Page 29 of Angel’s Doll

I sit with that. A resentful cousin, three time zones from supervision, out to prove he could do everything by himself. It fits Glitch and Cash’s intel perfectly.

“That’s good intel,” I tell her before we go for breakfast in the common room.

Waiting is its own kind of work, and the club does it the way it does everything, loudly and over cards. Compass deals her in without asking.

Twenty minutes later she has most of the table’s cash in front of her and Maverick is accusing her of counting.

“I’m not counting.” She stacks his money like she’s done it professionally, which I guess she has, just never for herself. “You check your cards twice when you’re bluffing. Bones looks at the pot when he hits. Compass …” she tips her chin at him … “gives nothing away. That’s why I fold when he raises.”

Compass smiles. From Compass that’s a parade.

Ten years reading the most dishonest room in Seattle. My Doll came out of it fluent, and this is the first table that’s ever paid her for it.

The radio on Smoke’s hip cracks mid-afternoon. Gate. A box truck on rental plates, a driver with a clipboard and a company name Glitch can’t find a company for. Asking whether a Miss Hale needs to sign for a delivery.

Her name. In a stranger’s mouth. At our gate.

By the time Smoke and I get down there the truck is idling and the driver is sticking to a script somebody paid him to hold. We don’t touch him. We stand where his dashboard camera can watch us not touching him. I take the clipboard, read the form with nothing on it, and hand it back.

“No Miss Hale here,” I say. “Drive careful.”

Glitch owns the plate before the truck clears the corner. Rented Tuesday, cash card, and the card runs back through one of Ian Durey’s shells.

So. He knows where she is, he’s known for days, and today he sent her name to our gate to hear what happened to it.

Letting that truck drive away costs me but proof before bullets, all the way to the meet.

The answer comes back before the yard lights come on. Fast.

Cash finds me at the gate with his phone already out, Glitch on the line, and reads it to both of us off Feeney’s message. No greeting. No signature. Terms.

He will meet. Neutral ground, he picks from three we offer. Six men a side. No police, no recordings, no surprises. And a condition of his own. Ian does not know. If Ian learns of the meet before it happens, there is no meet, and he will treat the leak as ours.

“Friendly,” Cash says.

“It’s better than friendly,” Glitch says in the speaker. “It’s controlled. Friendly you can fake.”

I read it twice more. A man who wanted us dead answers with silence or with company. A man who blessed Brightmoor doesn’t fence his own cousin out of the room. This reads like a chair who got an envelope, opened it, and started adding up what his aunt’s boy has cost him.

Or it reads like bait with good grammar. We’ll load for both.

The smart play got a yes out of Chicago. I’ll hold to it through the meet, Bishop’s rules the whole distance.

I go back to her room to keep my word.

Her door is open.

15

DOLL

The meet has terms, and Angel gives me all of them standing in my doorway.

Tomorrow night. A law office on the thirty-first floor, empty after hours, picked by Bishop off a list of three the Quinlans would accept. Six men a side. No police, no recordings, no surprises. The elder brother comes in person. Ian doesn’t know the meeting exists.

“That’s the shape of it,” he says. “Now the part I owe you. Cash would like you to come so your account of Ian in the room is available. Your word, your memory, in front of the man himself. Nobody voted on that. Nobody gets to. You can be there for it, or you can hear about it after.”

Since it’s my choice, I do not hesitate. “I want to be in the room.”