Vengeance Wears No Crown

CHAPTER 7

Hallow Ridge sat behind a wall of manicured hedges that did nothing to disguise the razor wire threaded along the top, the kind of security dressed up in enough landscaping that visiting families never asked why a psychiatric facility needed fencing built for a prison.

I watched it from across the street for three mornings before I ever set foot near the gate, memorizing shift changes, delivery schedules, the particular rhythm of a place that wanted to look peaceful and was anything but.

On the fourth morning, I saw her.

Sienna Voss came through the staff entrance at seven fifteen exactly, coffee in one hand, badge already out in the other, moving with the tired efficiency of someone who'd been doing this long enough to stop noticing how heavy the gate felt when it closed behind her. Wren's photograph hadn't done her justice. There was something in the set of her shoulders, a tension she carried that didn't match the calm on her face, like she was holding two different versions of herself together through sheer discipline.

I gave it two more days before I made contact, watching her routine, learning the coffee shop on Kessler Street she stopped at most mornings before her shift, three blocks from the bookshop Feld had mentioned, close enough that I filed the coincidence away without yet understanding what it meant.

On the sixth day, I was already seated at the small corner table when she walked in.

I'd built the version of myself I needed for this carefully. A name that didn't exist in any database Draycott's people could search, a story about relocating to Ironport for a shipping consultancy contract, nothing that would ring alarm bells for a woman whose entire life had trained her to notice when something didn't add up. I let her order, let her turn toward the table where I sat with a folder of shipping manifests spread out like I actually cared about the work, and let her be the one to speak first when there wasn't another open seat in the crowded shop.

"Mind if I sit? Every other table's taken."

"Go ahead." I gestured to the chair across from mine, closing the folder halfway, enough to seem casual, not enough to seem like I was hiding anything. "I promise the paperwork isn't contagious."

She almost smiled, the first crack in the careful composure she wore like armor. "Shipping consultant?"

"For my sins." I offered a name that wasn't mine, easy and unremarkable. "New to the city. Everyone keeps telling me the harbor district is the wrong place to get coffee before eight, and everyone keeps being right, because this is the third morning I've had to fight for a table."

"Ironport's a small city pretending to be a big one," she said, settling into the chair, wrapping both hands around her cup like the warmth of it mattered more than the coffee itself. "You get used to the crowds eventually. Or you don't, and you learn to come in at six fifteen instead."

"Noted." I let a beat of silence sit between us, comfortable rather than awkward, the kind that invites someone to fill it if they want to. "You look like a woman who's had a longer morning than coffee can fix."

Something flickered across her face, quick, guarded, gone almost before I caught it. "Occupational hazard. I work somewhere that doesn't leave a lot of room for good mornings."

"Rough industry?"

"You could say that." She studied me for a moment, the sharpness Wren's file had promised finally showing through the tired surface. "You're not from Ironport originally."

"Does it show?"

"You don't flinch when people mention the Draycotts," she said, quiet enough that I understood immediately how careful she was being, even in a coffee shop, even to a stranger. "Everyone born in this city flinches a little. It's practically reflex."

I filed that away, the crack in her composure telling me more than any file Wren could have pulled. "Should I be flinching?"

"If you plan on staying here long enough to matter to anyone," she said, "eventually, yes." She glanced at her watch, something tightening in her expression, the reflex of a person whose schedule wasn't really her own. "I have to get to work. It was nice meeting someone in this city who hasn't already decided who I am before I open my mouth."

"That happens a lot?"

"You have no idea." She stood, gathering her things, and for just a moment something in her looked exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with early mornings. "Good luck with the manifests, consultant. This city eats people who don't know what they're looking at."

She left before I could answer, and I watched through the window as she crossed the street toward Hallow Ridge, badge already in hand, shoulders squared like she was walking into something heavier than a normal day's work.

My phone buzzed the moment she disappeared through the gate. Wren.

"You made contact," she said, not a question.

"I made contact."

"And?"

I thought about the flicker in Sienna Voss's face at the mention of the Draycotts, the exhaustion she wore like a second uniform underneath the first one, the careful way she'd chosen every word like she'd learned the hard way what happened to people who spoke freely in this city.

"She's not one of them," I said. "Not really. Whatever she's doing inside that building, it's costing her something she hasn't told anyone about."

"That could make her an ally," Wren said. "Or it could make her exactly the kind of desperate that gets people killed for asking the wrong questions at the wrong time."

I knew that. I'd known it before I ever sat down at that table, and it hadn't stopped me from wanting to see her again, which told me something about myself I wasn't entirely comfortable examining yet.

"Cross finished his survey of the perimeter," Wren continued, all business now. "He found something you need to see. A delivery pattern that doesn't match anything a psychiatric facility should need. Unmarked trucks, twice a week, always after visiting hours end, always unloaded by staff Hallow Ridge doesn't have on their public roster."

"What's in the trucks?"

"I don't know yet. But whatever it is, they don't want anyone seeing it arrive, and that tells me your sister isn't the only thing being hidden behind that fence."