East doesn't look at her. "Good."
Candace smirks. "He's in his nesting era."
East's eyes flick up, sharp, warning-bright. "Say that again and I'm charging you rent."
Darla threads her fingers through his at her hip and gives them a small squeeze.
Kyle drifts from the pool table with a beer he isn't drinking, eyes too alert.
Nash flicks a glance at him. "Gonna pace a trench into my floor?"
"I'm acclimating."
"To what?"
"Being in a room with people who could kill me without spilling their drinks."
Frankie calls out, "That's everyone in this room, Kyle."
Kyle points his beer at her. "Exactly."
I guide Sloane into the seat beside me and brace forward, elbows on the table. Might as well start with what I know.
"Harrison showed up at the hospital today."
The room goes still.
"Second contact," I continue. "First was the café. Today he escalated. Approached Sloane during her shift. Cornered her at the nursing station." My jaw locks. "Grabbed her wrist when she tried to walk away."
Candace's spine goes rigid. East straightens off the post.
"He let go when I got there. Played it off. Polite. Reasonable." The word tastes of rust. "When we left, his car was in the lot. Far corner. Engine off, window down. Watching us leave."
Malachi's fingers drum once against the bar. "He's done testing."
"Yeah," I say. "He's planting flags."
Sloane sits motionless beside me. Her hand finds my thigh under the table, fingers digging in.
Arden's voice carries from the far wall, measured and unhurried. "It's worse than flags." Heads turn. He pushes off the wall and steps forward, arms loose at his sides. "I've been running surveillance on Harrison Mercer for the past seventy-two hours. He's not operating solo. He's got two men rotating outside the hospital. Different cars, different plates, same parking pattern. They've been logging Sloane's schedule. Start time, end time, which entrance she uses, who picks her up."
Sloane's grip bites deeper into my thigh.
"There's a third on the clubhouse perimeter. Drives by twice a day; photographs the gate. He also has someone on the house. Knox and Sloane's house. From a rental two streets south, leased under a shell company out of Chicago."
The silence that follows is heavy enough to hold.
Nash's hand drops from the pool table felt. His jaw locks, a muscle firing once, and his eyes stay fixed on Arden with the controlled stillness of a man recalculating every assumption he's made in the last two weeks. "That's on me." Flat. No deflection. "Rotating contractors under shell cover. I was scanning for known faces, not hired ones."
"How long?" I ask. My voice is level. The rest of me isn't.
"At least a week. Possibly longer. They're patient. Methodical."
"A campaign," Phoenix says, low.
Arden nods. "He's mapping your entire life. Routines. Relationships. Pressure points. He's building a case file for an extraction."
Sloane's breathing changes beside me. Turns shallower. Faster. I lay my hand over hers on my thigh and hold.
