Roman Breaks a Window

We make it back to Callum's loft over the old newspaper office just ahead of dark. The plan is ugly but functional: Poppy stays upstairs with the intern who still believes journalism is noble, I clone the burner phones, Callum scans the ledger, and then we call Nico before anyone else can frame the narrative. For twenty-one minutes, the plan holds.

Then the back window explodes.

The sound is so violent that my body hits the floor before thought catches up. Callum shouts from the desk. Glass rains over the editing station. Upstairs, Poppy screams my name. A brick skids across the hardwood and thuds against the filing cabinet. Wrapped around it is a strip of white fabric darkened at one edge by old lake mud.

Tessa's wrist bandage from the photograph.

Callum gets to the window first and swears. "Black SUV, no plate. Two streets over already."

I snatch the fabric from the brick and almost drop it. Written in marker across the inside seam are four words: He knows about 409.

Upstairs, I find Poppy on the landing hugging herself so hard her knuckles shine. She is trying not to shake and failing. "Was that Dad?" she asks.

"I don't know."

"Then stop saying you don't know when you mean you don't want to tell me."

I go cold all over. Callum comes up behind me with blood on the side of his neck where glass clipped him. "This is not subtle intimidation," he says. "This is someone telling us the ledger just moved into an active war."

My phone rings with Owen's name at the exact same moment. He should not know where I am. I answer before fear can organize itself.

"Where is Poppy?" he says, no greeting, voice flat as wet steel.

"Safe."

"Bring her home now."

"Why?"

He pauses, and in the pause I hear a car door shut on his end of the line, hear the muffled engine noise, hear proximity. "Because," Owen says softly, "once other people understand what is in that ledger, they will stop treating her like a child and start treating her like leverage."

I cross to the broken window and look down into the dark street. A black SUV sits at the curb with its headlights off. Owen is leaning against the passenger door, staring up at me.