Gatekeepers
She couldn't sleep. Jet lag, or something else. After an hour under the daisy sheets, she gave up, dug the dead carburetor out of her desk drawer where it had sat since she was seventeen, spread a newspaper across the blotter, and started taking it down by lamplight.
No noise. Nobody had to know.
Her fingers had gone stiff, and it took a while for the little jets and screws to come back to them. She was on the float bowl when an engine started in the yard.
She knew that sound. Dom's Softail, a low controlled idle, then a roll down the drive. She went to the window and moved the curtain an inch. Gray light. His taillight went through the gate.
She put the carb back in the drawer and lay down. Her eyes had barely closed when the phone chimed.
Dom: There's food downstairs. Eat before you sleep.
Aunt Pat and Pop were in the kitchen when she came down. They stopped talking.
"You're up," Aunt Pat said. "Perfect. Your father got up at six and sent a prospect to Sal's for breakfast. Sausage gravy, peach jam, biscuits. All your favorites."
June looked across at Pop. He was stirring his coffee like the coffee had wronged him.
He wouldn't have done that. Dom would have.
She smiled anyway. "Thank you, Pop."
She didn't go back to sleep after breakfast. She invented an errand at the hospital and left.
Nadia was on the phone when June came in. Whatever the person on the other end said, the color drained out of her face and rushed back in as something hard and furious. She hung up. She raised her arm like she meant to throw the phone across the room.
"Eleven hundred dollars," June said.
Nadia lowered it, jaw clenched.
"What happened?"
June unpacked the meal she'd brought onto the tray table: a protein box, and a green smoothie so heavy on spinach and celery that Nadia had always called it lawn.
Nadia was too angry to notice. She drank half of it in three swallows.
"Colton," she said. "That spineless, sorry—he took our test data to Vanguard. They've been trying to undercut Snowline for years. And now he's got his foot in the door at Aegis, too."
She put the bottle down hard. "The Sovereigns have been watching Whiteout for months. We were this close. And now nobody there will return my calls, and I know exactly why."
June had met Colton three times, total. She remembered someone polished, easy, the kind who knew how to make a good first impression. She hadn't expected this.
"Don't panic yet," she said. "The contract isn't his just because he wants it. Try Aegis again. Ask for a meeting."
Nadia was already pushing the covers back. "I'll go myself."
June pressed her down by the shoulders. "You start chemo tomorrow. You're going nowhere."
"You don't get it. If the Sovereigns sign with Vanguard, Snowline's dead. There's no coming back from that." Nadia's voice cracked, just slightly. "Whiteout ate two years. It ate every dollar. It's not a contract. It's..."
She stopped. Started again, quieter. "Half my engineers left with him. The ones still here won't talk to anyone they haven't known ten years. My calibration lead is a genius and would rather eat glass than sit in a lobby. It has to be me, and I..."
June looked at her a moment.
"Stay here," she said. "I'll go."
Nadia's emergency assistant turned out to be a girl of twenty-four in a Snowline hoodie with a grease smear along her jaw, who came through the door with six project binders in her arms like a woman fleeing a fire.
"Piper Nolan," she said, dumping them on the desk. "I was the apprentice. Now I'm the everything. Some of the files are incomplete, Colton took copies of half of it. Tell me what's missing and I'll try to find it."
June had studied the same field as Nadia. She moved through the binders fast, and within the hour she had a working grasp of where Whiteout stood. Then she and Piper took Piper's dented pickup to the Foundry.
On the way June pulled up what she could find on Aegis Cycle Group. It wasn't much. A spare, institutional website, a few lines in port-authority contracts, and that was it.
Piper leaned across the cab, delighted to fill the gaps. "Aegis is the legit side. Custom builds, parts, security work for the port. Behind it's the club, obviously. Word is if you climb the back fence at night, nobody calls the cops." She waited a beat. "They don't need to."
"Great."
"And Rook Mercer has no footprint at all. No socials, no tagged photos. Old Man Mercer is the National President on paper, but I hear Rook actually decides things." Another pause. "He's supposed to be scary. Like, nice hair, scary."
June said nothing. She thought of a man on a road with his hand on his thigh. Yesterday, from the back of a cab, had been exactly as close as she liked.
The Foundry sat on the harbor side, an old iron works of red brick with its chimney still standing and the glass Aegis lobby bolted onto the front like a suit on a bear.
Two prospects in vests checked every ID at the door. The security inside was layered and not shy about it. The whole entrance felt built to be tested.
June walked in with Piper at her shoulder and went to the front desk.
"Good morning. We're from Snowline Works. We'd like to see Mr. Mercer."
The woman behind the desk wore a black blazer and a small silver crown pin. "Do you have an appointment?"
"Could you check whether he has any time? We only need fifteen minutes."
"I'm sorry. Mr. Mercer's schedule is full today."
"Tomorrow? The day after?"
"I'm sorry. You're welcome to call the executive office."
Each refusal came out smooth and practiced. Piper's shoulders dropped a little more with every one.
"See? He's not going to see us. Nadia tried a hundred times." She leaned closer and dropped her voice. "They've probably already signed with Vanguard. You know how they got that offer? They basically said they'd pay the Sovereigns to take it. You can't compete with that. Maybe we should just..."
The elevator opened.
Colton Pryce stepped out.
Navy quarter-zip. Hair perfect. An Aegis visitor badge flapping on a lanyard against his chest. He saw June first, then Piper, and his face went from surprise to something more settled and pleased with itself.
"What are you two doing here?" He looked at Piper. "Nadia called you back from wherever? Flying home for a sinking ship. I'll give you points for loyalty."
Piper's face went rigid with a fury she was barely holding. "Nadia's still in the hospital, Colton. You were together four years. Does that mean anything to you?"
"I gave her four years. I'm not billing her for them. That's generous, honestly." He said it like he'd worked it out on a napkin. "And if she hadn't lived in that shop, maybe she wouldn't be sick. I told her. Slow down, get a life. Now she can't even..."
June stepped in front of Piper before she could move. She closed her hand around Piper's wrist.
"Don't," she said, quietly. "You can't appeal to a conscience that isn't there."
She turned back to the desk. "Please tell Mr. Mercer that June Sterling is here. Dom Reyes's sister."
Piper blinked. "You know him?"
June knew him the way you know a stove is hot.
But she wasn't about to say so in front of Colton. She kept her face still. "We go back a little."
Colton's smile went soft with pity. "Everybody in Port Halloran has heard of Rook Mercer. That isn't the same as knowing him. You've been gone too long, you forgot how it works. Do you know whose son he is? What his name does at the port?"
"Do you know who I am?"
He laughed, the kind of laugh that doesn't bother to hide what it thinks. She was bluffing and it wasn't landing.
"It doesn't matter who you are. Rook doesn't take meetings. He takes tribute. Your boss couldn't get a phone call returned, and you think you can walk in off the street?"
The woman at the desk had been listening with the receiver pressed to her ear. Now she turned and held it out to June with both hands. She had gone a little pale.
"Mr. Mercer would like a word."
Colton's face rearranged itself into something with a good deal less confidence in it.
June took the receiver.
"Rook," she said.
