Side Door
Nobody in the lobby said anything, but everybody was listening.
The prospect by the door had stopped pretending to check IDs.
Colton stood about three feet away, completely still.
The line crackled. It was an old desk phone with a curly cord, and the voice coming through it was low and in no hurry at all.
"Somebody down there's saying my name like they've earned it. Who's this?"
June didn't answer right away.
She cupped her hand over the mouthpiece and turned around to face the brick wall. Behind her, Piper took one look at Colton leaning in and went off like a car alarm.
"Oh my God, Colton, are you listening? To somebody else's phone call? In public?"
Two guys waiting by the elevator turned to look. Colton stepped back fast. "Lower your voice."
"You lower your voice."
June pressed her forehead almost to the brick. Somebody had set a coffee cup on the ledge there and left a brown ring. She looked at that.
"It's June Sterling."
"Sterling." A pause. "Like the judge."
"He's my father."
"Huh." He sounded like he was reading something else while he talked to her. "Judge Sterling doesn't get anybody up my elevator, kid. Try again."
So much for that. She'd walked in with one small hope, that he might help her for old times' sake, and he didn't even know they had old times.
The last time he'd seen her, she was seventeen and leaving every room he walked into. Why would he remember?
There was only one name left that worked in this building.
"I'm Dom's sister," she said. "Dom Reyes."
"Dom's sister." Same lazy tone. "Dom's not here. Try the clubhouse."
"I'm not looking for Dom. I'm looking for you." She heard how that sounded and added, "Mr. Mercer."
Three seconds ticked by in silence.
"Stay put," Rook said, and hung up.
It took five minutes.
When the elevator opened, the man who came out was tall and gray at the temples, in a charcoal suit with a Sovereigns cut over the top of it. That should have looked stupid. It didn't.
His patch said SECRETARY in small white letters. The woman at the front desk sat up straighter before he'd taken two steps.
He came straight to June and gave her a short nod.
"Miss Sterling. I'm Teague. This way."
Colton's face had gone a color June hadn't seen on him before. He started to say something and stopped.
Piper caught June's sleeve before she reached the elevator. "Okay. You actually know him," she whispered. "So we're in, right? We've got a shot?"
"Don't get excited." June kept her back to Colton and her voice down. "I said we go back. I never said he likes me."
The doors closed.
Piper turned around slowly.
Colton had his phone out and was talking into it with his shoulders up around his ears. All that easy charm he'd strolled out of the elevator with was gone. Piper decided this was the best she'd felt in two weeks.
"You okay, Colton?" she said. "You're sweating through your quarter-zip a little."
He gave her a look that could have taken paint off a truck and turned his back on her. He didn't lower his voice enough.
"June Sterling. The judge's daughter. I want everything on her. Who she knows, where she's been, all of it. Today."
Six weeks. That was how long he'd been working as a guy in Aegis purchasing. Steak dinners. Two seats behind the bench at a Riptides game. A set of custom grips that, now that Piper thought about it, had probably come out of Snowline's account. In six weeks he'd never made it past the third floor.
June had made it in five minutes.
If she really had a line to Rook Mercer, then whatever Colton had promised Halvorsen Drive was sitting on a very wobbly table.
Piper smiled at the back of his head and didn't bother hiding it.
Upstairs, June was a lot less calm than she looked.
It should have been simple. Rook was Dom's friend.
Snowline was a small shop with a good product. She wasn't asking for a favor, just a fair look. Twenty minutes of talking and done.
Except of all the men who'd ever passed through Dom's kitchen, Rook was the one she'd always stayed away from. She'd been in a room with him maybe five times. Every time, she'd come out thinking the same thing, and nothing since had changed her mind.
He was trouble. The kind you could feel from across a room, like weather.
The elevator opened onto the top floor. The hallway smelled like old brick and new carpet, and somewhere down it a radio was playing Creedence very low. Teague stopped at a steel door and knocked once.
"Come in."
His voice sounded flat and cold, nothing like the guy on the phone.
Teague opened the door and stepped aside. June blew out a breath that lifted her bangs off her forehead, and walked in.
The office had been carved out of the old foundry floor. Somebody had kept the iron beams and the tall arched windows and painted everything else black or gray.
A long black desk with nothing on it but a phone and a tin of lemon drops. Shelves with no books on them, just binders and a few engine parts.
In the corner by the window, a stripped-down Shovelhead sat on a lift with its tank off, like he worked on it between phone calls.
She hadn't expected people.
Four men sat on the leather couches by the windows. Three wore suits and Port Authority lanyards.
