Atticus drags a chair beside the coffee table and drops his laptop to knee height. “You said you’d sit on my shoulder. Sit.”
I drop in beside him. “I’ll make calls while you draw the map.”
He gives me that flat Atticus look. “That’s your entire personality.”
“Correct,” I say, already dialing.
For a little while, the room becomes what it’s supposed to be—us. A machine that only runs right when all four gears catch.
I talk to the docks. Atticus tracks time windows and camera scraps. Storm moves through the hallway like a shadow, talking low, quieter, gone. Conrad steps onto the balcony to strong-arm someone important enough to answer on the first ring.
No clutter. No chaos. Just the work.
Atticus mutters when he spots a pattern in the river logs. I follow it with a phone call, get the lie, push once, and get the truth. Storm sends a photo—someone in a maintenance uniform passing off a key ring to a woman we’ve walked past a hundred times without seeing.
The pieces begin to move. Then they begin to align.
And for the first time since this nightmare started, we feel like ourselves again.
Conrad comes back in with his phone white-knuckled in his hand and a look on his face that turns the air thin.
“What,” I say.
He stares at me and then at Atticus, and then the phone rings again and he answers it on speaker with a tight voice that makes me want to take the phone out of his hand and throw it off the balcony. “Hello.”
“Conrad.” The voice fills the room like old whiskey—smooth, expensive, familiar in the way of something that burned you once and laughed about it. “I heard you’ve misplaced that girl. Your minder.”
Masterson. Senior.
Air leaves my lungs. How did Masterson hear about Phoenix? And why would he even care?
Atticus’s fingers freeze over the keys. Storm is there again in the doorway without me hearing him return. He locks eyes with me, and in that split second all of us are on the same page:tread carefully.
Conrad’s mouth is a straight line. “Father.”
“You’ve got enemies who collect leverage the way other men collect wine,” Masterson says, conversational, like he’s commenting on the weather over canapés. “Find her before someone uses her against you and by default, through you, against me.”
There’s no “how are you” or “do you need anything.” Just strategy dressed as fatherly advice. Threat disguised as concern.
Conrad’s jaw ticks. “We’re working every angle that we possibly can.”
“I’m sure you are,” Masterson says. “But you don’t have as many angles as you think. Do hurry before it’s too late.”
The line clicks dead.
No one speaks.
Conrad stares at the phone like it might grow teeth or start to walk on its own. Then he puts it down very gently, like anything else would be violence he can’t take back, and looks at us.
“Is it just me, or was that a weird conversation?” I ask.
Con inhales. “He’s an asshole. If he thinks there’s the slightest chance I care about something—” He breaks off. “We’re going to find her and bring her back. Together,” he finishes after a moment.
“Together,” I answer, and suddenly that’s a vow, not a word.
Atticus nods, eyes back on the map. Storm slides a burner across the coffee table to each of us. I dial Azzurro back and tell him we’re past the point where my charm will carry it—we’re in the place where favors are debts, and debts come with interest. He laughs and says he’s already there.
We move.
