Page 70 of Rogue’s Mark

Nobody argues. Nobody tells me to sit down and let the grown-ups handle it. Nobody reminds me I've been here only a few months and they've been here years. They just look at me, and then they look at each other, and something changes the air in the room that I can feel even if I couldn't name it a few months ago.

They're not humoring me. They're following me.

I came into this place a Runt with nothing but a dead father and a dream. Now I'm standing in the ops room with a plan and the most dangerous men in the Rot waiting to hear the next part.

I think about my father in his room above the print shop, who did all of this alone and lost everything for it. I think about how I'm not going to.

"Okay," I say. "Let's talk about how we get into that firm."

46

VI

We spend the next hour building out our plan, and somewhere in that hour I notice something I've never felt in this room before.

I'm running it.

Not sitting in on yet another meeting. Not taking notes while the guys decide. Running shit. I lay out the order things have to happen in, and the guys listen, and then they do the thing that still catches me off guard every time. They go along with what I’m saying.

Let me repeat that.

They go along with what I’m saying.

I don’t want to gloat, so I continue. "We pull the firm apart in two places at once," I say. "I keep working the documents. Fischer's signature is the thread that climbs from the shell companies up into the firm, and the deeper I go, the more of them I can name. That part's mine. Nobody reads this paper faster than I do anymore."

"No argument," Armen says.

I keep waiting for the “but.” It doesn't come.

"Second, we need somebody who knows the firm from the inside, or close to it. Somebody who was there before everything fell apart." I look at Rogue. "We already have her. Alice flagged the firm in the first place. She knows more than she's said. She always does. I want to go to her today, if she'll see me."

"I'll take you," Rogue says. No hesitation, no checking with anyone else first.

"Third." I turn to Sting. "The firm doesn't operate out of Rothwell anymore. Whatever's left of them moved when the city did. I need to know where they landed, and I need it quiet. No noise."

Sting nods.

It's Rogue who says the hard part out loud, because somebody has to.

"You understand what we're walking into." He's not arguing, just making sure it's on the table. "These aren't Fischer. They're not even Voss. These are the people who sent a man into our building to trade for your father's location and then disappeared without a trace. They don't lose. As far as I can tell, they never have."

"I know." And I do. I've thought about it more than any of them realize, lying awake with my father's papers and the cold fact that while Dad’s gotten closer to them than anyone, it’s left him hiding for life. "Which is why we don't go at them head-on. We don't kick the firm's door in and announce ourselves. We take it apart quietly, one signature at a time, until we've got so much that the people at the top can't make it disappear no matter who they pay. By the time they realize we're coming, it's already everywhere."

I tap the folder.

"My father went at them alone, in the open, and they buried him for it. We do the opposite of everything he did, except the part where we don't quit."

Nobody disagrees. Even Sting's mouth does something that, in poor light, you might mistake for approval.

And that's it. I gave three people three jobs and not one of them looked to anyone else to see if it was really okay. A few months ago I'd have softened every sentence into a question. Do you think maybe we should…? What if we tried…? Now I just say the thing, and shit happens.

I head for the east stairwell to clear my head before we leave for Alice's.

That's when I round the corner by the old food court and nearly walk straight into Mara and Kade.

Kissing.

Not a careful, deniable, maybe-that-didn't-happen kiss, either. Mara's got both hands fisted in the front of Kade's jacket and Kade's got one hand in her hair, and they are extremely busy, and they have clearly forgotten that the Rot is a building other people walk through.