Page 32 of Angel’s Doll

Bishop sends Compass down for it, and soon the burner sits on the conference table, wired to Cash’s phone.

“Line’s clean,” Cash says. “Every word goes to my phone and a drive.”

Bishop takes the chair across from mine. Angel doesn’t sit. He comes around my chair and goes down on one knee beside me, level.

“You good?”

“Ready.”

“Then I’m right here.”

Bishop slides the burner to me. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Ten digits I’ve dialed a thousand times. From desks, from cars, from hotel lobbies at midnight because he couldn’t read his own itinerary.

For the first time in my life, I call my uncle with a script he didn’t write.

Two rings.

“Hello.”

“It’s me.”

“Sloane.” My name comes out of him in two pieces, relief and fury fighting over which one gets to answer. “Where are you? Do you have any idea what you’ve⁠—”

“Stop talking, Victor.”

He stops. How strange.

“You’re going to listen, because this is my last favor to you.” I give him the office voice. “The Quinlans are in Seattle. Ian’s family. They’re asking questions about Brightmoor.”

A long silence. Then, careful, “What questions?”

“Whose bright idea it was to spend their clean western money on guardianship wards and stolen coastline. Whether it was you or Ian who dug that sewer.” I let it sit. “There’s one window, Victor, and it closes tonight. The man who answers their questions first is a witness. The man who answers second is the story they tell about it.”

“You ungrateful little⁠—”

I don’t give him room for venom.

“Three hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars. Was that not enough to cover my education?”

The line goes so quiet I check the screen to be sure it’s live.

“On the day of the funeral, you told a twelve-year-old her parents left nothing but debt.”

“That money went to your care.” He’s yelling now. “Your school. Your⁠—”

“My decade of unpaid labor? Careful, Victor. If you can’t tell the truth about me, how will you convince the Quinlans that Brightmoor wasn’t yours alone?”

That does it. Victor protests. “It was his. All of it. His idea, his facility, his language. He came to me off hours, you were there, you saw him. He said the holdouts were a paper problem, so he brought a paper solution. Guardianship. Voss said it would hold.” His breathing frays.

Another voice, then. In the room with him, low, the words lost.

Victor’s answer isn’t lost at all. “I’m talking to my niece!”

His palm scuffs over the phone. It’s a bad seal. Victor has always been challenged by technology, and tonight that’s the most useful thing about him.

“Calm down,” he says, muffled, leaking. “I’m not telling her anything she doesn’t already know.”