Page 33 of Bear and Order

The smile fades slightly. "My story isn't very exciting." I don't believe that, and she can see it plainly. Her laugh is soft. "Fine." The smile vanishes entirely. "I was abandoned." The words land simply, directly, carrying weight that doesn't match how casually she delivers them. She says it like she's discussing the weather, like it stopped mattering a long time ago. I don't believe that either.

"I bounced around for a while." My jaw tightens. Juniper notices immediately, and a brief, sad smile crosses her face. "See? That face."

"What face?"

"The protective one."

I don't answer, mostly because I have no response worth giving. She looks down at her hands. "The bakery gave me something permanent. A place." Her gaze lifts slowly. "A reason to stay."

I understand that more than I want to admit, and more than I'm willing to say out loud.

The conversation settles into something softer afterward. Neither of us rushes to fill the quiet, and the silence sits comfortably between us — easy in a pattern that continues to catch me off guard every time it happens. Juniper eventually reaches for a stack of invoices. "I should finish organizing these."

She begins sorting — receipts, invoices, purchase records, the ordinary paperwork of a business that refuses to stop running despite everything pressing against it. A receipt slides free and lands near my elbow. My attention drifts toward it, then toward the complaint files beside me, then back again.

Something clicks.

Juniper notices immediately. "That look worries me."

"What look?"

"The investigation look." She says it like a warning.

I pull the receipt closer and straighten. "When complaints were filed, they created financial activity." Juniper pauses, the invoice suspended halfway through being sorted. "What does that mean?"

"It means paperwork. If the complaints were coordinated, somebody paid for something somewhere along the way."

Understanding crosses her face — slowly, then suddenly, the way it always does with her. "Oh."

Exactly. I pull out my phone and make the first call. Then the second. Then another. Questions become requests, requests become authorizations, and the process moves faster than expected. By the time the final call ends, email notifications begin arriving in a steady stream — reference receipts, financial records, transaction histories, everything landing at once.

Juniper abandons her paperwork entirely and moves to stand beside me. "What did you find?"

"No clue yet."

We begin reading. The first records appear ordinary. The second batch is considerably less so. The third makes my attention sharpen into something focused and certain. "Wait."

Juniper leans closer immediately. "What?"

I point toward a transaction, then another beside it. The names are different, the accounts are different. The timing is not. "There."

Juniper follows my finger across the screen. The realization crosses her face seconds later. "No way."

I keep reading. The pattern holds — repeated, consistent, impossible to explain away with coincidence. Financial activity exists precisely where it shouldn't. Transactions connect businesses that have no visible reason to be connected. The irregularities are subtle enough to avoid casual notice and significant enough, once spotted, to matter enormously.

We remain silent. The evidence spreads across the screen and we simply stare at it together, because the sabotage has finally left something more traceable than rumours and forged documents and whispered complaints.

It leaves money and money is considerably harder to hide.

15

JUNIPER

Iknow we're going somewhere important because Brock spends the entire walk looking even more serious than usual, which is impressive. The man already treats smiling like a tax obligation.

"Are you going to tell me where we're headed?" I ask.

Brock glances my way. "Yes."