Luka called again at 1:17 p.m.
“You're not going to like this,” he said without preamble.
“Tell me anyway.”
“Mercer's been investigating several of the people who attended Viktor's wedding. I cross-referenced his known cases against the guest list. Twelve matches. All of them connected to legal corruption in some way. Sealed evidence. Disappeared witnesses. Cases that closed too fast.”
My jaw tightened. “Is Viktor a target?”
“No. Viktor's clean. But some of his guests aren't. And if Mercer's building a case that involves any of them, he might consider Viktor collateral damage.”
“Not acceptable.”
“Agreed. Which is why you need to find out what he's hunting before he drags Viktor into it.” A pause, weighted. “Mercer's last partner died three years ago. Same week Mercer lost his badge. Official report says accident. Mercer filed seventeen complaints saying otherwise. Nobody listened.”
“He thinks it was murder.”
“He knows it was murder. Difference being he can't prove it. And that kind of certainty without proof makes men dangerous.” Luka's voice carried a warning I recognised. “Be careful with this one, Dom. He's not a civilian playing detective. He's a professional who stopped caring about rules when the rules failed him.”
“Understood.”
I ended the call and sat with the file Luka sent me. Callahan Mercer. Thirty-eight years old. Former detective. Current ghost. Hunting corruption through London's elite with the focus of someone who had no intention of stopping.
I understood that focus. Lived it myself. The difference was I knew my sister was dead and I was looking for truth. Mercer's partner was dead and he was looking for revenge dressed up as justice.
Unpredictable. Willing to cross lines I'd respect under different circumstances and couldn't afford to tolerate when they threatened people under my protection.
I needed to talk to him. Face to face. Somewhere without witnesses or cameras or the careful protocols that governed places like Eden.
I just needed to find him first.
I foundhim at a coffee shop in Clerkenwell, three blocks away from a storage unit Luka's file flagged as his secondary workspace. He sat at a window table with a laptop and coffee that had probably gone cold an hour ago, looking different in daylight — less polished than he'd been at the wedding, more real than he'd seemed in Eden's staged atmosphere. Just a man in dark clothes, working.
Except he wasn't as oblivious as he looked. His gaze flicked to the window every ninety seconds, scanning the street, checking approaches. He sat with his back to the wall and clear sight lines to both exits, posture that looked casual but could transition to movement in under a second.
He knew someone might be watching. The general awareness of prey who'd learned predators existed.
I waited across the street, patient. Patience was a weapon I'd spent years honing. I could hold position for hours if necessary, tracking movement, learning patterns, understanding the architecture of a target's routine until I knew where they'd be before they did.
When he left, I followed at distance — two car lengths back when he walked, staying in traffic when he caught the Tube. Hemoved through London with purpose and no hesitation, until he didn't.
His pattern shifted somewhere past Liverpool Street. Small changes: an extra turn, a doubled-back route, the adjustments of a man who'd clocked a tail and was testing whether it was real or paranoia. I stayed back, let him think he'd lost me, watched from doorways and reflective windows and the thousand small hiding places a city offered people who knew how to use them.
He led me east, into the maze between Shoreditch and Spitalfields where old buildings pressed close and alleys cut through blocks like veins. Foot traffic thinned, cameras grew fewer, the streets narrowing into something less forgiving.
Then he turned into an alley. Narrow. A dead-end visible thirty metres in.
I stopped at the mouth of it, calculating. This was deliberate — he'd chosen this ground, created the conditions for confrontation on his own terms.
Trap or invitation, I couldn't tell. I entered anyway.
He stood halfway down with his back to the dead-end wall, hands loose at his sides, weight balanced and ready to move. Those mismatched eyes tracked me as I approached.
“You're persistent,” he said. Voice steady. No fear. “I'll give you that.”
“You made it easy.” I stopped three metres away. “Almost like you wanted to be followed.”
“Maybe I did. Maybe I was curious what kind of man spends his afternoon tailing a private investigator through London.”
