The Cryptocurrency King

THE COURTESY VISIT

"You Wes Calloway?"

The man leaning against the wall outside the community center wore a linen shirt too clean for the neighborhood and sunglasses that hid nothing about the way he was studying Wes's face, cataloguing it, filing it away.

"Depends who's asking."

"Name's Rourke." He didn't extend a hand. "I work for people who'd like to have a conversation with you about a transaction pattern that's been bothering their accountants for about two months now."

Wes's stomach dropped, but he kept his face still, the same flat calm he'd practiced in front of Sal Renner and Deb Voss, because showing fear to a man like this felt like the single most dangerous thing he could do.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you do." Rourke smiled, easy, unhurried, the kind of smile that had clearly worked on plenty of people who weren't as good at hiding fear as Wes was pretending to be. "See, here's the thing about people like my employers. They don't get angry right away. They get curious first. They want to understand how a twenty-three-year-old high school dropout managed to find a hole in infrastructure their own security team missed for four years."

"Maybe your employers should hire better security."

"They're working on that." Rourke's eyes flicked over him head to toe, unhurried, cataloguing. "Funny thing is, most people who find what you found either sell it to the highest bidder within a week or panic and delete everything within a day. You did neither. You just kept quietly using it to fix your family's problems, one bill at a time, like a man who thought if he was careful enough, nobody would ever notice the difference between smart and invisible."

Wes said nothing. His silence seemed to please Rourke more than any answer would have.

"Maybe I'm smarter than your security team."

Rourke's smile widened, and something behind it went cold. "You might be. That's actually the problem. Smart is useful. Smart is something people like my employers prefer to buy instead of bury, if the person attached to it is willing to be reasonable."

"And if I'm not willing."

"Then we have a different kind of conversation. One that doesn't involve a job offer." Rourke pushed off the wall, unhurried, and pulled a folded photo from his shirt pocket, holding it up just long enough for Wes to see it clearly before tucking it away again.

A photo of Sawyer, taken from across the street, walking home from the therapy program three days earlier.

Wes's whole body went cold, then hot, then cold again, adrenaline flooding somewhere past the point of thought.

"You stay away from my brother."

"Nobody's touching your brother. Yet." Rourke said it like the word yet was the most reasonable thing in the world. "This is a courtesy visit, Wes. My employers want a meeting. Somewhere private, somewhere professional, where we can discuss terms like adults. You bring your laptop. You explain how the exploit works. Maybe you walk away with a consulting f*e bigger than anything you've skimmed so far, and everybody's happy."

"And if I say no?"

Rourke checked his watch, unbothered, like the answer to that question was too obvious to bother stating directly.

"You've got a mother in a hospital bed who needs round the clock care, and a brother who walks the same four blocks home from therapy every single day at the same time, because routine is the only thing that keeps him calm." He met Wes's eyes for the first time, and whatever warmth had been in his voice before was gone completely. "People in my line of work don't need to threaten anybody directly. We just need you to understand exactly how much we already know."

He handed Wes a plain white card with nothing on it but a phone number.

"Forty-eight hours," Rourke said. "Call it, or don't. Either way, we'll be in touch."

"And if I go to the police instead?"

Rourke actually laughed at that, a real laugh, short and genuine, like Wes had told a decent joke at a bad party. "Go ahead. Tell them a man in a linen shirt showed you a photo of your brother and asked you nicely to explain a decimal error in a blockchain settlement contract. See how far that gets you before somebody asks how you know so much about the decimal error in the first place."

He had a point, and they both knew it.

"One more thing," Rourke said, already turning to go, casual as a man remembering an afterthought. "The person who's been messaging you. Warning you about us, coaching you along. We know about them too. Whoever they are, they used to be one of ours, a long time ago, before they decided their conscience was worth more than their paycheck. Ask them sometime how that decision worked out for the last person they tried to protect."

Wes's stomach turned over. "What happened to that person?"

Rourke's smile didn't waver, which was somehow worse than if it had. "Ask your new friend. See if they're honest with you about it."

He walked off down the block, unhurried, whistling something low under his breath, and Wes stood frozen on the sidewalk with the card burning against his palm, watching the space where the man had disappeared, his heart slamming so hard he could feel it in his teeth.

His phone buzzed. A text from Sawyer's school-issued tablet, sent through the therapy program's check-in app precisely on schedule the way it always was.

SAWYER: leaving now. same route. home by 4:15 like always.

Wes looked at the message, then at the empty street, then broke into a dead run toward the four blocks that separated him from his brother.