The coordinates led to an old textile mill two towns over. A place where the machines ground cloth and secrets equally. Our tires crunched in the gravel like a heartbeat. The lot was empty except for one van and a man standing under the mill’s broken neon. He was the kind of figure that smelled like trouble: rooted, casual, with a phone to his ear and the confidence of somebody who thinks they have options.
When he saw us his face didn’t bother with surprise. “You don’t play by the rules,” he said. “So you don’t get the courtesy of a warning.”
“You have Tyler?” Dominic’s voice was a blade.
He shrugged. “He bought his vices from the same market as everyone else. He slept where men told him to. That makes him easy to move.”
The man lifted the phone and a flick of the camera showed a smal
