جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 90

COLEMarcus’s first piece of information came three days after Okafor’s warning, in person, a carefully guarded exchange as per our agreement on this particular front of the investigation.“He says Vane had an unscheduled meeting yesterday,” Damien explained once we’d regrouped in the library corner, which had become the closest thing to a neutral ground for us all. “Not the full council. Just him and two others my father wouldn’t name, people my father considers’the quiet ones,” elders who rarely speak out in council sessions, even if they exert more control over our affairs than they let on.“What was this about?” Aiden asked.“My father wasn’t invited, but Vane mentioned it afterwards in passing, to see if my father hadn’t perhaps heard of it elsewhere.” Damian’s jaw set, the tightening of his muscles echoing the tension in his voice rather than betraying it. “He wants to hear if anyone else talks about it, if he hasn’t already been the one to leak the information to the rest of th

COLECoach worked us extra hard that Thursday, and for maybe the first time ever I was grateful for his endurance. Marsh caught up with me at the fountain during a break to stare at me with more interest than I was comfortable with. 'You've been off more than normal again.''Had a rough week,' I shrugged, offering it up as an excuse I knew was too small to cover everything but also nothing I felt like expanding upon today - or maybe ever if I was honest.'Some weeks are like that,' he said, just clapping my shoulder instead and skatering off to the next drill, and again I was incredibly grateful for teammates that had learned to accept my evasions.Lena was in the stands when practice ended, notebook shut, watching me just as closely as Marsh but for reasons that were less pressing. She knew what I was feeling, the same way I knew hers. A week of losses to sit in silence about after watching a long, excruciating match.'You looked good out there,' she greeted me after perching down to

COLENoah found something two days later. I could tell by the deliberate thrill in his voice when he called that it was worth delaying practice for. "It's security footage," Noah said, once I'd slipped off the pond and away from my teammates. "From a council building renovation. Eleven years ago. It was... archived? Mostly left forgotten? Buried in the contractor's files that Marcus accessed when he mentioned the renovation coinciding with the council transition that set things in motion.""What does it show?" I asked, wiping the towel to dry my sweat, willing to focus on his words if not the sting of my muscles. "A man with his description, wandering the halls, captured on film for four seconds by an unassuming security camera. Pale eyes, tall stature--the contractor stopped playback to remark in passing, if the timestamp and his notes are accurate, before moving one to the next item."My heart was racing. "There wasn't any."“Can you get a clear image?”Working on it," I said. "Enhan

COLENoah had pasted an entire wall of the library corner with printouts by the time we arrived and marked out a crude map of the territory around Northcrest, circling places in careful succession, radiating out from the faculty parking lot where Lena had seen him before"Assuming he was willing to drive no more than thirty minutes for a casual stop," Noah said, not looking away from the laptop on his lap, "that gives us a search radius that's still big, but considerably smaller than an entire region.""How do we narrow it?" Lena asked, studying the map."Property records. Older, wealthy, private places, the ones the discreet hide in. I'm comparing it against ownership structures that have reason to be intentionally obscured, shell companies, trusts, anything that implies someone has considerably more interest in keeping a normal property search from finding their address."Astra followed along the marked-out sections with her fingers. "That's clever. Most people don't bother hiding p

COLEDamien called before I had even finished my coffee, his voice sharp with something that sounded a lot like shock."Everyone knows it," he said without preamble, "Elias Marlow. He went very, very quiet when I mentioned it, very quiet in a way I haven't seen from him since our conversation in his study.""Wanted to know what he said?" I asked, my hand already moving towards Lena, who had gone rigid next to me the moment he had heard the change in my voice."He said it was the name on the guardianship transfer, twenty-five years ago. He spent twenty-five years believing it was a shell name, nothing more than the way most of the transaction's documentary evidence is designed to be hidden. But he confirmed it personally, is the name of the man who signed the paperwork, buying his silence."The weight settled heavily over the apartment, Lena's hand clenching around mine as she finally realized what he meant, the facts finally clicking into place in my skull."That's him," she said soft