Page 68 of Bar Down

He took that moment to study her, because watching her when she didn’t know he was watching was something he only allowed himself rarely. When she was presenting, when she was spinning gold from chaos in press briefings, when she was tapping her pen against her lip while reading reports she’d never admit he’d written better than the league’s own analysts.

She looked wired. Not jittery. Just alive. Like her blood was still moving at double-speed and she hadn’t found the off switch. She finally spotted him and made a beeline for the booth, cutting through the noise like a signal through static.

She slid into the booth beside him without ceremony. Close enough that her coat brushed his arm. She didn’t speak right away.

Marcus waited.

Finally, she exhaled. “I put the laptop back without anyone noticing.”

Marcus nodded once. Relief moved through his chest like a weighted blanket, grounding him, but he kept his reaction minimal. There were still too many variables.

“You sure?” Chenny asked.

“Yeah, Reed was too busy trying to charm Westfield into thinking he invented analytics.”

Marcus blinked. “Did it work?”

She didn’t answer right away. “Kind of.”

That dropped like a puck to center ice. “What do you mean?”

Stephanie looked down at the table, then back at them. “That slippery snake found a way in. I’m still head of Communications, but Westlake offered him head of Analytics.”

The logic short-circuited for a beat.

Chenny made a sharp sound from across the booth. “So I punch a guy, get sussied, and he gets promoted. Nice.”

Stephanie didn’t meet his eyes. “I didn’t see it coming.” She kept her voice steady, but Marcus could see it in the strain around her mouth.She already blames herself.

“I thought we stopped him,” Chenny muttered. “We burned his leverage.”

“We did,” she said. “But he didn’t need the blackmail to climb. He just needed the moment.”

Marcus’s thoughts spun through every angle. They’d neutralized the immediate threat—yes. But Reed had sidestepped, repositioned, taken advantage of the very chaos they’d created. The strategy wasn’t flawed.

The opponent was just better than they’d expected.

“He’s inside now,” Marcus said slowly. “With credentials. Authority.”

“Which means he can manipulate the data from within,” Stephanie said. “And shape narratives to fit.”

Marcus leaned back in the booth, a familiar hollowness blooming in his chest. He’d seen games like this before—ones where you dominated possession, outshot the opponent, did everything right... and still lost because they scored on a fluke.

Charlie stirred beneath the table, sensing Chenny’s rising tension.

“This was supposed to shut him down,” Chenny said. “That was the point. All of it.”

“It did shut down the blackmail,” Stephanie said gently. “It didn’t stop Reed from being who he is.”

Marcus didn’t speak.

Because what he really wanted to say wasI should’ve seen this coming.He’d built his reputation on anticipating patterns, modeling behaviors, forecasting outcomes with brutal accuracy.

And somehow, he’d missed this.

Stephanie touched his hand—lightly, just a brush—but it was enough to bring him back.

“We still have the tracker,” she said quietly. “And the virus on the backup server. If he makes a move, we’ll know.”

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