“Selene,” he said, his voice cracking. “The thing that happened… with Eamon. I’m… I mean, the statistical probability of a gas leak was always… I mean…”
He stopped, taking a breath.
“I’m really sorry about your father. He was a good man.”
It was clumsy and awkward and perfectly Orin.
“Thanks, Orin,” I said softly. I reached out and squeezed his arm for a second. He gave a small, quick nod, his gaze dropping to the floor. We both knew there weren't enough words for a loss like this.
Mira turned away from me then, her eyes landing on Dane. He was leaning against the doorframe, watching us. He looked tired, pale, and in pain.
Mira’s expression softened. The professional mask dropped completely.
“And you,” she said, walking over to him. “You signed the waiver.”
“I’m fine, Mira.”
“You’re an idiot.” Her voice was quiet, intimate. She reached out, her hand resting gently on his chest, right over his heart. “You shouldn’t be out of that bed.”
Dane didn’t draw back. He covered her hand with his own. “I couldn’t stay there. Not with this happening.”
They looked at each other. A silent conversation passed between them—worry, history, and a spark that hadn’t quite gone out. The hospital stay had changed something; it had stripped away the bickering.
“Sit down,” she ordered him, but there was no bite in it. “Before you fall to the floor.”
Dane obeyed, sinking back onto the sofa. Mira sat on the armrest beside him, her hand lingering on his shoulder.
“Right,” she said, looking at me. “Orin said you put him to work.”
“I did.” I gestured to the small coffee table. “Orin, walk us through the data you pulled this morning.”
Orin scrambled to clear the empty mugs and opened his laptop. He typed furiously for a moment, bringing up the files he had been compiling since my call, bypassing firewalls I didn’t even want to know about.
“Okay,” Orin said. “You called me earlier, asked me to dig into Varessia Quinn. Specifically the guard found at the Industrial Crescent—the one she claimed was her employee.”
“Miller Cross was a low-level thug until three months ago,” Orin explained. “Then he vanished off the grid. His bank account didn’t. He started receiving weekly deposits from Aegis Logistics—the security firm we already tied to Quinn Enterprises.”
“We know she hired him,” Dane said. “That’s not a crime.”
“No,” Mira cut in. “But what he was doing is.”
She pulled a flash drive from her pocket and tossed it onto the table.
“I ran the autopsy on Cross before Varessia showed up to claim the body,” she said. “When we still had access. I saved the data locally, off the main server, just in case Darian tried to wipe it.”
She looked at me, grim satisfaction in her eyes.
“That guard was more than augmented, Selene. He was pumped full of volatile, experimental compounds. His adrenal glands were shredded. His heart was twice the size it should be. Whatever they were injecting him with, it was killing him long before his neck was broken.”
“Illegal magical experimentation,” Dane said. “That’s ACD jurisdiction. Darian will bury it.”
“He would,” I said, scanning the spreadsheet on Orin’s screen. “If we charged her with a magical crime.”
My gaze snagged on a column near the bottom. A sudden clarity snapped into place. “Orin,” I said, standing up. “Print it. All of it.”
“What are you looking for?”
“A loophole Darian Morrow can’t close.” I grabbed my jacket, the fatigue in my bones vanishing under a flood of pure adrenaline. “We only need to prove she’s a bad employer.”
