Her Name In Someone Else’s File

Sloane stopped on the third step from the bottom.

The woman at the bar had her back turned. She was maybe forty, dark hair pulled into a neat braid, and she was talking to Pearl in the low focused way of someone conducting an interview. The photograph was face up on the bar. Even from across the room Sloane could see it clearly: a photo taken outside her apartment building in Chicago, maybe three months ago, on a day she had been wearing the grey coat she had eventually left behind.

The smart thing was to go back upstairs. Pack the bag. Leave through the window if she had to and worry about the truck later.

She did not do the smart thing. She had never been very good at the smart thing when someone was threatening to take something from her, and apparently that included this room, this town, and the first decent night of sleep she'd had in nearly two weeks.

She came the rest of the way down the stairs.

The woman heard her footsteps and turned, and in that same moment Sloane saw what was on the cover of the file folder. It was a logo. A sheriff's badge, but not local. A federal seal. The woman was not one of Garrett's people.

She was a federal agent.

"Ms. Vega," the woman said. She had the careful neutral voice of someone trained to make people feel calm before delivering something that was the opposite of calm. "My name is Agent Diana Cross. I've been looking for you for five days."

Sloane sat down on the nearest bar stool because her legs made that decision for her.

"How did you find me?" she said.

"Your phone pinged a cell tower last night. The burner, not your regular number. Your friend Mira bought it at a store with a loyalty card." Cross almost smiled. "She's not a professional. Neither are you. That's okay. You didn't need to be."

"What do you want?"

Cross put her hand on the file folder. "The same thing you want. Garrett Hale in a federal prison. And you're the person who can make that happen."

* * *

Sloane knew about the investigation. Not the details, not the scope of it, but she had known, in the way you know things you are not supposed to know when you spend four years sharing a life with someone who has grown less careful over time, that Garrett was on someone's radar. She had thought it was the SEC. She had not guessed it went this far.

Cross laid it out quickly and without drama, which Sloane appreciated. The Iron Vow Motorcycle Club had been flagged eighteen months ago as a possible cartel distribution channel, but subsequent investigation had revealed that the club was actually the target of cartel pressure rather than a willing partner. The cartel needed the club's territory and had been trying to force them into cooperation through a series of escalating tactics that included threats, property damage, and the kind of business interference that was hard to prove in court.

The cartel's legal infrastructure, the money laundering, the account manipulation, the shell corporations, all of it ran through a network of attorneys. One of the central nodes of that network was Garrett Hale's firm.

Sloane sat with that for a moment.

"So Garrett isn't just laundering money for people," she said. "He's laundering money for people who are also trying to destroy the club in the bar directly above my head."

"Yes."

"And you need me because I saw the files."

"We need you because you saw the files, because you can place yourself in the apartment where those files were stored, and because Garrett has been careful enough that physical evidence alone may not be enough to convict him. A firsthand witness changes that."

"He'll know I talked."

"He already assumes you talked. That's why his people have been looking for you." Cross looked at her steadily. "Ms. Vega, you are not safer running than you are cooperating with us. If you work with us, you get protection. Real protection. If you keep running, you get whatever room you can afford with cash until the money runs out."

Sloane looked at the photograph of herself on the bar. Grey coat. A morning she barely remembered, walking to the coffee shop two blocks from the apartment. She had been smiling at something, she could not remember what. She looked like a person who believed the world around her was safe.

"I need time," she said.

"How much?"

"A day."

Cross considered this, then nodded. She handed Sloane a card with a phone number that was a single digit different from the burner she was already using. "Call that number when you're ready. Don't take longer than twenty-four hours. Things move fast when they start moving."

She picked up the file folder, put it under her arm, and walked out.

Pearl set a mug of coffee in front of Sloane without being asked.

Sloane stared at the card. She turned it over. On the back, in small precise handwriting, Cross had written: You are not as alone in this as you think.

* * *

She was sitting at the far end of the bar with her second cup of coffee and what remained of her composure when Colt came in from the back.

He stopped when he saw her face. Then he walked over and sat down across the bar from her, which meant he was on the employee side and she was on the customer side and there was a counter between them that felt like it was doing very little work.

"Bad morning?" he said.

"Complicated morning."

"You want to talk about it?"

"No."

He nodded as if this were a reasonable answer and poured himself a coffee. She watched him drink it. He was not someone who filled silence to make himself more comfortable, she noticed. Most people could not sit quietly near a person in distress without starting to offer things: advice, reassurance, opinions. Colt just sat there, steady and still, and somehow that was the thing that made her throat tighten.

"I might need to stay a little longer than I thought," she said. "If that's okay."

"Room's yours as long as you need it."

She looked at him. "You don't know anything about me."

"I know enough."

"You know my name is Rae and my truck doesn't work."

The corner of his mouth moved. Just barely. "I know you walked into a room full of Iron Vow brothers last night and sat down without flinching. I know you argue about paying for things you didn't ask for. I know you slept for ten hours straight, which means you were running on empty before you got here."

She stared at him. "That's not knowing someone."

"It's a start," he said.

And then he stood up, rinsed his mug, and went back to work, and Sloane sat there with her coffee gone cold and the card still in her hand, and she thought: this is exactly the wrong time to find someone interesting.

She thought that very firmly.

It did not help at all.

That afternoon, when she went to check on her truck at Mick's shop, she found it had already been paid for, repaired, and filled with gas. No receipt. No name. Just the keys on the counter and Mick looking at the floor when she asked who to thank.