"I didn't know," he says. Not a defense. A fact. The worst fact. "I didn't know what I was helping do."
"I know you didn't."
"How do you know that?"
I close my eyes. Open them. And then I do the thing I've been afraid to do for days.
I get up from my stool. Walk behind the bar. Reach underneath the counter where my laptop lives when I'm not using it. Bring it out.
Set it on the bar next to his.
Open it.
My spreadsheet. Seven acquisitions from the SEC filings. Delgado's five confirmed properties. The PREVIOUS OWNER column I've been filling in for a week. The NICHOLAS'S THREAD column I added yesterday, still empty.
Nicholas stares at it.
"You've been researching Coldwell," he says.
"Since the day you walked in."
"You've been—" He stops. Looks at my spreadsheet. Looks at his. Back at mine. "You have seven. I have nineteen from the project code. Langford flagged eleven personally. How many are we looking at?"
"Counting overlap — twenty-six. Same number you have."
"You knew. This whole time. You knew what they were doing."
"I knew something was wrong. I didn't know the scale until Delgado came in and told me about the other properties." I pause.
The night the wall went back up. The night I pulled away from him, went cold, reinforced every distance between us. He's doing the math — I can see it, the calculation happening in real time behind his bloodshot eyes.
"That's why you shut me out," he says. "Delgado told you Coldwell was targeting shifters and I work for Coldwell."
"Yes."
"And you thought I was — what? Part of it? Building a file on you?"
"I didn't know. Delgado thought so."
Nicholas flinches. Small, contained — the response of a man who just heard himself described as the enemy.
We sit with that. Two laptops on the bar, two spreadsheets, twenty-six properties between us. The morning light is shifting — warmer now, the first edge of sunrise touching the windows. The bar looks different at dawn. Softer. The wood grain glows. The neon signs are dark shapes, sleeping.
"You gave me info yesterday," Nicholas says. "You took a chance."
"I needed to know what you'd do with it."
"And what did I do with it?"
"You drove to my bar at dawn with a spreadsheet that proves your own company is running a systematic displacement campaign against shifters." I look at him. "That's what you did with it."
Relief crosses his face. The expression of a man who's been carrying something alone in a hotel room and just set it down in front of someone who was carrying the same thing.
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know yet. I need — I have the data but I need someone who knows what to do with it. A lawyer, maybe. Or a journalist. Someone outside Coldwell who can—"
"We need to talk to Knox."
