Unknown Number
740 Words
I locked the phone screen before anyone could see it.
My thumb moved on instinct, the message gone dark, but the words were already burned into the back of my eyes. I know about the second drive, Wren. The one you don't know you're carrying.
There was no drive I didn't know about. I had sewn that pocket myself. I had counted every file on it a hundred times in the dark of a bus seat somewhere between Ohio and here.
Unless I hadn't.
"Wren." Kane's voice cut through the noise in my head. "You coming?"
I slid the phone into my pocket and followed him into the main hall, where Donovan sat in a chair that had clearly been chosen for how little comfort it offered. The man from the SUV stood near the door with two Iron Saints flanking him, close enough to be a wall, far enough to look like courtesy.
Up close he looked exactly like what Asher had described. A face built for trust. Silver at the temples, a charcoal suit that cost more than my entire bus ticket, hands folded like he was waiting for a board meeting to start rather than sitting in a biker compound surrounded by men who had wanted him dead three years ago and hadn't stopped wanting it since.
"Frank Mercer," Kane said, and the name landed in the room like a verdict. "Last time anyone in this building heard that name, two of my brothers were already in the ground."
Mercer's smile didn't waver. "That was a different situation, Voss."
"Funny. Felt pretty permanent from where I was standing."
Asher hadn't moved from the wall, but I watched the muscle in his jaw work once, twice, before he spoke. "You ran logistics for Meridian when the network moved through three states in 2019. You coordinated the handoffs personally. I know because I spent eight months trying to prove it and never could."
"Then I suppose you'll appreciate," Mercer said, "that proving things and surviving them are different skills."
Jasper, leaning against the laptop table with his arms crossed, made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "Is that a threat or a job offer."
Mercer's eyes moved past Jasper, past Kane, and landed directly on me.
"Miss Sutton." His voice was warm in a way that made my skin crawl worse than Donovan's ever had, because Donovan's warmth had been performance and this man's felt like policy. "You have caused quite a lot of inconvenience."
"I've caused exactly one inconvenience," I said. "I refused to disappear quietly."
"There's still time to fix that."
Kane's hand found the back of my chair, not touching me, just present. "She's not fixing anything for you."
Donovan finally spoke from his chair, voice flatter than I had ever heard it. "Frank. This isn't the plan."
"The plan changed the moment she walked into a biker bar instead of a police station," Mercer said, not looking at him. "Your mother will adjust."
I felt the room tighten. Even Ryker, silent by the door, shifted his weight in a way that meant something.
"She doesn't take orders from anyone," Donovan said. "Not even you."
"Everyone takes orders from someone," Mercer said pleasantly. "Your mother takes hers from the people who fund Meridian. I take mine from her." His eyes found Donovan with something close to pity. "And you take yours from whoever is left standing when the smoke clears."
The threat in that sentence did not even bother to hide itself.
Kane stepped forward. "You came here to deliver a message. Deliver it."
Mercer's gaze came back to me, slow and deliberate. "There is a second drive, Miss Sutton. You did not plant it. You did not even know it existed until about four minutes ago, judging by your face." His smile widened a fraction. "Find it before we do. Because if we find it first, the deal Eleanor offered you disappears, and so does any reason to keep you breathing."
My phone buzzed again in my pocket.
I didn't reach for it. I didn't have to.
I already knew, with a cold certainty settling into my chest like a stone dropped into water, exactly who must have sent it.
Frank Mercer hadn't looked at his phone once since he walked through that door.
Which meant the second message hadn't come from outside the gate at all.
It had come from somewhere inside it.
- Writer
