“And Vi?” Rogue asks.
I knew that was coming.
“We don’t tell Vi. Not yet.”
“She’s going to lose her shit when she finds out we sat on this,” Rogue says.
“I know.”
“She’s already pissed at you for the silent treatment. Add this to the pile, and it’s going to be ugly.”
“I know that too. But if we tell Vi right now, she’ll go straight at him. You know she will. She’ll confront his ass before we have anything solid, and he’ll deny it and walk out of the Rot tonight never to be seen again. And if he is Fischer, we lose the one connection we have to the people who destroyed this town.”
Rogue looks at Armen. Armen looks at me.
“Yeah,” Armen says slowly. “We watch. Gather info. When we have something solid, we bring her in. But it needs to be soon, Sting. We can’t sit on this for long.”
“I agree,” I say.
Rogue leans back and stares at the ceiling through the broken glass. “If this guy is really Fischer, he’s been here the whole time. Living with us. Eating our food. And we never noticed.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That part I’m very pissed about.”
“Join the club.”
We sit with it for a minute, three men in a room with cracked glass and bad lighting, looking at two pieces of paper that might mean nothing, or might mean everything.
Then Armen stands. “I’ll take mornings. I can adjust my rounds to keep him in sight without it looking unusual.”
“I’ve got afternoons,” Rogue says. “He comes through the neutral zone most days around two. I’ll be there.”
“I’ll handle nights,” I say. “And the trade records. If he’s been writing requisitions, there’s more samples. I’ll build a comparison.”
Armen nods. Rogue nods. We’re in agreement. It feels good for the three of us to be in a room with a plan, working a problem together, each taking a piece. This is what we do. This is how we built this place.
I’ve been paralyzed by evidence I couldn’t process and feelings I couldn’t express. Now, I’ve got a target, a threat. It’s something I can track, contain, and deal with.
It’s the first time in a long time I’ve had something I can grab onto—and I’m not letting it get away.
49
VI
I finally meetthe famous Tommy.
Mara brings him over at lunch, just walking up to the communal table where I’m eating something that might be soup.
“Vi, this is Tommy. Tommy, this is my best friend I keep telling you about.”
He’s not what I expected. I don’t know what I expected, honestly. After the fight with Mara, I’d built him up in my head as some kind of threat, which was unfair because I was projecting my own paranoia onto a guy I’d never met. Standing in front of me, Tommy is just… a guy. Mid-forties. Average height, average build. Thinning hair, friendly face, a man you’d stand behind in a grocery store line and forget about by the time you got to the register.
“Heard a lot about you,” he says. Warm smile. Firm handshake. His hand is dry and his grip is measured, not too strong, not too weak. “Mara talks about you constantly.”
“Good things, I hope.”
“Nothing but.” He pulls up a chair and sits down across from me, easy, comfortable, the body language of a man who’s at home in this space. “She says you’re doing important work. Figuring out some things about your family.”
I glance at Mara and she gives me a small shrug.I didn’t say that much.
