THE UNMARKED HIER

Chapter 6: Three Days

Briar's warning stayed with Nash long after she walked down the street.

Three days, she'd said, before Osgood pieced together what she already suspected.

Nash didn't know if that number was real or a guess meant to scare him into moving faster, but he couldn't afford to test it either way.

He spent the next morning working out how much damage Osgood could do with three days and a strong hunch.

Osgood didn't need proof to act. Men like him only needed enough suspicion to justify a closer look, and a closer look at Nash Ferro would end with someone digging into records that shouldn't exist for a man who'd appeared out of nowhere two years ago.

He needed Corwin Vale to move faster than that timeline allowed.

"You're back sooner than I expected," Corwin said, when Nash walked into the same bar two nights after their first meeting.

"Plans changed."

"Plans always change with men who won't say what they want." Corwin gestured to the seat across from him. "You said you could prove your information was real. I'm listening."

Nash slid a second set of photographs across the table, taken the night before from a closer position than the ridge, close enough to catch delivery times stamped on shipping crates stacked inside the textile building's loading dock.

"Wade's moving product through this site twice a week," Nash said. "Wednesdays and Saturdays, always after midnight, always with the same four trucks. Hit the Wednesday run and you take out a third of what he's hiding from Declan in one night."

Corwin studied the photographs longer this time. "You've done this kind of work before."

"I know how to watch people."

"That's not what I asked." Corwin's eyes came up, sharp now, assessing. "Most men who bring me information like this want money, or territory, or a favor cashed in later. You haven't asked me for any of that. Which tells me you want something you're not willing to name yet."

"I want Kessler gone," Nash said. "That's the whole truth I'm willing to give you tonight."

"And Declan Callahan."

Nash held his gaze. "One war at a time."

Corwin leaned back, considering him for a long moment before finally nodding once. "Wednesday, then. If this information is accurate, we'll talk about what you actually want from me. If it's not, don't come back."

Nash left the meeting with the alliance half built, which was progress, but progress that wouldn't matter if Osgood moved first.

He needed to know exactly how much Osgood already suspected, and there was only one place likely to have that answer.

He found Fenwick waiting at the laundromat room that night, standing near the window with the kind of stillness that meant bad news.

"You look like you already know something's wrong," Nash said, closing the door behind him.

"Osgood requested pack records today," Fenwick said. "Security footage from the docks going back three weeks. He's building a file."

"On me."

"On the man he thinks might not exist the way he claims to." Fenwick closed the distance, lowering his voice even though they were alone. "He also requested something else. Old medical records from the pack archive. Specifically, anyone treated for a scent anomaly in the last decade."

Nash felt something cold settle in his chest. "There's a record."

"There's exactly one record," Fenwick said. "Sealed under your father's authority eleven years before you were born. Osgood doesn't have clearance to access it, not yet, but he's persistent, and persistence eventually finds a way around clearance."

"What's in the record?"

Fenwick hesitated, longer than Nash liked. "Your father wasn't the first Callahan to deal with this. There was an uncle. Your father's older brother. Nobody talks about him because he disappeared from every family record when you were still a child."

"It disappeared, how?"

"The same way you almost did," Fenwick said. "Betrayed by someone close to him. Lost his scent afterward, the same way you lost yours. And when he tried to come back and reclaim what was his—"

A knock at the door cut him off, three sharp knocks that made both men go quiet at once.

Fenwick moved to the window first, checking the street below before nodding at Nash to open it. Nash pulled the door back carefully, weapon already in hand behind his leg, and found Briar standing in the hallway, out of breath like she'd run the whole way there.

"You need to hear this now," she said, pushing past him into the room without waiting for an invitation. "Osgood knows more than a rumor. He's got a name."

"What name," Nash said.

"Not yours," Briar said. "Not exactly. He's been asking around about your uncle. Someone who vanished from the Callahan family over a decade before you were even born." She looked between Nash and Fenwick, catching the tension already in the room. "Which tells me you already knew that story before I said it."

Fenwick said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.

"There's more," Briar said, lowering her voice further. "Osgood found something in the old records nobody sealed carefully enough. A photograph. Of your uncle, before he disappeared."

"And," Nash said.

Briar looked at him steadily, the way someone looks at a person right before delivering something they can't take back.

"He looks exactly like you," she said. "Same face, same build. Down to the last detail, like the two of you could stand side by side and no one would be able to tell which one was born first."

She let that settle for a moment before finishing.

"Osgood isn't looking for Callahan who faked his death anymore," she said. "He's building a theory that whatever happened to your uncle eleven years before you were born is happening again, to the same bloodline, on purpose. And if he's right about that, Nash, then someone in your own family has been doing this for a very long time. Long before Declan ever gave the order to have you killed.”