“Two cars anytime she leaves the house,” Storm says. “Staggered routes. Atticus’s trackers on phones and the new keys. No deliveries cleared without visual confirmation. Operators on outer perimeter, our team inside. Nobody assumes a uniform means friendly.”
Spencer nods and shifts his gaze to me. “You okay?”
No one else asks it quite like that. He isn’t questioning whether I can handle knowing; he’s asking if the knowing is sitting right.
“Yes,” I say. “Because I want a plan and I want this to be over more than I want to be sheltered.”
Atticus’s mouth does that small thing again. He hears rules; he likes me following them when I write them.
I go to the table and flatten the sketch with one palm. Rafe Collier looks back at me—neat, practiced, patient. The small scar near his ear is the only pout on a face that prefers not to be read. I want to put a thumb over that white line and push until I find the nerve under it. I want to be in the room when the first handcuff clicks. I want to watch him pretend to be tired of this conversation.
“What’s the play?” I ask.
“We keep you out of sight, first,” Atticus says, practical. “No lobby walks, no back corridors, noI just need toanything. If Collier worked this close to us once, he can do it again.”
“We take his money,” Storm says. “Not literally. We take the flow. Shell companies. Pay lines. If we pinch his wallet, he’ll have to move.”
“We flush him,” Maverick adds, leaning on his elbows, eyes bright. “You give the city the face without giving them you. Anonymous tips. A reward that’s not tied to us. We flood the places he thinks are safe. Dock bars. Yard crews. Men who think they’re invisible until they’re suddenly not.”
Conrad’s fingers flex around the butt of his gun, then finally—finally—he holsters it. His voice is low when he speaks, the way it gets when he’s past fury and into focus. “And I go see my father,” he says.
Atticus looks like he wants to object on principle. Storm looks like he wants to volunteer to carry the explosive. Maverick looks like he wants to go to keep it from turning into a murder charge. I look at Conrad and don’t look away.
“You go,” I say. “Because if you don’t, he’ll come. And I don’t want him in this house.”
Conrad’s jaw eases a fraction. He hates that I’m right and loves me for it. “I’m not giving him anything he can use.”
“Take a recorder,” Atticus says, already sliding one across the table. “He thinks in performative sentences. He wants witnesses even when he’s pretending he doesn’t.”
“We send him a copy of the sketch,” Storm suggests, deadpan. “With a note that says, ‘oops.’”
Maverick grins. “Tempting.”
“I think…we don’t give him anything,” I say. “If he’s dirty, we don’t give him a head start.”
Spencer exhales like he approves of the rhythm. “You have at least three good plays. Pick one to lead. Save the rest for when the board shifts.”
Atticus taps the corner of the sketch with one finger. “We lead with the docks and the money,” he decides aloud. “Maverick, you and I drive the tips without a trail back to us. Storm, you and the operators take the yards and the bars. Conrad—” He hesitates just long enough for me to watch him decide to trust the man he sometimes wants to kill. “—go see him. Short. Controlled. You do not let him pull you into water he owns.”
Conrad glances at me again. “You stay here.”
I arch a brow.
“With me,” he amends, because he’s learning. “In my head. On the phone. Not anywhere near him.”
“Better,” I say.
“Phoenix.” Atticus’s voice pulls me back from staring down at the paper and imagining it on fire. “You don’t walk around with this in your hands. We need to lock up the hard copy until Junia makes additional ones.”
I pick up the sketch and look one more time, not because I need to—he’s already branded on the inside of my eyelids—but because I like the ritual of saying I saw him, I named him, I made him real to more people than me.
Atticus takes it in a sleeve and slides it into the safe behind a framed map that looks like generational wealth and is really just expensive paper. The door clanks shut. The click sounds like a promise.
The team breaks—clean, purposeful. Comms checks. Assignments. Storm starts a list and three grown men fall in behind it like it was their idea. Spencer steps aside and lets the younger men be the sharp edge. He’s the wall that makes the edge matter.
I stand a second longer, watching the room move around a plan we actually chose and not one we were forced into.
The man without a name finally has one, and it fits his face like a collar.