The fourth wore a cut from some chapter up north, a patch she didn't know. They'd been in the middle of something.
She barely saw them. Her eyes went to the man on the far couch before she could stop them.
Rook didn't have Dom's trustworthy features. He had a crooked, broken nose, a heavy brow, and a face that made you check for the nearest exit.
He sat with his back to the window and one arm along the top of the couch. Black T-shirt. Jeans. Boots crossed at the ankle. His cut was thrown over the arm of the couch beside him, patch side out. NATIONAL VICE PRESIDENT, and under that, the crowned rook. He looked like he'd been sitting there for a hundred years and planned on a hundred more.
When the door opened, he glanced over.
It took less than a second. His eyes went down her once and back up, the way you'd check a package to see if it was the right one. Then he turned back to the man who was talking. His face didn't change.
So why bring her up here at all, if he was busy? June didn't know. She found a chair against the far wall, sat, folded her hands in her lap, and tried very hard not to listen.
It took twenty minutes.
Berth fees. A crane lease. Somebody's nephew who'd rolled a forklift into the harbor and was now "not welcome on Pier Six." The man in the northern cut laughed at something Rook said, then looked around like he wasn't sure he'd been allowed to. Rook's phone buzzed twice on the couch cushion. He didn't look at it either time.
Finally the suits stood. Handshakes. Somebody said, "We'll be in touch."
Teague walked them out and shut the door.
The room went quiet except for the radio leaking in from the hall.
June got up and walked over.
Rook hadn't moved. He had a folder open on his knee now and a pen in his hand, and he was writing. He didn't look up. As far as she could tell, he'd forgotten she was there.
She knew what she was working with. Dom's name had gotten her through the door. Not hers. That kind of credit ran out fast, so she didn't wait for him to finish. She started talking.
She kept it plain. Whiteout. Two years of work. Where the bench tests were at. How close Snowline had been to the National Build. Then Colton. The account. The engineers. The files, and where they'd ended up.
About halfway through, she noticed the pen wasn't moving.
The folder was still open on his knee. But he'd put his elbow on the arm of the couch and two fingers against his temple, and he was looking at her. Just looking. She honestly couldn't tell if he was listening or deciding what to have for lunch.
She kept going.
"Whiteout is most of Snowline's money and two years of Nadia's life. Halvorsen didn't get those files legally. And Colton didn't leave because the drive doesn't work. He left because things between him and Nadia went—"
"I'm not here to referee a breakup," Rook said.
Same low voice as on the phone. But the fun had gone out of it. What was left was cool and even.
"I want the drive. I don't care who walked out on who. I don't care whose name is on the patent."
"Yes, you do," June said.
She kept her voice steady. Her hands were folded in front of her, and she dug her thumbnail into her knuckle where he couldn't see.
"Nadia Frost has a master's in powertrain engineering. Colton has a business degree and a really nice watch. Every part of Whiteout came out of Nadia's head. Halvorsen has the files. They don't have the one person who knows what to do when the files are wrong." She took a breath. "You've been watching this drive for months. I don't think that's because of Colton."
His eyebrow went up. It was the first thing on his face that had moved since she walked in.
"Mr. Mercer," he said. "Downstairs it was Rook."
Downstairs you didn't know who I was.
"Rook," she said.
He looked at her like that was a little bit funny. Only a little.
"So why are you the one up here? What's Snowline got to do with you?"
"Nadia was my mentor. She's in the hospital and she can't come. So I came."
"People who want something from me go through Teague. Takes them about a month." He said it like he was telling her the time. "You went through Dom, and it took you five minutes." He shifted on the couch and sat up a little. "I don't usually do that. I'll do it this once."
Something in June's shoulders let go.
He wasn't finished.
"Halvorsen wants the same deal. Same terms. If they want to sign, they can call Teague and wait their turn like everybody else."
She frowned. "Halvorsen is giving it to you for nothing. They'll eat the cost, because getting into the National Build is worth more to them than the contract. They can afford to lose money on it. Snowline can't. Whiteout is two years of real work and every dollar Nadia had, and—"
She stopped.
His face had changed. Not much. One corner of his mouth had pulled up, not quite into a smile.
He reached over to the desk without looking, thumbed the lid off the tin, and put a lemon drop in his mouth. Then he turned the pen over in his fingers. Once. Twice. Slow.
When he talked again, the business voice was gone. What came out instead didn't belong in a meeting.
"Princess," Rook said. "Dom's name got you up the elevator. It doesn't get you a discount."
