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CHAPTER 170
Blade took the toothpick out of his mouth. "You know them?" "I found Reyne this morning. He's a director at Corvane, a company I was looking into, and he sits on the board of a facilities contractor with a standing contract inside Stratton." Darius turned the pad around so they could see the lines he had drawn. "Corvane isn't a shipping company. It's a conveyor. Someone is taking material out of Stratton, and Corvane's ships are how it leaves the country." Marguerite whistled softly through her teeth. "So Mills isn't just taking favors from us." "Mills has been reporting to them since March. Everything he had been asked to do, every pallet moved early, Reyne's people have known about it." Darius's voice stayed level. "I don't think they've understood what we are yet. Mills told them he was helping a medical supplier. But they've been listening, and the longer it goes on, the more careful they'll get." "Then he's finished," Blade said. "That bast
CHAPTER 169
The Argos Logistics building stood on the harbor side of downtown, twenty-two floors of blue glass that caught the morning light and threw it back at the water. Darius had passed it a hundred times in his life without once imagining that a key to it would end up in his pocket. Reginald's secretary, a brisk woman in her sixties named Mrs. Kellog, met him in the lobby at eight sharp. She handed over the key, a keycard, and a folder of passwords. "The Grandmaster's old research office is on nineteen," she said, leading him to the elevators. "Nobody has used it since his heart scare. It has a view of the container yard. He said you'd want the quiet." "He's right." "Is there anything the staff should be told, young master? Some of the department heads have been asking." "Tell them I'm reviewing competitor filings for my grandfather." He smiled, and it came out easy and boyish. "It's dull work. I'm sure nobody will care." She did not look co
CHAPTER 168
Darius got home that evening a little after seven, and found a note on his bed in Reginald's blocky, deliberate handwriting. *Study. When you're ready. No hurry.* He washed his face and changed his shirt and stood for a moment in front of the mirror, rehearsing an expression. Then he walked downstairs. The old man sat behind his desk with his reading glasses low on his nose and a sheaf of papers fanned in front of him, and when Darius came in, he took the glasses off and gestured to the chair. "Sit. You look tired." "I'm fine." "You always say that." Reginald's mouth twitched. "Alan tells me you've been out most days. Business?" "Some of it. It just some things I'm trying to work out. Nothing worth reporting." "Good." Reginald nodded slowly, and Darius felt a small, cold relief, because the old man did not ask what things he was talking about. "I'm glad you're out of the house. I've worried about you in these rooms. Too many corr
CHAPTER 167
Mills left first, hurrying out through the glass door with his coat flapping, and Darius watched him cross the street. A few steps from the corner, Mills pulled his phone from his pocket, glanced over his shoulder, and answered the call that had been buzzing all afternoon. He turned his back and kept his head low as he spoke to the phone. Darius picked up his briefcase, dropped three bills on the table, and walked out onto the pavement just as the gray jeep pulled to the curb. Blade came out of the restaurant behind him a moment later, folding his newspaper under one arm. "He called someone," Blade said quietly. "Right after you shook hands." "I saw." "Want me to follow him?" "Two cars. Don't let him see either." Darius opened the rear door of the jeep and got in beside Lucifer, who was studying him with open curiosity. "And find out who owns the number on that call." The car pulled away from the curb. For several blocks nobody s
CHAPTER 166
The restaurant Lucifer had chosen was called Marenco's, and it sat between a dental clinic and a bank on a street where nobody looked twice at anybody. Darius thought it was the safest room in the city for a conversation that could not be overheard, and he disliked it for exactly that reason. He arrived ten minutes early in a charcoal suit, with a leather briefcase containing nothing but a notepad and a calculator. He took the corner table by the window, ordered sparkling water, and watched the door. Two tables away, Blade sat with a newspaper he was not reading. Lucifer had not come inside. He was parked across the street in a gray jeep. Gareth Mills walked in at 12:40, five minutes late. He was shorter than his photographs suggested, a soft-bodied man of forty-eight with thinning sandy hair and a slightly stooped posture. He paused inside the entrance and looked around the room with the quick, darting attention of a man checking for e
CHAPTER 165
Lucifer rose, pulled his coat from the chair, and paused beside the table. "For what it's worth," he said, "I'm sorry. About the video. About all of it. But I'll ensure when this is done, the footage gets deleted." Darius didn't answer. Lucifer waited a moment longer, then nodded to himself and went up the stairs, the room falling quiet after he left. Darius sat for a while with the lamp humming and the paper pinned to the wall, now crowded with names, arrows, and small, neat question marks. He felt the stiffness settle into his shoulders. He picked up his pen. He set it down again. "The footage is destroyed the day the job is done." He had turned the sentence over a dozen times since the beach. Roberto had not said where the recording was kept. He had not said who held it, or in what form. The promise was an exchange rate: do what we ask, and we'll stop holding what we hold. It had no mechanism. It did not take a criminal mind t
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