Page 13 of Vamp CEO Bit You Where?

"It's from the café on your own ground floor."

"Then I especially don't trust it." Both hands stay on the wheel, easy and exact, as if even driving has a protocol. "Sleep if you want. We have two hours."

"And miss a billionaire driving himself? No one would believe me."

"Driving clarifies things."

"Such as?"

"Whether I want Kestrel Systems. Access control — doors, elevators, archives. The locks people forget they're standing behind."

"Riveting."

"It will be, once I own it."

I take notes anyway, because that's the job, and because listening to him is easier than ignoring him. Outside Hartford the fields go to scrub, and the quiet between us turns into the kind I don't usually allow.

"My father drove like you," I say. "Slow. Like the road owed him an explanation."

"Drove."

"He died when I was nine." I fix my gaze to the passing fields. "It looked like a robbery gone wrong. They said he surprised someone. But nothing was taken, the case closed in a week, the story never held." I haven't said the next part aloud in years. "Two marks on his neck. Here." I touch my own throat. "Like punctures. They blamed the struggle. My mother found him."

He doesn't fill the gap with anything useless. He just lets me have it.

"He was kind, from what I remember. Not soft. Just decent in a way people noticed. He was an investigative journalist, a good one, and I think he found something that got him killed, and the people who decided it was a robbery didn't want it found twice." I take the photo from my purse, the corners fading from years of carrying it. "That's him. I look like him. Same stubborn face."

He takes it carefully, studying it. "He does have a kind face," he says, and returns it. "I'm sorry you went through that. It's a heavy thing to carry in childhood."

We pull up to Kestrel's office. The parking lot is half-empty. It would have been considered modern thirty years ago. The current owner, Lattimer, is sweating through his shirt and pretending he isn't desperate for the sale. He pitches the software, patents, and municipal contracts. Sebastian nods through the pitch.

"Your legacy installations," Sebastian says. "Private archives, restricted buildings. How many still use manual override?"

"Those? Barely revenue. We'd retire them in the deal."

"I'd keep them. Especially the older permissions. Master credentials, emergency bypasses, audit trails that predate your current platform." Pleasant, unhurried. "And you list several clients as private. I'd want them named before close."

Lattimer's smile shrinks. "Some clients value discretion. Old money. Old contracts."

"Missing access logs," Sebastian says mildly. "Curious, for a security company."

"Migration error," Lattimer says, too fast.

I write it all down. It sounds like risk management. It also sounds like Sebastian came here already knowing where to press.

We start packing up shortly after and leave. We get ten minutes of highway in before I crack.

"You're not that interested in the software," I say.

"I'm interested in it all."

"No, you let him talk about software. You asked about the buildings. The elevators. The places still staffed after dark. And every time he avoided naming a client, you noticed."

"Old infrastructure is a liability. If I acquire the company, I acquire its exposure — I'd rather know which I own than be surprised by them." Reasonable. Clean. An answer designed to close the subject.

"Right," I say, and let him believe it worked.

Crowe Technologies has changed in the time we were gone. Two new faces sit at the security desk, and a man I've badged through a hundred times is asked for a second ID. People are stopped, checked, and checked again before the elevators will take them up.