System Of Retribution

Chapter 10

Ryan set the notebook down and picked up his phone, and scrolled to Danny's number, which was still in his contacts from the Lin Group years, and sat with his thumb over the call button for a brief moment.

Starting the company felt different from the earlier moves against Tyler.

Those had been reactive, a man defending himself by attacking sideways and in a way was something else.

This was choosing, deliberately and with full awareness of what it cost, to become something that could be seen, something with a name and an address and a purpose that extended beyond survival into actual ambition.

He thought about what the system had said in the hospital, that first real conversation when Ryan had still been half convinced he was dreaming the whole thing.

With a deliberate movement, he pressed call.

Danny picked up on the third ring, his voice came the same as Ryan remembered it , the voice of a man who had stopped being surprised by most things a long time ago.

"Danny Reeves," he said.

"Danny," Ryan said. "It's Ryan Cole. I know it's been a while, and I know my name probably comes with some baggage right now, but before you say anything I want to say two things. First, everything they said about me was fabricated, and I can prove it and second, I'm starting something, and I think you'd be good at it, and I think you'd find it interesting for reasons that go beyond the money."

There was a pause on the other end, the kind that meant someone was actually listening rather than just waiting for their turn to speak.

"Two questions," Danny said finally.

"Go ahead," Ryan said.

"When you say you can prove it?" Danny asked, "do you mean you have the evidence already, or you mean you are confident you will get it?"

"Getting there," Ryan said, which was honest enough.

"And the second question," Danny said. "The thing you're starting. Is it clean?"

Ryan looked around his half emptied apartment, at the notebook on the floor and the cold coffee and the forty three dollars that had quietly grown to four hundred and twelve without him doing anything dramatic to earn it, and thought about what clean meant to a man in his particular position.

"It will be," Ryan said. "That's the whole point of it."

Another pause came in between them.

"Send me what you have so far," Danny said. "I'm not saying yes yet, of which I'm not saying no either, which from me is closer to yes than most people realize."

Ryan exhaled, slow and quiet so Danny would not hear the relief in it. "I'll send it tonight."

He ended the call and sat for a moment in the particular quiet of a decision that had just been made, the kind that does not feel momentous in the instant but that you recognize later as the thing everything else turned on.

"Good start," the system said.

"It's one call," Ryan said.

"Every structure starts with one load bearing piece," the system said. "Danny Reeves is yours. Now there is something you should know before you get too comfortable with the momentum you are building."

Ryan looked up from the notebook. "What."

"Carter's people have been asking questions about you in the industry," the system said. "Quietly, through intermediaries, two people you have not spoken to in over a year have been contacted in the last forty eight hours. Someone is building a picture of who Ryan Cole is now, not who he was before the scandal."

Ryan felt a cold chill settle in his chest.

"How long before the picture is complete enough to be useful to him," Ryan said.

"At the current rate," the system said, "seventy two hours. Possibly less if the third contact they are planning to make tonight goes the way Carter expects it to."

"Who's the third contact," Ryan said.

The system paused, and this time the pause was long enough that Ryan felt his body tension rise before the answer came.

"Danny Reeves," the system said. "Carter's people will reach out to him within the next three hours. Which means the call you just made may have started a clock you did not intend to start.”