Nicholas's hand stops on the wood. "Knox."
"This is his bar. His decision. I've been building this case behind his back for a week and that ends now." I close my laptop. "And Nicholas — he needs to hear it from you. Not me. You're the one with the inside data. You're the one who found the project code."
"He's going to—" Nicholas stops. Recalibrates. "He's an alpha lion shifter and I'm about to tell him that my company has been systematically targeting his community. His response to that information is going to be significant."
"Knox won't hurt you."
"I know that intellectually."
"But?"
"But my body does math that my brain can't override, and the math on telling an apex predator that you're part of the thing threatening his family is not great."
"You're not part of it. Not anymore."
"I was part of it yesterday."
"And today you drove here at dawn to tell us the truth. That's not nothing."
He looks at me. The sunrise is behind him now — the window booth lit up gold, the parking lot bright, the mountains visible for the first time this morning. His face is half in shadow and half in light and his eyes are bloodshot and his sweater is wrinkled and his hands have stopped shaking.
"Why did you tell me yesterday?" he asks.
"Because Silas said trust has to start somewhere."
"That's Silas's reason. What's yours?"
I look at him. The morning light. The oak bar between us. The two laptops, the two spreadsheets, the twenty-six properties that brought us to this bar at dawn from opposite sides of the same ugly truth.
"My lion decided about you," I say. "The night you told Troy to leave. I've been fighting it for days because you work for Coldwell and wanting you was stupid and dangerous. And then you showed up in my parking lot at this morning with evidence that your own company is hurting people like me, and my lion said—"
I stop. Because the next word ismineand saying it out loud in this bar at dawn with the sunrise behind him will change everything.
"Said what?" Nicholas asks. Quiet. The quietest I've ever heard him.
"Ask me later," I say. "After Knox."
He nods. Accepts the deferral the way he accepts incomplete data — reluctantly, with the clear intention of following up.
We sit there. Two laptops. Two mugs of tea, his untouched, mine cold. The sunrise filling the bar with gold light that makes the oak glow and the dust motes float and the space between us feel like the smallest and largest distance in the world.
I lean forward. Not a lot — an inch, maybe two. The space between us compresses. I can smell him — hotel soap and coffee and the sleepless, electric scent of a man who's been running on adrenaline for twelve hours. His eyes track the movement. His pulse spikes — I hear it, the sudden acceleration, and it's not fear.
"Ezra," he says. My name in his mouth. Low, careful, the way you say something you're afraid to break.
"Yeah."
"Is this—"
"Probably a bad idea. Yes."
"I was going to sayis this where we're heading."
"Also yes."
He leans in. I lean in. The bar top is between us — the oak, Knox's grandfather's hands, sixty years — and our faces are close enough that I can see the gold flecks in his brown eyes and count the hours of sleep he didn't get.
The floorboards creak overhead.
