I stand, stretching the stiffness from my back.
"Let him wait," I say. "He needs the practice."
She gives a half-smile and leaves.
I linger in the office for another minute, then run my hand along the spines of the books on the wall—old legal volumes, mostly unread.
I find what I'm looking for—an untitled red binder, hidden behind a fake copy of Joyce.
I slip it free, open it, and scan the contents.
Blackmail material, mostly.
Photos, transcripts, the kind of kompromat that has no expiration date.
I tuck the binder under my arm and make my way downstairs, leaving the door to the office open behind me.
The house is quieter now.
The guards have shifted positions, and the main hall is empty.
I pass the chapel again and see that the altar has already been hauled away.
Themen are smoking outside, leaning against a wheelbarrow full of marble and wood.
They see me coming and straighten, but I wave them off.
"Finish the job before dawn," I say and make for the exit.
For now, my work here is done.
The temporary Crowley headquarters is my next destination in the city, comprising five stories of municipal concrete squatting at the edge of the docks, a structure built to endure more than to inspire.
Half the city assumes it's still the old union offices, though the only negotiating that happens here now is through bulletproof glass and with enough surveillance to give the CIA an inferiority complex.
I let myself in, bypass the reception—no one in their right mind would try to stop me here—and head for the rear conference suite, where the real work gets done.
My brother, Fiachra, is already there, sprawled across a leather chair like he's daring anyone to try dislodging him.
He has the look of a man who takes his lunch raw, face all sharp planes and hyena angles, the only softness in the dark half-moons beneath his eyes.
On the table between us, a sprawl of maps, satellite photos, shipping manifests, and several old-school folders fat with the kind of data you don't digitize.
The walls are plastered with sound-dampening foam, and the one window is armored to the point of parody.
He doesn't stand, just gestures to the spread.
"You're late," he says.
I check my watch.
"No, I'm finished."
He grins, teeth as white as a shark's.
"Did you get what you wanted from the house?"
I throw the red binder on the table.
