It was almost eight pm, and the celebration was gradually dying down. Food stalls on every corner were beginning to pack up, and all the children were sleeping at ho. But the Hunters were still outside arguing about the new E-rank baseline and its effects on them.
Kai walked through it while checking his phone.
Family chat.
Leo: I have terrible news.
Kai: You can’t sleep?
Leo: No.
Leo: Worse.
Mina: I’m afraid to ask. But I do agree you should sleep...
Leo: Co on Mina! It’s Friday, I can stay up!
Leo: Wait, that isn’t the point! I found out Rank One hunters still have to buy groceries.
Kai: Tragic.
Leo: I thought becoming Rank One ca with servants.
Mina: That’s called being rich.
Leo: Sa thing.
Kai: No.
Leo: You sure?
Kai: Very.
Leo: Damn.
A photo appeared. Leo had sent a picture of an empty refrigerator, shot from above with the kind of composition that communicated theatrical suffering.
Leo: Ergency.
Mina: You ate everything.
Leo: That isn’t important right now.
Kai: Seems important.
Leo: I ca here for support.
Mina: Wrong family.
Kai shook his head and put the phone away with a faint smile and then it faded. His destination was across the street.
A small office building.
Nothing about the exterior invited attention, which was probably by design. The sign beside the entrance listed a logistics managent company on the third floor. The man inside was nad Corwin. His na had co from the interrogation room three days ago, passed along from soone who had decided that silence was too expensive.
Kai crossed the street and went in.
The receptionist looked up from her desk. "Do you have an appointnt?"
"No," Kai said, and kept walking.
She started to say sothing and then she looked at him properly and stopped.
The office was on the third floor. Kai found it by the na on the door and knocked once and opened it without waiting for an answer. Corwin looked up from his desk, and the recognition was imdiate.
"I was wondering when this would happen," Corwin said.
Kai sat down. "You know why I’m here?"
"I know why anybody is here when they show up unannounced." Corwin had been standing. He looked at Kai for a mont and then slowly sat back down. "Generally speaking."
Kai put the transaction records on the desk. The sa sheet he had used with Fenn, pulled from the ledger and cross-referenced with public business filings. Corwin recognized the docunts imdiately.
"These records aren’t illegal," Corwin said.
"I didn’t ask if they were illegal," Kai said.
Corwin looked at him. "Fair," he said.
"Who handled these transfers?"
Corwin leaned back slightly. "Depends."
"On?"
"How much trouble you’re trying to cause."
Kai looked at the papers.
"Enough that you’re already nervous."
Corwin laughed once. Not because anything was funny. Because that was the answer he had expected, and he had sohow still hoped it would be sothing different.
"Victor?" Corwin said.
Kai did not react.
Corwin looked at the transaction records and then at Kai, and then exhaled. "You know the strange thing?" he said.
Kai waited.
"Two months ago, nobody would have answered these questions–"
"Two months ago, I’d be asking different questions." Kai’s eyes narrowed slightly. "Be thankful these are the ones I’m asking."
Corwin shivered before slowly nodding and then looking at the desk. "You could have walked into this office with the sa docunts and the sa questions, and the answer would have been to call security and wait." He looked at Kai. "Now you’re asking them."
"And now?" Kai said.
Corwin looked directly at him. "Now you’re asking them," he said again.
Kai let the silence sit for a mont. "How many people are between Victor and the assassin?"
Corwin looked away. A small movent, just his eyes going to the window for a fraction of a second before coming back. He noticed Kai noticing. "More than one," he said.
"How many?"
"I don’t know."
The Heartguard Ring registered the answer. True. Kai noted it.
"Who would know?"
Corwin took longer to answer. "People above my level," he said.
"Nas."
"No."
Kai leaned back. "Then let’s save ti."
Corwin frowned. "What do you–"
"You tell what you can tell ." Kai continued. "I figure out the rest."
Corwin shifted slightly in his chair, and Kai continued staring at him.
Corwin finally said, "You knowing them would be more accurate than I know them."
"But you know of them," Kai said.
The ring stayed silent.
Corwin shifted in his chair. Not afraid in the way that the people in the interrogation room had been afraid. More like a man realizing he wasn’t in control of the conversation anymore.
"You don’t understand what you’re looking at."
"I will never understand why you people love wasting my ti." Kai tapped the papers. "Stop telling what it isn’t and what it is."
Kai tapped the paper. "That’s why I’m here. Now explain."
Corwin tapped the transaction sheet with one finger. "You’re treating this like one operation. One thing that has a beginning and an end. Soone decided to do sothing and hired people to do it." He paused. "It’s not."
Kai said nothing.
Corwin continued. "Money moves. Information moves. Equipnt moves. People move. They all use different channels–"
Kai looked at the records. "So if one channel collapses..."
Corwin’s expression changed. "The others survive."
"And is hiring an assassin one of those channels?"
"Yes, but nobody in any one channel knows what’s happening in the others."
Kai’s eyes moved to the sheet. "So who makes sure the channels are running well? Or let be more blunt for you: who is the manager of this?"
Corwin’s expression changed the mont the words were out. Kai watched it happen, the realization that he had said more than he had planned to. Corwin looked at the desk and then at a point sowhere past Kai’s shoulder, and then he said, quietly, "The one who makes sure nobody asks questions."
Kai was quiet for a few seconds and then spoke. "Good."
Corwin frowned. "Good?"
Kai smiled. "That ans I’m on the right track."
The celebration drifted through the window, even though it was distant. Corwin opened his desk drawer. He took out a folder and set it on the desk. He did not push it toward Kai. He just set it down, took his hand away from it, and looked at the wall.
Kai looked at the folder. "You shouldn’t be giving that," he said.
"No," Corwin said.
"But you are."
Corwin looked at him. "Yeah," he said, and did not explain further.
Kai picked it up and opened it.
Addresses.
Transaction records.
eting locations written in shorthand. Another piece and not the last one. He turned the pages slowly, and one entry caught his attention. Not a person’s na or a company. It was a nightclub in the lower market district, listed under a eting date three months ago.
No explanation attached, just the address and the date. He turned to the next page, and the address did not appear again. He went back and looked at it. He folded that page separately and put the rest of the folder on the desk.
Corwin was watching him. "If you’re going after Victor," he said carefully, then stopped.
Kai looked up.
Corwin chose his words. "Don’t assu he’s the biggest problem."
Kai looked at him. "The biggest problems won’t be an issue by then."
"Huh?"
"By the ti I am done with Victor, well..." He folded the page with the nightclub address. "You will understand by then."
Those words made Corwin’s expression change, but he didn’t speak.
Kai closed the folder and stood. Corwin’s shoulders lowered, only slightly. The specific relief of soone who had survived a conversation they had been dreading.
"Don’t leave the city," Kai said.
Corwin went still.
Kai walked toward the door.
"Why?" Corwin said.
Kai stopped with his hand on the door fra. "Because I’ll need to find you again," he said, and left.
The stairs were quiet, and the lobby was quiet, and then he was back in the street, the celebration running around him, food stall slls and music from sowhere to the east, and people moving in every direction.
He walked two blocks, found a bench, sat down, and took out the folded page with the nightclub address.
He looked at it.
No na attached or explanation. Just an address in the lower market district and a eting date three months ago. He put it in his inventory and looked at the city around him for a mont.
He stood.
Two months ago, soone important had been there.
Kai intended to find out who.
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