Page 48 of A Very Bumpy Christmas
Her eyes soften. “Then I already am.”
The phone buzzes again.
DUKE: Subaru stuck around after you parked but didn’t follow you inside. He did a slow drift past the north entrance, then got out of sightlines to take a call.
GUNNER: Mercer’s still at Kipling. Didn’t move all morning. Two coffees. One burrito. Man’s predictable in the ways that matter.
DUKE: Here’s the thing—we’ve got frames of Subaru Guy watching Mercer last night, not you. Third player may be shadowing the shadow.
I pace the tiny kitchen, picture lines on a board. Subaru’s not hunting; he’s herding. He’s interested in what Mercer’s interested in. Which might be us. Or might not.
“Red herring,” I mutter.
“Excuse me?” Melanie says, folding laundry like it’s going to argue.
“Third guy might not be the danger,” I tell her. “He might be following Mercer. He could be an investigator hired by someone we don’t hate. He could be a rival contractor trying to poach a client. He could be exactly what he looks like—a problem. We don’t assume. We ask.”
She points at the sticky notes. “Look at you following the rules.”
I look at her. “I’m learning.”
Flurries start in earnest, fat flakes that make the world quiet and treacherous. The sky pushes down. A plow ghosts by and the street takes it personally. My palm itches to be outside solving the map, but my chest pulls toward the woman who’s leaning against the counter with a hand on the small of her back.
“Go,” she says finally, reading me before I read myself. “Do the watch. I’ll call Amelia to come hang out. You’ll know more if you look, and you’ll only stand here and stare at the window like a caged wolf otherwise.”
“You’re getting good at command,” I say.
“I’m adapting to my audience,” she deadpans, and I huff out a laugh that shakes some of the static loose.
Fifteen minutes later, Amelia breezes in with a bag of oranges, a battery pack, and a lecture about electrolytes. I brief her fast—storm, wedge, candles not near curtains,gingerbreadmeans I don’t knock, I break—and she salutes me with a clementine.
I take the truck because ground clearance is a love language. Roads are already slick, and my hands do that micro-correction dance they learned on mountain passes at 3 a.m. Kipling Motor Lodge wears snow like guilt. I park three buildings down, under a camera that works, and walk the last stretch on the windward side so my tracks look like a delivery guy who changed his mind.
Mercer’s curtains are open an inch. Rookie move unless he wants me to see him acting like a civilian. TV glow, the lean of a man who thinks he has time. Subaru’s nowhere in the lot. Not in sightlines. That means roof or angles, or he’s smarter than us. I circle slow, let the wind cover my steps, and find the cleanest proof: fresh prints on the stairwell steel, water drops under the access hatch, a cigarette butt still warm under snow on the parapet even though no one “smokes” anymore. He took the roof to watch door lines.
“Roof rat,” I murmur into my sleeve.
Duke ghosts by at street level, checks his watch for no one. We don’t wave. We don’t need to.
My phone buzzes with a screenshot—Subaru Guy’s face from a side angle under a streetlight. He reads like a company photo you never posted: haircut that happens every two weeks, jaw that’s seen a mouthguard, eyes that don’t stick to anything they can’t leave.
GUNNER: Ran it through a couple of friendly filters. Alias ping: Hero Hale. Freelance “reputation recovery.” Not violent. Sells “solutions.”
DUKE: He did three gigs this year for contracts tied to meltdown influencers, two for hedge types, one for a rival security firm we don’t like. No charges. Lots of smoke.
Motivation?
GUNNER: Whoever hired Mercer might’ve hired Hale to watch Mercer. Or to steal whatever Mercer digs. Either way, Hale’s a collector, not a hitter.
So the third shadow is a thief of thieves. Red herring? Maybe. Or maybe the guy who makes a mess without drawing blood.
The wind picks up. Snow shifts from pretty to strategy. I pull my collar up and shift my thinking from tail math to weather math again. If the grid blinks, elevators stall, cars stack up on hills, and routes shrink to walking distance. Mobility goes down. Births go up. I know too many EMTs not to respect barometric pressure.
I text Melanie.
Home status?
MEL: Cozy. Amelia insists we make a fort in the living room. Baby approves.
