Marcus texts a dossier to my secure line. I open it.
The politician's son has a name. Richard Hennessy Jr. Father sits on a federal finance committee. Money moves through three shell companies into the son's real estate portfolio. Simone had photos. Wire transfers. A source inside the accounting firm who went dark two weeks ago.
I scroll. I note vehicles. A black Escalade registered to one of the shells. A silver pickup registered to a known associate, ex-enforcer out of Montreal named Luc Tremblay. Tremblay's the one I watch for. He's the one who'd come for her.
I memorize the plate numbers.
I'm ten minutes in when I hear her in the kitchen. Bare feet on hardwood. The click of the fridge. The soft sound of a woman who's trying to pretend she's fine.
I get up.
She's at the stove in the leggings and the tee, braids pulled over one shoulder, a pan in her hand and two eggs on the counter. She doesn't look up when I come in.
"You want some."
"No."
"You need to eat, Mercer."
"Later."
"Now."
She cracks a third egg into the pan without asking.
I watch her a second. The small economy of her movements. The way she salts without measuring. The way she stands with her weight on one hip, relaxed, in a cabin she got a threat delivered to an hour ago.
Stubborn like our mama, Marcus said.
Stubborn like she'd cook breakfast in the middle of a firefight if she was hungry.
I sit down at the counter because I'm supposed to be maintaining energy and because sitting down gives me something to do with my hands that isn't watching the line of her neck.
She slides a plate in front of me. No comment. Just eggs and toast and a fork.
Then she sits across from me with her own plate and eats like we're not hunted.
I eat too.
Quiet kitchen. Forks on plates. A woman across from me I've known for three hours who already feels like a problem I'm going to fail.
I take a bite.
She smiles at the wall like she's won something.
Maybe she has.
4
SIMONE
Ican't sleep.
Not really a surprise. The last time I slept well was two weeks ago in my own bed, before a dead sparrow showed up on my welcome mat with its little neck turned the wrong way. I've been running on caffeine and spite since.
The cabin is quiet in a way I'm not used to. My apartment in Toronto has the low hum of traffic and the upstairs neighbor's boyfriend arguing with his mother on speaker. Here it's just the creak of the logs settling and the occasional thing I choose not to identify moving through the trees.
And one more thing.
