The Cryptocurrency King

THE TERMS

"Where is he."

"Safe. For now. That part's entirely up to you." Rourke's voice was easy, unhurried, like they were discussing dinner reservations instead of a fourteen-year-old boy. "You want to hear him?"

"Yes."

"Ask nicely."

Wes's jaw clenched so hard it ached. "Please."

"See, that wasn't so hard."

A shuffling sound. Then Sawyer's voice, thin and scared but steady in a way that broke something in Wes's chest.

"Wes? They took my notebook. I don't have my pens. I can't keep track of anything."

"I'm coming, buddy. I promise."

"You always say that."

"I know. This time I mean it more than I've ever meant anything."

There was a pause on the line, Sawyer's breathing audible and uneven, and for one terrible second Wes thought the connection had dropped entirely.

"There's a ship," Sawyer said suddenly, fast, like he was trying to get the words out before someone stopped him. "I can hear a ship. It makes a sound every few min"

The line went dead on Sawyer's end, cut off mid-sentence, and Rourke's voice replaced it, still calm, still reasonable, which somehow made it worse.

"Here's how this works," Rourke said. "Tomorrow night, ten o'clock, you bring the laptop and you bring yourself. No phone, no calls to anyone, no clever code running in the background. You walk me through the exploit, hand over full access, and your brother walks out with you."

"How do I know you'll actually let him go."

"You don't. That's the deal. Trust, or don't, but either way tomorrow night is when it happens."

"I need proof he's still fine when I get there. Not just tonight. Tomorrow."

A pause, longer than Wes expected, like Rourke was actually considering it instead of just performing patience.

"Fair," Rourke said finally. "You'll get a call an hour before. Now, address."

He rattled off a location, somewhere near the port, industrial, nowhere Wes had ever had reason to go. Wes wrote it on the back of his hand in pen because his phone felt too dangerous to touch right now, too easily read by someone who already seemed to know more about his life than any stranger should.

"One more thing," Rourke said. "That message you've been getting. The one warning you about us. I'd think real hard about whether you trust a voice you've never seen a face on, Wes. People who hide that well usually have their own reasons for it."

"Is that a threat or advice."

"Call it professional courtesy. I've been doing this longer than you've been alive, kid. The people who help you for free usually want something they haven't told you about yet."

The call ended before Wes could answer.

He stood in the kitchen with the address inked onto his skin, listening to the apartment's terrible new silence, no pens scraping against notebook paper, no radio murmuring economics call-in shows, no small precise voice cataloguing the exact minute Wes was late. He had never once, in fourteen years of being Sawyer's older brother, understood how loud his silence could be until it was the only sound left in the room.

He caught himself staring at Sawyer's chair at the kitchen table, the one with the slightly uneven leg that always rocked when he leaned forward to write, and had to look away before the sight of it undid whatever composure he had left to work with.

His laptop chimed.

WATCHER: I heard part of that. Not the words. The pattern. A location transfer usually means an in-person meet, which means you're about to walk into a warehouse with people who have no reason to let either of you leave.

WES: I don't have a choice.

WATCHER: You always have a choice. You just don't like any of the ones available to you right now, which is different.

Wes stared at the screen, exhaustion and terror fighting for space behind his ribs.

WES: Then help me find a better one. Please.

WATCHER: I need to know everything Rourke said. Word for word if you can manage it. Details matter more than they feel like they do right now.

Wes typed out the whole call as best he could remember it, hands shaking hard enough that he had to correct half his own typos, the address, the timeline, the strange, almost gentle way Rourke had let him hear Sawyer's voice like a kindness instead of the leverage it clearly was.

WATCHER: Okay. That's useful. More useful than you probably realize.

The typing indicator blinked for a long moment, longer than any pause Wes had seen from this contact before, like the person on the other end was weighing something heavier than code.

WATCHER: All right. But if we're doing this together, you need to know who you're actually talking to. I've been careful about that for a reason, and I'm about to stop being careful, because your brother doesn't have time for me to keep protecting myself instead of him.