“How’d you get in?”
“I’m a man not many places can keep out.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the one you’re getting.”He nodded down-hall.“South run’s lazy.Camera rolls past a dead strip every forty seconds.Your guy trusts the spec sheet.”
Oren filed it away and would speak with Marsh about it tomorrow.He doubted it was true.Marsh didn’t miss shit like that.Something else was going on here.
“What brings you back here?”Oren asked, moving slightly to the left, to give himself room.“And how did you know I’d be here?”
“You always stay late.The last walk through, checking to make sure your minions haven’t done something they shouldn’t have, or taken a short cut.Can’t have the mighty Redline team fail on a build.”Carson held his gaze.“What would the world think.”
“You don’t know us that well.”Oren practically growled.
“I know enough.”His chin ticked at the plan tube.“He draws it.You make sure it stands.”
“Leave Ty out of it.”Oren growled.
“Didn’t say his name.”
“Say what you came to say.”
Carson closed the space by a step, shoulder to a stud.“You’re alone.That’s why I’m here at this time.No cameras.No chance of anyone walking in on us.Just you and me.”
Oren took a half step toward him.“If you want to take a run at me, try it.”
Carson’s smile thinned.He drew a pistol, low and neat.“Not tonight.”
Oren didn’t take his gaze from Carson’s not even to track the weapon.
“I decide when I pull the trigger.”He kept the muzzle down.“And when I do, you’ll see it coming.They all will.”
The temp light cut across his face and something snagged in Oren’s chest.Brown, he’d always thought.Not now.The eyes threw the light back—blue, cold, wrong enough to hitch his breath.For a beat there was cold concrete under his shoulder blade and a slow drip he didn’t want to remember.There was something there—something.
He blinked it off.“You going to do something now or just talk my fucking ear off.”
“Like I said, not tonight.I want a stage worthy of an audience.I just wanted to stop by and say don’t get too comfortable,” Carson’s smile turned even more vicious.“I can get to you whenever I want to.You are on my timetable.”
“You got through once,” Oren said.“You won’t again.I’ll tell Marsh, he’ll close the door.”
“Tell him.”Carson said with a shrug.“Fix the hole.Won’t matter.”Carson pushed up from the stud he leaned against.“This isn’t the final chapter of our story, Oren.I’m just getting ready.”
“For what.”
“For you to look at me and know why.”He backed away, never turning.“Tell your architect I said hello.”
“You hurt him, and I will put you through a fucking wall.”
Carson’s mouth twitched.“There he is, the monster on the inside.”He vanished into the dark.“Good night, Oren.”
He slid out the way he’d come.The building swallowed him with a scrape of grit and the soft bump of chain against scaffold—one, two, three.
Oren kept still until sound returned in layers—wind through the ducting conduits, the low hum of lights.He opened his hands and found crescents where his nails had pressed.
Facts, he told himself, he needed to remember the facts, so he had something to go on.He needed time to gather more information so that they had a place to start.Carson inside the perimeter.Unmatched boots.Slept rough.Knew cycles.Chose a corridor with no lens.Produced a weapon, set a boundary, promised a stage.And the eyes—brown, now blue.
He gathered Ty’s tube and killed the light.The corridor went to charcoal.He took the long route out, counting studs and steps because counting moved him forward without the blue of Carson’s eyes replaying in his head.
