Chapter 71: Fryday mornings 1

If she falls, I buy the dip. Andrew handles campus noise. Charles handles files.

"Copies?" Logan asked.

"This is the last clean set. Paul thinks I shredded. I kept it because I am not a loyal dog. I am a man who wants a job in a city that still has jobs."

"Immunity is not mine to sell. Counsel can hear you. Mara can hear you. I can walk you in. I cannot wash you."

Charles laughed once, miserable.

"Then walk me in tonight. If I sleep in my own house I will not wake up useful."

They almost made it to the side door.

The pin in Logan’s pocket jumped.

Night Watch: two vehicles incoming. No badges. Thirty seconds.

Logan shoved the folder into his jacket and grabbed Charles by the arm.

"Service trench. Move."

They dropped into a maintenance cut that smelled like wet rust. Above them doors opened without courtesy. Voices. Paul’s voice was not among them. Andrew’s was.

"He is here. Charles texted from this cell. Find the folder."

Charles’s face went gray.

"I did not—"

"You did," Logan said. "Or your phone did. Same result."

Boots on concrete. A light swept the warehouse floor.

Logan kept Charles down until the light passed, then moved them toward the far loading slit where Night Watch had said they could extract.

They were three steps from the slit when a gray shirt dropped into the cut from above and put a stun device into Charles’s ribs.

Charles folded.

The folder was in Logan’s jacket. The gray shirt reached for Logan next.

Counterweight did not fire. This was not public. This was a trench.

The Physical Guard Charm was already spent from last night.

Logan took the hit in the shoulder and stayed up because the physique upgrade refused to let a student die in rust. He put his forehead into the man’s nose and felt cartilage give. The stun device clattered. Logan kicked it into the dark, dragged Charles by the collar, and burst through the slit into night air.

A Night Watch car was already sliding sideways to cover them. They threw Charles in first, Logan second. The car left rubber on a road Paul did not own.

Charles came back to himself six minutes later, vomiting into a bag, swearing he had not sent the text.

Logan checked the phone.

A silent outgoing ping at 8:02. Not a text. A live share. Andrew had been in the conversation as a ghost contact Charles had never cleaned.

"You are going to sit in counsel’s office until Friday," Logan said. "You are going to tell the truth because the lie already tased you."

Charles nodded with tears he would deny later.

At the firm, the folder changed hands. Copies bloomed. 170 names became a list with teeth.

Stephanie arrived without being asked. She read Paul’s note and sat down very carefully, as if the chair might be part of the trap.

"This is enough to end him," she said. "It is also enough to make him try something that is not a board."

Logan knew.

Caroline called. Brandon was finally asleep in a different unit. She had watched the warehouse pin move and had not screamed at him on the line. That was love or discipline. Maybe both.

"Come back when the list is not on your body," she said.

"It is not on my body."

"Then come back anyway."

He did, late, smelling like rust and a stun charge that had missed his heart.

Stephanie did not come with him. She stayed with counsel to watch copies multiply.

The new unit was smaller. Caroline opened the door in a shirt that belonged to no husband and pulled Logan in by the wrecked shoulder.

"Show me you are here," she said.

It was not a strategy meeting.

Logan put her against the closed door and kissed her until the warehouse left his mouth. Perverted Hands woke because she was bound now and the skill recognized its own. Heat ran from his palms into the heavy curve of her ass, up her back, into the undersides of her breasts when he pushed the shirt away. Caroline moaned into his teeth like she hated how much she had waited.

He took her on the bed that was supposed to be only a safe place. Slow at first because his shoulder burned. Then harder when she told him not to treat her like glass. She came with her thighs locked around him and her mouth on the unbruised side of his face. He finished in her because she asked, same as Stephanie had asked, and the system recorded it without poetry.

[Caroline intimacy registered]

[Attraction +1600]

[Caroline multiplier 5x]

[Brandon remains asleep one wall away in the other room of a split unit]

[Risk: high]

[Host, you are building a house on a live wire]

Logan lay there with Caroline’s thigh over his and listened to a boy sleep on the other side of cheap plaster.

Friday was one sleep away.

Andrew still had a father.

And Charles’s phone had taught everyone in this story that a ghost contact can open a warehouse.

Friday arrived like a verdict wearing a suit.

Hydra’s full board floor had more glass than mercy. Logan came in through witness access with a swollen cheek and a shoulder that argued when he lifted a bag. Counsel walked beside him. Charles walked behind them looking like a man who had chosen the least lethal firing squad.

Stephanie was already at the table. Navy again. Ring still off. The absence of gold made a louder statement than jewelry would have.

Paul sat across from her with Andrew one chair down. Paul looked rested. That was the most threatening thing about him. Andrew looked like a street clip. Someone had covered the slap with makeup and failed.

Mara Quinn was not in the room. Her six o’clock was. Phones were supposed to be off. Nobody’s hands were that obedient.

Alfred opened the sitting.

Packets moved.

The laptop chain.

The wellness language.

The library wrist.

The street slap and Counterweight’s file.

The 170 names.