Hollis was wrong.
The Ledger wasn’t what it started as.
They went too far.
You keep looking underground.
The answers aren’t under the city.
The words circled in my head, looping over and over until they started to lose meaning.
Gene had known the system was rotten because he had helped rot it.He had signed papers he shouldn’t have signed.Helped hide a tunnel that shouldn’t have existed.Helped build the monster that was now eating its own.
And then they killed him.
Not because he betrayed them years ago.But because he might betray them now.
Wheels moved me toward the couch.“Sit.”
“I don’t want to sit.”
“Sit anyway.”
I looked up at him.
His eyes were hard, but not at me.Never at me.
I sat.Mostly because my knees had started shaking and I didn’t want everyone to see.
Wheels sat beside me, close enough that his thigh pressed against mine.He didn’t ask if I needed him.He just stayed.
Tempi sat on my other side.
She didn’t hug me.She didn’t ask what I saw.She simply reached over and took my hand.
I held on.
Britta stood near Swift, both arms wrapped around herself.“They killed their own guy?”
“They killed a loose end,” Hodge said from near the bar.
His voice was flat.Cold.
He hadn’t taken his cut off.Hadn’t sat down.Hadn’t stopped moving since we walked inside.He paced from the bar to the front window and back again like he needed something to hit and didn’t care what it was.
Gramps looked at him.“Sit down before you wear a path in the floor.”
Hodge didn’t even glance at him.“No.”
“Fine.Keep stomping.Maybe you’ll find another secret hatch.”
No one laughed.
Gramps looked down into his coffee.“Too soon?”
“Yeah,” Method muttered from the hallway.
Twister walked to the middle of the room.“We need to talk through what he said before any of it gets lost.”
