Chapter 330: Let Her Go

Lucas stayed in the hallway a little longer than he meant to.

The message from Lena came through while the bass from the main room still leaked under the door. Names. Numbers. Short notes beside a few of them. It was clean work. Useful work. The kind of thing he had been waiting for all evening.

He scrolled once.

Then again, slower.

One investor name made him pause. Another sat close enough to Durnik’s circle to matter. He forwarded the list to himself a second time out of habit, locked the phone, and only then realized how long he had been standing there.

Rechelle was still at the table.

That thought pushed him off the wall.

He started back toward the floor.

---

On the main floor, the four men moved as soon as Lucas disappeared from view.

Not all at once. Not in a rush that would draw every eye in the room. One drifted first, angling toward the side of the bar where the staff came and went. Another followed a wider line through the crowd and stopped near the corridor Lucas had used. The last two went straight for the table covered in empty and half-empty bottles.

Rechelle did not notice the first change.

She was too busy with the next beer.

The bottle felt lighter in her hand than it should have. Her head had that warm lag behind it, the kind that made the music feel thicker and the lights a little softer at the edges. She blinked once, hard, and tried to sit up straighter. The room did not spin. Not yet. But it had stopped being sharp.

A chair scraped near her.

She looked over.

One of the muscular men from earlier had taken the seat across from her without asking. Up close he looked even broader through the shoulders, neck thick, eyes flat. He smiled like someone trying to copy the shape of friendliness from memory.

"You ordering for the whole house?" he asked, nodding at the bottles.

Rechelle stared at him for a second too long.

"What?"

"The beer," he said. "That’s a lot for one girl."

She made a vague sound and reached for another bottle anyway. "Not your table."

The man did not leave.

Behind her, near the path back toward the toilets, the second man had already stopped walking. He stood with his body half-turned to the room, close enough to the corridor mouth that anyone coming back from that direction would have to pass him. He was not looking at Rechelle. He was watching the hallway.

The third man stayed by the bar, blocking an easy cut toward the front.

The fourth remained near the side wall, eyes moving between the table and the floor.

It was a shape more than a scene.

A closing shape.

Rechelle drank.

Some of the beer missed her mouth and wet the side of her hand. She wiped it on her thigh, frowned at the bottle, and only then looked at the man across from her again.

"You still here?"

"Just talking."

"I didn’t ask for talking."

He leaned forward a little, elbows on the table, still smiling. "Your friend left you alone. That doesn’t seem smart in a place like this."

Rechelle’s eyes narrowed, slow and unfocused.

"My friend," she said, "is coming back."

"Is he?"

Something in the way he said it finally poked through the alcohol.

She glanced toward the corridor.

The path looked longer than she remembered.

And there was a man standing in it.

---

Lucas stepped out of the quieter hallway and into the noise again.

The music hit first. Then the heat of bodies. Then the sight line to the table.

He saw the empty space where he had been sitting.

He saw Rechelle still there.

And he saw the man seated across from her.

Lucas’s walk changed without him deciding to change it.

He did not run. Running in a packed bar made people look, and people looking made everything harder. But the ease went out of his shoulders. His eyes moved once across the room and caught the second man near the corridor, then the one by the bar, then the one at the wall.

Four.

Same four.

Not drinking.

Not blending.

Working.

Lucas cut between two groups of shouting men and kept going.

At the table, the man across from Rechelle had put his hand on one of the bottles, turning it idly like he had all the time in the world.

"You’re pretty far gone," he said. "Maybe you should come outside. Get some air."

Rechelle laughed once, short and rough.

"You first."

"I’m serious."

"So am I."

She tried to stand and failed on the first attempt. The chair caught her thigh. She grabbed the table hard enough to rattle the remaining bottles and stayed half-up, glaring at him with drunk pride and real irritation mixed together.

"Don’t touch me."

"I haven’t."

"Don’t."

The man near the corridor shifted a step closer to the center of the path.

Lucas saw that too.

He was still several bodies away.

---

Lena’s message buzzed in his pocket again.

Probably the rest of the contacts. Probably a note he needed. Probably the exact kind of information he had left the table to get.

He did not look at it.

Rechelle’s arm had been taken.

Not roughly enough to make the whole bar turn. Just firmly enough that her balance, already bad, went worse. The man across from her stood with her, one broad hand closed around her upper arm, body angled toward the side of the room instead of the front entrance.

"Outside," he said, still using that false calm voice. "You’re done for the night."

"Get off."

"Stop making it loud."

"I said get off!"

Her voice rose on the last word. A couple near the next table glanced over, then looked away when they saw the size of the man holding her. Nobody moved to help. In a place this noisy, a short struggle could still look like a drunk girl being guided out by a patient friend if no one watched carefully.

Lucas watched carefully.

He pushed past a server with a tray, ignored the complaint behind him, and closed the last of the distance.

"Let her go."