Chapter 8

Oliver stood just inside the doorway, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness, the single flickering light near the back doing little to push back the shadows pooling between the rusted support beams. Water dripped somewhere in the darkness, slow and steady, the only sound besides his own breathing and the faint patter of rain against the roof above.

"I know you're in here," Oliver said, his voice carrying flat and even across the empty space. "You didn't bring me all the way out here just to hide from me now."

Movement stirred somewhere near the back of the warehouse, a shift in the shadows, subtle enough that most people wouldn't have caught it. Oliver's hand drifted instinctively toward his side, though he kept his expression unreadable, giving nothing away.

"Come out," he said. "Slowly."

A figure finally emerged from behind one of the support beams, hands raised slightly, palms open in a gesture meant to show he carried no weapon. He stepped forward into the weak circle of light, and Oliver studied him carefully, cataloguing every detail the way he'd trained himself to do with any stranger who might mean him harm.

Older than the voice on the phone had suggested. A face worn thin by years that hadn't been kind to him, a jacket too thin for the weather, hands that trembled slightly even held out in front of him. Not a face Oliver recognized, though something about the way the man carried himself, cautious, watchful, like someone who had spent a long time looking over his own shoulder, told Oliver this wasn't his first time being afraid of something.

"You came," the man said, his voice quieter in person than it had sounded through the phone. "I wasn't sure you would."

"You said you knew who did it." Oliver's voice stayed level, controlled, though something dangerous simmered just beneath it. "I don't waste time on people who waste mine. So start talking."

The man's eyes flicked past Oliver, toward the doorway, toward the darkness beyond it, as though checking for anyone who might have followed. Oliver caught the movement and understood it instantly.

"Nobody knows I'm here except the men outside," Oliver said. "And they answer to me. Whoever you're afraid of, they're not walking through that door tonight."

The man exhaled slowly, some of the tension easing from his shoulders, though not all of it. "You don't know who I'm afraid of."

"Then tell me."

"It's not that simple."

Oliver took a step closer, his patience thinning visibly now, years of restraint doing little to soften the edge creeping into his voice. "Nothing about tonight has been simple. You reached out to me. Not the other way around. So either you have something worth my time, or you've made the worst mistake of your life dragging me out here before sunrise."

The man's throat worked as he swallowed, his hands lowering slowly to his sides. "I used to work security. Years ago. At a school your sister attended."

Something in Oliver went very still.

"I didn't know her well," the man continued quickly, as if sensing how carefully he needed to choose every word from here forward. "But I was there. The night everything happened. I saw more than I ever told anyone, and I've spent years regretting that silence."

Oliver's jaw tightened, his voice dropping into something low and dangerous. "Then why now. Why not years ago, when it might have actually mattered."

"Because I was scared," the man said, his voice cracking slightly. "Because the people involved had money, and power, and they made sure everyone around them understood exactly what would happen if the truth ever got out. I had a family to protect. I made a choice, and I've hated myself for it every day since."

"And what's changed," Oliver asked. "Why come forward now, after all this time."

The man hesitated, his eyes dropping briefly to the ground before lifting back to meet Oliver's. "Because I heard what's happening. The engagement, the wedding that never happened, everything coming apart around that family now. And I realized if I didn't speak while it was already unraveling, I might never get another chance."

Oliver's mind raced, pulling threads together faster than he could fully process them, the mention of a wedding that never happened landing like a blow he hadn't braced for.

"What does Lucas Carter have to do with my sister," Oliver asked, his voice quieter now, more dangerous for its stillness.

The man's expression shifted, something like fear and relief tangled together at once, the look of a man finally setting down a weight he had carried alone for far too long.

"Everything," he said. "It has everything to do with him."

Oliver closed the last of the distance between them, close enough now that the man flinched slightly, close enough that the flickering light overhead cast sharp shadows across both their faces.

"Say it," Oliver said. "All of it. Right now."

The man's breathing had gone shallow, his hands trembling more visibly now, and for a moment Oliver thought he might lose his nerve entirely, might turn and bolt back into the shadows the way he'd apparently been hiding in them for years. But something in the man's face hardened instead, some final decision settling into place behind his eyes.

"I need protection first," he said. "For me and my family. If I tell you what I know, and it gets out that I talked, they'll come for us. All of us."

Oliver studied him for a long moment, weighing the desperation in the man's voice against years of hard learned caution.

"You'll have it," Oliver said finally. "Whatever protection you need. But only after you tell me the truth."

"How do I know I can trust you."

"You don't," Oliver said flatly. "But you already made the choice to come here. You're not walking away from that now, and neither am I."

The man's shoulders sagged, some final resistance breaking loose inside him, and he opened his mouth to speak.

Before a single word left him, the sharp crack of a gunshot split the air outside the warehouse, followed instantly by shouting, footsteps pounding against wet concrete, and the unmistakable sound of Oliver's men scrambling into motion.

Oliver spun toward the door, every instinct in his body snapping into focus at once, and behind him the man let out a strangled sound of panic.

"They found me," he choked out. "They know I'm here."

Oliver's hand shot out, gripping the man by the collar before he could bolt for the shadows again.

"Who," Oliver demanded. "Who found you."

But the man's eyes had already gone wide with terror, fixed on something behind Oliver's shoulder, and before Oliver could turn to see what it was, the warehouse door burst open behind him.