A Bug in the Seam

A guard shoved the heavy office door open, and Liam stumbled across the carpet.

His left eye was swollen shut, the skin around it the dark purple of an eggplant. He held his forearm against his ribs, staring down at Victor’s polished floorboards. When he saw Tessa standing by the mahogany desk, his face twisted in shame.

“Tessa,” he said, his restless fingers picking at the frayed cuff of his denim jacket. “They told me you were here.”

Tessa flattened her gray wool sleeves with two hard strokes of her palms. “What did you do, Liam?”

“I tried to settle it,” he said, his voice cracking. “A guy met me at the diner on Fourth. Said Mr. Moretti wanted an accounting in person. Offered me twenty grand just to walk through the front entrance and wait.”

Victor did not raise his voice. He stepped away from the dark window, his gaze steady on the boy. “Take off the jacket.”

Liam pulled back, wincing as his bruised shoulder shifted. “It’s freezing out there—”

“Off,” Victor said.

Liam peeled the denim down his arms. Victor took the collar, feeling along the seams with blunt fingers until he stopped at the inner lining near the lower hem. He drew a pocketknife from his slacks, slit the thread, and tipped a black plastic disc the size of a coin into his palm. A tiny amber light pulsed inside the casing.

“Gabriel gave you this,” Victor said.

“He said it was a keycard,” Liam said. His chin dropped toward his chest. “Just proof I made it upstairs.”

Tessa stepped between them, her stomach turning cold. “The fifty thousand wasn’t all of it, was it? In the books. An eighty-thousand-dollar payout routed through an entity called North Pier. That was your signature on the intake receipt.”

Liam swallowed. His hands shook against his knees. “I had a system, Tess. The roulette wheel in the back room—it paid out three nights straight. I was going to pay it back before anyone noticed.”

“You took eighty thousand from a shell company run by killers, and you thought you were winning?”

“I needed the cash!” Liam said, then clamped his mouth shut, glancing toward Victor.

“You led them to us,” Victor said. He crushed the plastic disc under the heel of his shoe. “That wasn’t just a beacon.”

Before Tessa could answer, the floor shuddered beneath them.

A dull boom rolled up through the building’s concrete core, knocking a framed print off the wall. The glass shattered across the floor. In the hallway, the overhead lights went dead, replaced by the orange pulse of emergency strobes. Then the fire sirens screamed, loud and deafening, as gray smoke began pushing through the vents near the ceiling.