Vance signaled another round. The bar noise filled the gaps, and somewhere between the second beer and the third, the conversation loosened the way it did when the work faded and the people underneath started to show.
Vance set down his glass and looked at us. “Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot,” Donovan said.
“Citadel. What’s it actually like? Not the pitch you gave Rawlings. What’s the day-to-day?”
The question carried no angle I could detect. His posture was open, his voice curious. A cop sitting across a table after a long night, turning over the question of what else existed.
“Varied,” I said. “No two contracts look the same. Lastyear, we did executive protection in Dubai, then turned around and worked a missing persons case in Montana.”
“And Jolly?”
“The firm lets me build contracts around his capabilities. Tracking, detection, apprehension. When the work shifts, we shift with it.”
“And the bureaucracy?” Vance peeled the label on his bottle with his thumbnail. “Government work’s eighty percent paperwork. How’s that ratio look on the private side?”
“Better,” Donovan said. “Shorter chain of command. Fewer people between the decision and the action.”
“Less red tape, more autonomy.” Vance nodded slowly. “I can see the appeal.”
Donovan grinned. “Careful, or Citadel’s going to recruit you. That’s twice I’ve made that threat.”
Vance laughed—relaxed, real. “Summit Falls is home. But I might be tempted.”
“Let me know if you’re truly tempted. I can talk to Ethan Cross.” I took a small sip of my beer. I was still on number one in order to keep my edge. “You married?”
“Once almost. Dodged a bullet.” He chuckled, then his eyes dropped to the table, and when he spoke again, his voice was quieter. “You ever get tired of it, though? The moving. Never putting down roots.”
“That’s the trade,” I said. “Freedom costs something. Some people think it’s worth it.”
“And the ones who get tired of paying?”
“They settle somewhere. Take local contracts. Build something where they want to be. Citadel doesn’t chain anyone to the field.” Something I’d been thinking more about in the past few days than I had my entire career.
Vance rolled the strip of label between his fingers. His face held the expression of a man standing at a window,looking at a landscape he hadn’t visited yet. Not longing exactly. Inventory. The quiet arithmetic of a life weighed against its alternatives.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Citadel had a new employee within the next few months.
The waitress checked on us, and the conversation shifted to the department’s softball team. I let my attention wander. Sports didn’t matter to me.
But they definitely mattered to Martinez. Sometime during the Citadel conversation, the older man had quietly worked through a few more whiskeys. His phone was facedown on the bar top. First time I’d seen that. His shoulders had dropped away from his ears, his hands moved when he talked instead of hovering over a screen, and his voice carried across the room in a way it never did during working hours.
The basketball game on the TV had his full attention. Not casual viewing. He was leaned forward on his stool, tracking the score with the locked-in focus of a man who had money riding on the outcome.
When one team hit a three-pointer, his fist came down hard enough on the bar to rattle the whiskey glass. When the other team forced a turnover, he muttered to the officer beside him in the rapid shorthand of someone who knew spreads and lines the way other people knew weather forecasts.
“Come on, come on, hold the lead.” He was loud enough that the bartender looked over. Then to the officer on the next stool, he said, “No way they blow a six-point cushion with four minutes left. No way.”
The officer laughed and said something I couldn’t catch. Martinez shook his head. “You don’t understand. I need this. I amduea win tonight.”
Nothing about those words was incriminating on its own.Any guy watching a game said things like that. But most guys didn’t track the score with white knuckles, and most guys didn’t sayI need thisabout a game between two teams with no connection to their life.
Jace had said the online gambling stopped. Watching Martinez track that game—the spreads, the lines, the fist on the bar when the score moved—it looked less like it had stopped and more like it had moved somewhere Jace’s data couldn’t follow.
A local book. Cash bets. Something that wouldn’t show up in a digital footprint but would explain the irregular deposits that didn’t match his pay schedule.
Donovan had clocked it too. I could tell from the angle of his body. He looked casual to anyone watching, but had oriented himself so Martinez stayed in his peripheral vision. He hadn’t said a word. Neither had I. When our eyes met across the table, the look lasted exactly long enough to confirm we were holding the same thought.
