12
CATLIKE
CALLAHAN
I'd been trying not to think about what happened with Harrow.
Not thinking about it meant focusing on other cases — simpler ones, cases where the worst thing you dealt with was corporate greed instead of a predator in a private room, where you could shower afterward and feel clean instead of spending an hour scrubbing skin that still felt marked by hands you'd let touch you.
Necessary, I told myself. Intelligence gathering required sacrifices, required crossing lines, required letting Harrow bind me and blindfold me and use me while I memorised his voice patterns and the way he moved and every detail that might prove useful later. I'd learned to compartmentalise years ago, learned to separate what happened to my body from what happened to my mind, learned to file experiences into boxes labelled “job” and “survival” and “worth it” so I could function in the aftermath.
Opening those boxes wasn't something I had the luxury of right now. Examining what I'd done, or whether the intelligenceI'd gathered justified the cost, wasn't something I had the luxury of right now. What I had was work — and work meant focusing on something that didn't leave bruises I couldn't see.
I'd been sitting in my car for three hours, watching a private equity office in Canary Wharf, drinking coffee that had gone cold an hour ago and cataloguing the movements of a man named Silas Dole. Forty-eight years old, chief financial officer at a large consulting firm whose managing director had appeared at my office looking like someone who'd already found discrepancies in the books but needed proof before going to the authorities. So here I sat, recording every movement, waiting for Dole to do something stupid enough to photograph.
Patience was currency in investigation work. Rush things and you got blurry photos, circumstantial evidence, nothing that would hold up if it went to court. Wait long enough and people always gave you what you needed.
The loading bay door opened and Dole emerged with two other men, both wearing expensive suits and both carrying briefcases that looked too heavy for documents. One of them opened the boot of a car and transferred something wrapped in plastic into Dole's separate vehicle. The exchange took ninety seconds — practiced, unhurried, done a hundred times before. I took eight photographs and got everything I needed to prove Dole was moving physical assets, not just cooking books.
Then I waited another hour.
One of the cars left. Dole stayed behind, made a phone call, and paced the loading bay like he was arguing with someone. When he finally drove away, I didn't follow. Instead I approached the warehouse on foot.
The building was registered to a shell corporation, papers filed three years ago, directors listed at addresses that didn't exist — a classic money laundering structure. I'd run the searches the previous day, traced the ownership through fourdifferent countries, and found connections to offshore accounts and property purchases that made Dole's theft look systematic rather than opportunistic. He wasn't just embezzling; he was running an entire network, siphoning millions from the firm's clients, moving the money through shell corporations, converting it into physical assets — art, jewellery, anything portable and valuable — and then selling those assets abroad for clean currency.
I photographed the warehouse exterior, documented the security cameras, the access points, the shipping schedules posted near the loading bay, and built my case with the methodical patience James had taught me years ago. Evidence first. Analysis second. Accusations only when you could prove every word.
I was walking back to my car when I felt the presence behind me — not obvious, just a shift in the air, a sound that didn't belong, the particular alertness that came from years of people wanting me hurt or dead. I didn't turn around. I adjusted my grip on the camera bag, calculated the distances to cover, and assessed my escape routes. Three men, maybe four, moving with the coordination of people who'd trained together. Not random muggers.
I kept walking and headed for busier streets where witnesses would complicate violence. The footsteps behind me matched my pace, staying close but not close enough to grab, herding me away from the crowds and toward the industrial area near the canal where screams wouldn't carry.
I could run — probably should have — and I was fast enough, knew London's back streets well enough to lose them if I committed to it. But running meant abandoning my evidence, my camera, everything I'd spent six weeks gathering.
I made it another block before they moved.
The first one came from my left, rushing me with a tackle that suggested rugby training, his shoulder aimed at my ribs. I sidestepped, used his momentum against him, and drove my elbow into the back of his skull as he passed. He went down hard, his head cracking against the pavement.
The second grabbed me from behind, got his arm around my throat and squeezed with enough pressure to make breathing difficult. I dropped my weight, made myself dead mass, then snapped my head back into his nose and felt cartilage crunch. His grip loosened. I spun inside his arms, drove my knee into his groin, and followed with a palm strike to his throat that dropped him choking to his knees.
The third was smarter. He'd hung back and let his colleagues engage first, watching how I moved, and when I turned toward him he had a knife — a seven-inch blade held low and professional, his stance suggesting he knew exactly what to do with it.
“Just walk away,” I said. “You're not getting paid enough for this.”
He smiled and came at me fast, the blade leading and his free hand ready to grab or deflect. I dodged the first slash, caught his wrist on the second, and twisted hard enough to make the bones grind. He headbutted me. Stars exploded across my vision and I tasted copper, felt blood running from my nose, but I didn't let go of his wrist.
We grappled. His knife got closer to my ribs than I liked. I hooked his leg, took us both down to the pavement, and ended up on top with his wrist still locked in my grip. I slammed his hand against the ground until the knife clattered free, then hit him once, twice, three times until his eyes rolled back and his body went slack.
I got up, grabbed my camera bag, and took stock. A bleeding nose, a split lip, ribs aching where the first tackle had clipped me despite the dodge. Nothing serious, nothing that wouldn't heal.
The fourth man stepped out of an alley.
He was bigger than the others and moved differently — calculated, patient, unhurried in the way of someone who'd learned that waiting was its own form of violence. He had a gun, held it with casual competence and aimed it at my centre mass.
“Drop the bag,” he said. “Walk away. You live.”
I calculated the odds. Considered compliance. Considered that running might work if I moved before he fully committed to shooting.
Then I heard the whistle — a sound like birdsong that had no business being in industrial London at night. The gunman's head turned toward it, just a fraction, just long enough.
