Page 62 of Sawyer
Riggs:Hatch Auto & Marine is a warren. Owner (Hatcher) says he hasn’t seen Rourke in three days, but a Riverfront-style jammer was serviced here last week. Rae pulled shop cams: guy in ball cap, beard, scar on left ear. Hatcher calls him “Bane.” Could be our man.
I text back:If Hatcher’s a vet with a code, we can push him without breaking him. Offer him an IOU he actually values: getting Rourke off his stoop.
Riggs:Already working him. Rae’s scraping “Bane” through data brokers.
Rae pings the thread with a still from the shop cam: a man in a ball cap caught mid-turn, leaving a sliver of his face and the edge of a distinctive ear notch. “Pulled from a 2018 bar fight, dishonorable discharge records under ‘Evan Rourke’ show a similar injury,” she writes. “Also: cellphone tower pings from a prepaid that hit Fox Hollow co-working two nights in a row after midnight, then Lighthouse Point in the morning. Breadcrumbs. I’m on him.”
Across the hall, the fluorescents thrift and flare: forty-seven seconds. The metronome of the fourth light. Still there. So am I.
I pull my notebook—the paper one, not the encrypted app—and write names and verbs because I have learned over and over that sometimes you have to put ink next to a plan if you want it to become something you can hold.
Marcus Vale— Atlantic Heights townhouse + SoMa office.Surveil. Serve warrants. Freeze Alder & personal accounts. Seize devices before they’re wiped. Get travel logs: jet tail numbers; watch for flight to no-extradition.
Kestrel Risk— Magnolia Ridge P.O. Box + call center.Subpoena client list; seize CRM; flip low-level staff; show them kidnapping enhancement sentencing guidelines.
Rourke / “Bane”— Hatch Auto & Marine + Fox Hollow co-working.Canvas camera rings. Make it too hot to move. Box him. Choose the arrest space to protect collateral (no civilians, clear backstop).
Inside assist— text spoof + contact knowledge.Gregory’s assistant? PR firm? Caterer assignment editor? Cross-ref who had Cam’s inner circle numbers.
Cam— privacy protocol.Alias on chart. Two Orange at both ends of corridor. Decoy discharge route if press gets frisky.
I close the book and lean my head against the wall. The paint is cool. The cinderblock under it is older than I am. I tell myself I’m letting the building hold up some of the weight.
A cough from inside brings me upright. I don’t open the door. I don’t call her name. I put my palm against the wood directlyover where I know her bed is—she likes to sleep with her head toward the window when she can. I don’t push. Just… anchor. It’s ridiculous. It steadies me anyway.
“Mr. Maddox?” Hartley again. He keeps his voice low. “We just got a heads-up: your boy Vale’s counsel is trying to get him wheels-up to Vegas ‘for meetings.’ We’re about twenty minutes from warrants.”
“Vegas is a hop to anywhere,” I say. “We can’t lose him. You got a legal way to sit on him until paper lands?”
“We can do a ‘consensual conversation’ that takes fifteen minutes and a lot of coffee,” he says, mouth twisting. “Or we can get lucky with code compliance on his office and have someone ‘notice’ an occupancy issue.”
“Do both,” I say. “I’ll call Dean to have the fed bark.”
He snorts. “Thought you’d say that.”
By the time I loop Dean in, his friend in the Bureau has already leaned on Vale’s counsel. A polite but ironclad “do not travel” request is now in writing. The kind that says “your boarding pass will print, but the men in windbreakers will meet you at the gate.” It’s not an arrest. It’s a glare that buys us an hour.
Rae drops a new pin in our shared map.Fox Hollow—co-working. “Bane” logged in as “Stark” last night (they cross-sell day passes online). IP address used to access a single page: municipal police scanner feed and a Craigslist posting for storage units near the airport.She adds:He’s compulsive about checking his own myth.Then:Hatcher likes us. He just texted an address on Third Street where Rourke sleeps when he’s between jobs. Cheap monthly. Unit 4B. We’re rolling.
