simply stood up, picked up her cardigan from the arm of the sofa, and walked toward the stairs. He followed without asking where they were going.The city was doing its late evening thing below them, lights coming on in clusters, the river catching the reflection in long dark strips. The air was cooler up here, enough that Hazel pulled the cardigan around herself before sitting on the wide stone bench near the edge.Alan sat beside her. Not close enough to crowd her though.Neither of them said anything for a while. A car alarm went off somewhere below and stopped again. The wind moved through in a slow, easy way that the lower streets never got."You don't have to start," Hazel said eventually. "I will."Alan nodded and waited.She looked out at the city, not at him, and took a breath that was quieter than a sigh. "I know who you are," she began. "I know you wouldn't do somethi

“Ahh…I might as well just get it over with," Alan finalised with a long sigh as he picked up his phone.He made the call that Monday morning, from his office, before Jasmine arrived.He had Dane Fontaine's direct number through a contact in the city's business registry, which wasn't difficult to obtain for someone with the right access, and he had been sitting on it for four days while he decided how to use it. Not whether to use it, that had been clear since Hazel told him about Lucia on the rooftop. Just how.He dialed at eight-twelve and the call connected on the third ring."Walker." Dane's voice was even, unhurried. Not surprised, which told Alan something."Fontaine," Alan replied, in the same register. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything.""Not at all," Dane returned. "I was expecting your call, actually. Just not this early.""I'm an early starter," Alan said.A brief silence settled between them, the kind that both men were comfortable with and neither felt the need to fill

The warehouse district on Silver Lace's eastern edge was an area that got busy between five and nine in the morning and then went quiet for the rest of the day. Logistics traffic, mostly. Delivery vehicles moving in and out of the loading bays, forklifts, the occasional flatbed carrying construction materials to one of the development sites further south. By ten, the roads between the warehouses thinned to almost nothing, and by noon you could park a car on the service road that ran behind the third cluster of buildings and sit there for two hours without anyone coming past.Taskmaster had been doing exactly that for four days.He had identified the eastern warehouse district as one of three supply chain entry points worth watching about a week after settling into Silver Lace. The logic was straightforward enough. Trident's local infrastructure in the city, the part that had been quietly built over the preceding year before Taskmaster was assigned as regional coordinator, relied on t

In a small restaurant in the old district, away from the business centre, Alan was calmly seated at a table. He had eaten there twice before, once with Hazel and once alone, and he liked it because the tables were spaced properly and the staff were very good at their job. Their discretion was very professional and he would argue that they showed more etiquette than in higher-class restaurants.He arrived ten minutes early and took the corner table, the one with a clear view of the entrance and the secondary exit near the kitchen. It was an habit of his. He ordered water and looked at the menu without reading it.Dane arrived at exactly the agreed time. He wasn't a minute late, nor a minute early. The man was right on time, almost irking Alan.‘What is he trying to prove?’ Alan couldn't help but ask himself. No one would go that far just for the sake of it.Dane came alone, as Alan had specified. No Sera, no assistant, no lawyer hovering in a car outside. He wore a jacket without a tie

John Bones made the first contact on a Tuesday evening, through a man named Craw.Craw ran a small security outfit in Silver Lace's southern district, one that provided muscle for clubs and private events and asked no questions about the nature of the events in question. He was not powerful, not well-connected in any serious sense, but he was embedded, and embedded people knew other embedded people, and that was the point.John had been watching Craw's operation for four days before he made contact. He wanted to know the shape of the man before he sat across from him, which was a habit he had never broken regardless of how small the meeting.He walked into the bar where Craw held court on Tuesday evenings at eight-thirty, took a seat two down from him at the counter, ordered a beer, and waited.Craw noticed him by eight-forty-five. It was hard not to notice John Bones in most rooms, besides,.Craw was a man smart enough to notice who stood amongst normal men.He leaned over after a few