System Of Retribution

Chapter 8

Vanessa blinked, clearly having prepared herself for something louder. "That's all you're going to say?"

"What would you like me to say," Ryan said.

"I don't know," she said, and for a moment she actually looked like herself, the version of her he had known before everything, uncertain and a little undone by her own choices. "Something real, maybe."

"Something real," Ryan said. He thought about it for a moment, genuinely, standing on the corner of Marsh and Eleventh with the cold working its way through his jacket and his knee starting its usual late afternoon complaints. "Alright. Something real is that I spent a long time thinking the worst part of this year was losing the job. Standing here right now I think I had the order wrong."

Vanessa said nothing. Her jaw moved slightly like she was searching for a response and coming up empty.

"Take care of yourself," Ryan said, and walked past her.

He made it half a block before the system spoke.

"That was not nothing," the system said.

"Didn't feel like anything," Ryan said quietly, low enough that the couple passing him on the left couldn't hear a man apparently talking to himself.

"It was information," the system said. "Tyler told her it was just a fight. He didn't tell her he ordered it. He is managing her the same way he manages clients, with the version of the truth that keeps things convenient for him."

Ryan turned that over as he walked, hands in his jacket pockets, the city moving around him in its indifferent afternoon way.

"So she doesn't know what he actually did," Ryan said.

"Not yet," the system said. "Whether that matters to you strategically is your decision. Whether it matters to you personally is a different question I am not qualified to answer."

"It doesn't," Ryan said.

"You hesitated before saying that," the system said.

"I was thinking," Ryan said.

"You were feeling," the system said. "There is a difference, and unlike catastrophizing versus processing, this one actually matters. A man who pretends not to feel things does not eliminate them. He just loses track of where he put them."

Ryan stopped walking. He was standing outside a pawn shop with a dusty window full of other people's discarded valuables, guitars and cameras and watches that had once meant something to someone, and he looked at his own reflection in the glass for a moment, jacket collar up, jaw still carrying a faint yellow bruise from the alley.

"When did you become a therapist," Ryan said.

"I became whatever you need me to be to keep you functional," the system said. "A distracted host is a vulnerable host. I have a vested interest in your clarity."

"How reassuring," Ryan said, and started walking again.

He was two blocks from his apartment when his phone buzzed, an unknown number, and something in his chest tightened before he even answered it, the threat assessment reading the moment as significant without being able to say why.

He answered it anyway.

"Mr. Cole," said a voice he didn't recognize, male, measured, with the particular smoothness of someone accustomed to being listened to. "My name is not important yet. What is important is that I have been watching how you handled the Whitlow situation, and the Creston matter, and I think we should have a conversation."

Ryan said nothing, waiting, the way you wait when you want someone to show more of their hand before you show any of yours.

"I represent certain interests that find Tyler Briggs's removal from the market quite convenient," the voice continued. "And those same interests are very curious about who orchestrated it so cleanly. We would like to meet."

"Who are we," Ryan said.

The voice paused, just long enough to be deliberate. "People who could make your next move considerably easier," it said. "Or considerably harder, depending on how this conversation goes."

Ryan's jaw tightened, though his voice stayed flat. "Is that a threat?"

"It's an observation," the voice said pleasantly. "I find observations tend to land more accurately than threats. Shall we meet tomorrow, Mr. Cole? I promise you will find it worth your time."

The call ended before Ryan could respond, and he stood on the pavement outside his building with the phone in his hand and the system already moving at the edge of his thoughts.

"Tell me you got something from that," Ryan said.

"The call was routed," the system said, "but not well enough. The number traces back to a shell company registered eighteen months ago. The shell company's registered agent is a law firm with one notable client on public record."

Ryan already knew what the system was going to say, felt it before the words formed.

"Vince Carter," the system said. "Ryan, he already knows it is you.”

Ryan stood outside his building for a long moment after the call ended, phone still warm in his hand, the city carrying on around him with the complete indifference cities have toward the private crises of individual people standing on their pavements