Page 109 of Slashed Bonds
They have it exactly backward.
We aren’t clawing. We’re playing to the committee’s tune because the committee wrote a tune we can play, and every note of it is being recorded by a five-foot-four Omega in a pink coat who has decided that if they want villains, they’ll get villains, and they’ll get them at a volume they didn’t budget for.
It’s worked. Too well.
Money arrived on Thursday. All three of our accounts, same amount, same hour. Mysterious sender. No name, no memo, a transfer from an account that a bank would tell us about if a bank were willing, and it isn’t.
A few thousand dollars.
Am I going to complain? No. I’m going to buy a new skate guard.
I did look, though. I look at everything.
The transfer came through a trust with a name that means nothing and a registered agent who’s a lawyer in a city four hours from here. The lawyer’s firm has three partners. One of them handled a property transfer five years ago for a parcel of Omega-protected land in the county, cheap, secluded, a two-room shed in a forest that I’d bet my skate guard has a truck the color of a bruise parked outside it.
Same money. Same hands. Whoever paid for her, they’re paying for us now.
I haven’t told Cash. I haven’t told her. I’m holding it, because a thing like that isn’t information until you know what it’s for, and I don’t yet.
There’s a version where it’s kindness. There’s a version where it’s investment. Money that keeps a woman alive for five years and then keeps her team afloat the week she joins it is money with a plan, and I’ve never once met a plan that didn’t want something back.
But there’s a thing I will complain about, and it’s the reason I’m here.
Mori’s trending.
Not the team. Her. People are digging. That eleven-second clip has turned into a hundred people asking who she is, and the hundred has turned into a thousand, and it hasn’t crossed into a hashtag yet, but I know how these things scale and I’d put it at three days.
Before Tuesday. Before the game.
And I can’t work out how to feel about it.
Threatened, on her behalf, at the idea of more eyes on her, because eyes are how people get found. Or threatened on ours, at the idea that we don’t have the resources yet to protect her from what those eyes bring.
Not yet.
Which is why I’m here.
Cash said work your magic on a bleacher on Thursday morning, and I’ve been working since.
The text came off a prepaid handset. The lawyer had the carrier by noon that day, and the tower by two, and the tower put the phone in a town called Halbrook at the moment the message was sent. Halbrook has one arena, and the arena has a program that plays in our division, and I didn’t need the lawyer for the rest.
Hellsing Ross. Same as Cash’s photo. Same as the jackets.
The handset was bought with cash at a gas station on the county road out of Halbrook, eleven days ago. Eleven days is before she got the card in the barn. Before Roz’s eleven weeks were over. Before anybody outside a barn and a wool coat knew where Morrigan Crowe was.
Somebody knew anyway. Somebody’s known the whole time.
Then there’s the account that commented on Maddie’s clip. No picture, no posts. Created at 2:13 in the morning on the day she moved in.
2:13. I’ve got her phone log too, because Cash has her phone log, because the lawyer has everyone’s phone log. Unknown number, four calls in six weeks, every one of them at 2:13 in the morning, every one of them unanswered.
That’s not a time. That’s a message. Somebody wants her to know they remember a time.
I don’t know what happened at 2:13. I know it happened to her. I know that whoever’s sending it is standing in Halbrook with a prepaid phone, and that they were standing there before she’d said yes to any of this, and that they’ve decided the play is to remind her.
I haven’t told Cash the 2:13 part. I’ll tell him Monday. He’ll want to do something with it before Tuesday, and there’s nothing to do with it before Tuesday except let it sit in the file where it can’t hurt her yet.
Let them play cat and mouse. I know where the cat lives now.
