Seventy-Four Billion Reasons

Chapter Six: Ten Days

The Hatton Street garage was eleven minutes from Gilder's Row. Darius made it in seven, running the last two blocks through the rain with the emergency operator still talking in his ear.

He found Benji on the third level beside his old blue hatchback. He was curled on the concrete with one arm over his head, his glasses snapped in half beside him. His laptop lay a few feet away, its screen shattered and its casing pried open like a shell. The slot where the hard drive should have been was empty. There was no sign of a grey sedan anywhere.

"Benji." Darius dropped to his knees beside him. "Benji, can you hear me?"

One swollen eye opened. "Took you long enough," Benji croaked.

The paramedics arrived four minutes later and loaded him onto a stretcher, and Darius climbed into the back of the ambulance without asking permission. Under the harsh white lights, the damage looked worse. Benji's lips were split, his face was purple along one side, and he winced every time he breathed. Still, as the doors slammed shut and the siren started, he turned his head toward Darius and grinned.

"They took the drive," he said.

"I know. I'm so sorry, Benji. This is my fault."

"No, listen." Benji coughed and gripped Darius's sleeve. "That drive was a decoy, an old backup full of cat videos. The real copy's somewhere they'll never think to look. But in case they found that too, I memorized the one line that matters." He took a careful breath. "The forged transfer didn't go straight to the Caymans. Before it went offshore, it went through a cashier account at the Moreau Grand Casino. The VIP desk."

Darius's hand tightened on the stretcher rail. He had spent three days reading the ledgers in the vault, and he knew that name. The Moreau Grand belonged to House Moreau, and House Moreau held one of the five chairs that would decide whether he kept the Tally or lost it.

"You're sure?"

"I stared at it for an hour before they wiped it." Benji's grin faded as the painkillers began to work. "Dare, whoever did this to me knew exactly what I had. Be careful."

Benji's ribs were cracked and his cheekbone fractured, but the doctors said he would recover. Darius stayed by his bed until dawn, then took the first bus back to the Lower Town.

The protesters were already there.

There were more of them than the day before, perhaps two hundred now, filling Gilder's Row from wall to wall. Someone had spray-painted the word THIEF across the cardboard in the shop window. Basil met him at the back door and suggested he stay inside.

Darius walked to the front door instead, unlocked it and stepped outside.

The noise rose at once. People pushed forward, shouting, and the phones came up all around him like a wall of small black mirrors. He stood on the step with his hands at his sides and let them see him.

An old woman made her way to the front. She was small and wiry in a faded green coat, perhaps seventy, holding a paper cup of tea in one hand and a cardboard sign in the other. She looked at him for a long moment, and then she threw the tea in his face.

It was cold, which almost made it worse. It ran down his cheeks and into his collar, and the crowd roared.

"My name is Grace Nwosu," she said, her voice shaking with fury. "I cooked lunch for thirty-one years at the Ellingham school for the dockworkers' children. Thirty-one years. That pension was all I had." She pointed a trembling finger at his chest. "Since it stopped, I've been cutting my insulin in half to make it last. Do you know what that does to a person? Do you?"

The street had gone quiet. Every phone was pointed at him, waiting for him to shout, shove or storm back inside. He could almost feel the headline being written.

Darius wiped his face slowly with his sleeve. When he spoke, his voice was calm.

"Mrs. Nwosu, I didn't take your money. I know you have no reason to believe me, so I'm not asking you to." He raised his voice so the rest of the crowd could hear. "Within ten days, I will stand in public and name the person who took your pension. And every one of you will be repaid, in full, down to the last cent."

For a second there was stunned silence. Then the jeering started, louder than before.

A young man near the front was livestreaming on his phone, and he began reading the comments aloud with delight. The thief promises to return what he stole. Ten days to pack his bags and run. Somebody check the airports. Darius could see the viewer count climbing past forty thousand.

Freya had arrived at some point. She slipped through the crowd to his side and spoke in a voice only he could hear.

"Congratulations," she murmured. "You've just turned a private war into a public deadline. If you fail, you won't just lose the vote. You'll be the most hated man in Ostley."

Darius didn't answer, because he was watching a man in the middle of the crowd.

The man was in his late thirties, broad-shouldered, with a buzz cut and a cheap anorak, and he had been leading the chants since Darius stepped outside. Every time the noise faded, he started it up again. Now he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, "Liar! Thief! Liar!" and the people around him took up the cry.

Darius knew that face. He had seen it last spring on a staff badge photo while auditing Ellingham's executive payroll, line by line, for three tedious weeks.

"Kyle Dorsey," he called out, clearly.

The man stopped mid-chant.

"Executive protection specialist, grade four, assigned to the office of the CEO." Darius met his eyes across the crowd. "You're on Jasper Ellingham's private security team. You earn ninety-four thousand dollars a year, you're thirty-eight years old, and you've never drawn a pension in your life. So who's paying you to stand here this morning?"

Every head in the street turned. Dorsey opened his mouth, closed it, and looked around at the faces staring at him. Then he shoved his way out of the crowd and ran.

Nobody chanted after that. The protesters stood murmuring to each other in the rain, uncertain for the first time. Grace Nwosu was still looking at Darius, and her expression had changed. It wasn't trust, not yet. But it was no longer pure hatred.

That evening, after the street had finally emptied, a courier in a dark uniform rang the bell. He handed over a heavy cream envelope, touched his cap and left without a word.

Inside was an embossed invitation, the edges gilded, with a single line printed in elegant black script.

Madame Moreau will receive the Keeper tonight. Come alone.

Darius turned it over. On the back, someone had added a line by hand in blue ink.

Leave the lawyer behind. She isn't who you think she is.