Older sins.
Inside, the waitress glances at me once and decides I’m not worth the conversation. Smart woman. I take the back booth, the one with a mirror behind the register that gives me a partial view of the entrance if I angle my head right.
Jenson is late by seven minutes.
Not enough to mean anything.
Enough to irritate me.
When he finally walks in, he looks as if hell carved itself into a man’s shape. Leaner than I remember. Beard rougher. Left shoulder stiff, an old injury making a season out of him. He seesme, hesitates, then comes over with the kind of caution men learn when they’ve survived too much to waste themselves on pride.
“Ryder.”
“Jenson.”
He slides into the booth opposite me and looks at the coffee with intent.
“You still drink that swill?” he asks.
“I still meet men who make me need it.”
That gets the smallest curve of his mouth.
Doesn’t last.
The waitress drops a mug in front of him. He waits until she’s gone, until the cook in the back slams something metal and the truckers near the window laugh too loud about nothing, before he reaches inside his jacket and puts a thick manila envelope on the table.
I don’t touch it yet.
“What am I looking at?”
“Proof,” he says. “Enough of it to tell you I’m done pretending Cole’s just posturing.”
My hand settles on the envelope.
Paper.
Photos.
Maybe a drive if he’s smarter than he used to be.
“Talk.”
Jenson leans back and scrubs a hand over his mouth. “He’s not trying to scare you anymore. He’s committed.”
“I figured that out when he sent men to a storage unit instead of showing up himself.”
Jenson’s mouth tightens. “If he wanted you dead, Rye, you’d be dead. That wasn’t the play.”
I go still.
“That was pressure,” he adds. “Close enough to hurt. Not enough to finish it. He wanted to see how fast you move, who you protect first… how messy you get when it matters. Look.”
That gets my attention sharper than it was already.
I open the envelope.
Photos first.
