Page 77 of Rogue’s Mark

"She knows you're here," Oren says. "Has since the day you arrived. The firm, the woman in the coffee shop, all of it, she let you have it. You think you cracked something? She opened the door for you."

He smiles, and it's an ugly thing. "My boss wants to meet the people who came all this way. Says to tell you the address. Says come on up. She's not afraid of you. People like her are never afraid of people like us. That's the part you don't understand."

"Maybe," I say.

Then Sting is there, and Oren's good coat is up against the brick before he finishes turning, with Sting's forearm across his chest, quiet as a closed door.

"He's done talking," Sting says. To me, not to Oren.

We aren't going to kill him. That's not what the Rot is, whatever men like Oren tell themselves about people like us. We take his phone, we take the little gun he's carrying, and we leave him against a brick wall in the clean city he sold his soul to live in, with nothing to report that Lydia Vance doesn't already know. He's out of it. No longer useful. For now.

I don't look back at him. There's nothing back there for me. The kid from the neighborhood has been gone a long time, and the man against the wall made his choices, and I made mine. Somewhere in the difference is the whole reason I can live with myself and he can't.

By the time we regroup, Vi's already moving.

Phones work here. That's the thing about a living city. Shit works. Back home, a phone's a paperweight. Here, Armen put cheap burner phones in our hands the day we landed, because Vi's whole plan depended on reaching the rest of the world the second we had our last piece of evidence. She'd spent the last two days turning her father's case into something you could easily send at the press of a button. All the evidence was scanned, sorted, and ready to fly.

So while Oren was busy being the last word in Lydia Vance's arrogance, Vi was on hers, and what she set in motion can't be called back. Everything, including her father's case, the firm, the inside woman's road map, all of it, packaged and timed and sent as soon as the woman in the coffee shop gave us the last piece. Not to one newspaper that Lydia could buy by morning. To everywhere at once. To outlets in multiple major cities. To agencies that still answer their mail. To people who've been waiting years for this.

"It's out," Vi says. Her voice is steady but her eyes are bright. "It's out and it's everywhere and there's no putting it back in the box."

So now there's only one thing left to do.

Lydia Vance opened her door and invited us up, certain we're walking into her house to be handled.

She doesn't know her whole life went public ninety seconds ago.

"Let's go see her," Vi says with a smile.

And God help me, I've never wanted anything the way I want to be in the room for this.

52

ROGUE

Lydia Vance lives at the top of the nicest building in a city full of nice buildings.

The elevator opens straight into her place, no hallway, no door to knock on, like the rules other people follow stop applying once you're high enough up. The ceilings go on forever. There's art on the wall that costs more than the entire Rot makes in a year, a wall of glass looking out over the bright, living city, and every inch of it was paid for by a dead one. I keep my hands at my sides and I don't touch anything. It all belongs to Rothwell, as far as I'm concerned. Every dollar of it.

She's waiting for us by the window with a drink in her hand, like we're guests.

She's older than the photos the firm keeps on its respectable little website, but she carries it well, the way money lets you. Silver hair done just so. A suit that probably costs more than Oren's whole sellout coat. She looks at the four of us coming out of her private elevator and she smiles, warm and gracious, the smile of a woman who has cut a thousand ribbons and meant none of it.

"Vi Renner. We met at your father’s memorial," she says to Vi, like she's delighted. "My goodness. You have his eyes, don’t you. I’d forgotten the amazing resemblance."

I feel the room tighten. Vi doesn't move.

"You knew my father," Vi says.

"I adored your father." Lydia takes a sip of her drink. "One of the few honest men this part of the world ever produced. Such a tragedy, what happened to him."

She tosses out a small, fond smile. "I spoke at his memorial. The whole city wept. You were there, of course, front row, a devastated little thing. I sat with you afterward. Held your hand."

Vi looks like she might vomit.

The woman continues. "I don't expect you to remember, dear. Grief makes a blur of everything. But, please. Sit. You came an awfully long way to see me. The least I can do is hear you out."

Nobody sits.