"But there's nothing that I’ve heard." Nick rubbed his thumb over the edge of his coffee cup. “Except rumors about quiet deals. Back-channel money. Questionable pressure applied where official pressure wouldn’t work. Witnesses protected. Assets redirected. But if you go asking questions, no one answers with Koda's name. It's weird.”
“Assets,” Juniper whispered.
Sterling pulled another page from Mia’s stack. “The issue isn’t that Koda helped Frost or even that it could've been done without the government's official backing until after it was already in the works. If that were the only connection, I wouldn’t like it, but I could live with it because it's done all the time.”
“Generous of you,” Nick said.
“I’m known for it.”
“No one has ever said that about you.” Nick waved his finger.
Juniper reached across Sterling and took the page before the two of them could turn into middle-aged schoolboys. “What else did Mia find?” She scanned the page. Three names had been boxed. None of them meant anything to her, but Mia had drawn connecting lines to freight financing, a conference in Miami, and a policy foundation with Koda’s name on the letterhead. “These people don’t show up in the official corridor file?” she asked.
Sterling shook his head. “No. But they were there.”
Nick leaned over the island. “How do you know?”
“Seriously?” Sterling pushed the laptop toward him. “One of them stood outside a customs office in Panama wearing a red tie with a blue stain near the knot. One was listed under a different name on a hotel security log in Cartagena. The third had a shell company that bought warehouse equipment six weeks before Restrepo agreed to talk.”
Juniper stared at him.
He gave her a small shrug. “I told you. I remember details in ways that others don't. People like to call it a photographicmemory or whatever, but it's not that, exactly. I forget things just like everyone else, but when I focus, even on multiple things at once, I can remember details that others wouldn't think to track.”
“You remember useful things,” she said. "I get it."
Nick smiled into his coffee. “Careful. Compliment him too much, and he’ll organize your pantry.”
Sterling glanced down into his coffee and fiddled with the rim.
"Tell me you didn't."
"I won't lie to you," Sterling said.
“You organized my cabinets?”
“Just one." He shrugged. "You had soup next to cereal.”
“They’re both food.”
Nick laughed. “I’m so glad I came.”
Sterling pointed at the report. “Can we focus?”
“I am focused.” Juniper kept her eyes on him. “On the fact that you rearranged my kitchen.”
“It was a hostile environment.”
“My soup threatened no one.”
Nick slapped a hand over his mouth, but the laughter still managed to spill through his fingers.
Sterling sighed. “Maybe not, but you asked me to go over to your house and get a few things. I did. And then I got carried away. But we should just bring everything over here. It would be so much easier.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
"I need some popcorn," Nick said.
