Concrete Walls and Crayon Drawings
The travel from Route 9 Motel, room 14, outskirts of the city to Safehouse loft, industrial district consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The safehouse smelled like concrete dust and industrial solvent. The loft had been a textile factory once, thirty-foot ceilings with rusted I-beams and floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the smokestacks of the industrial district. Flynn had already replaced the glass with ballistic laminate. The bars would go up tomorrow.
Killian circled the space on his second sweep, checking the sightlines from each window, the position of the single reinforced door, the fire escape that led to a dead-end alley. He counted eighteen seconds from the street entrance to the loft door. Eighteen seconds of exposed stairwell with no cover.
“It’s a goddamn shooting gallery,” he said.
Flynn looked up from the tactical map he was assembling on the kitchen island. “It’s what was available in six hours. The shell company purchased it through three intermediaries. The Blackthorns won’t find it through normal channels.”
“They don’t need normal channels. They have Owen’s network.” Killian stopped at the window, watching the street below. Empty. The last shift at the plastics plant had ended an hour ago. “How many men can you put on rotation?”
“Four. Two on-site, two mobile. I’ll rotate them every eight hours.”
“Not enough.”
“It never is,” Flynn said. “But it’s what I’ve got until I vet the additional contractors. You want warm bodies fast, or you want people who won’t sell you out to the highest bidder?”
Killian didn’t answer. He already knew the calculus. Trust was a currency he’d been bankrupt of for six years.
Cassidy emerged from the bathroom with Jace’s hand in hers. The boy was dragging a roll of butcher paper behind him, the industrial kind used for pattern-making. He’d found it in one of the storage closets, along with a box of markers that had dried to dust.
“There’s a 24-hour art supply store on Grand,” Cassidy said. “I need to get him something to do. He can’t watch screens for four days straight.”
“I’ll send someone,” Flynn said.
“No.” Killian turned from the window. “I’ll go. You stay here with them.”
Cassidy’s eyes met his. There was something in them he hadn’t seen in years—not trust, exactly, but an acknowledgment that they were in this together. It was more than he deserved.
“Take my car,” Flynn said, tossing him a key fob. “The black sedan. It’s clean.”
The art supply run took twenty-three minutes. Killian moved through the store with the efficiency of someone who had learned to see every space as a threat surface. He grabbed the largest drawing pad they had, a box of crayons that looked like it belonged in a kindergarten classroom, and a set of washable markers. At the last second, he added a coloring book with dinosaurs on the cover.
When he returned, Jace had claimed the corner of the loft nearest the windows. He’d spread the butcher paper across the concrete floor and was drawing with a black marker he’d found somewhere. His tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth in concentration.
Killian crouched beside him. “What are you making?”
Jace didn’t look up. “Our new house.”
The drawing was crude, six-year-old proportions and wobbly lines. But the details were specific. A rectangle with windows. A door with a knob. A stick-figure family standing in front: one tall, one medium, one small. And a fourth figure that looked like a dog.
“That’s you,” Jace said, pointing to the tall one. “And that’s Mama. And that’s me.” He tapped the dog. “That’s Rex.”
“We don’t have a dog.”
“We could get one. He could sleep on my bed, and I’d feed him, and he’d bark if bad people come.”
Killian stared at the drawing. The dog was a lie the boy was telling himself. A piece of normalcy in a world that had given him nothing but broken promises and whispered secrets. Jace had never asked for a dog before. He’d never asked for anything, really, except the truth about his father.
Killian pulled out his phone and called Flynn. “I need the number for a rescue organization. One that does same-day placements.”
Cassidy looked up from the kitchen counter where she was inventorying supplies. “What are you doing?”
“Getting him a dog.”
“Killian. We’re in a safehouse. We can’t have a dog.”
“We can have a dog. The loft has concrete floors. We’ll put down puppy pads. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. It’s reckless.”
“He drew a family,” Killian said, and his voice cracked on the last word. “He drew us with a dog. I’m not letting him have the lie. I’m giving him the thing.”
Cassidy’s mouth opened, then closed. She looked at Jace, who had moved on to drawing a sun in the corner of the paper, orange marker bleeding through to the concrete.
“Fine,” she said. “But you’re cleaning up the accidents.”
The dog arrived three hours later. A golden retriever mix, eighteen months old, with soulful brown eyes and a tail that wagged in constant motion. The rescue volunteer handed over a leash, a bag of food, and a crate. “He’s house-trained. Mostly. Good with kids. His name is Gus.”
Jace looked at the dog. The dog looked at Jace. And then the boy’s face broke into a smile so pure it made something twist in Killian’s chest.
“Rex,” Jace said, kneeling down. “His name is Rex.”
The dog—Rex—licked Jace’s face and the boy laughed, the first real laugh Killian had heard from him. Cassidy pressed her hand to her mouth, and Killian saw the sheen of moisture in her eyes before she turned away.
Miriam arrived at dusk, carrying bags of groceries and a weighted blanket she’d bought for Jace. “For the anxiety,” she said, setting it on the couch. “My nephew has one. Works wonders.”
She stayed for dinner. Flynn had ordered Thai food from a place that delivered to the alley entrance, and they ate around the kitchen island like a family playing house. Jace sat on the floor with Rex, sneaking him pieces of chicken when he thought no one was looking.
After dinner, Miriam pulled out a board game she’d brought—a complicated fantasy game with miniatures and cards and a rulebook that looked like it belonged in a law library. Jace’s eyes lit up.
“You’re going to teach me?”
“I’m going to destroy you,” Miriam said. “But yes, I’ll teach you first.”
While they set up the game on the coffee table, Killian and Cassidy retreated to the far end of the loft. The windows faced east, the city lights casting long shadows across the floor. Killian had placed two chairs facing each other, an improvised command center.
“I have something,” he said, pulling out his phone. “Something I should have used years ago.”
He opened an audio file. The recording was scratchy, ambient noise from a restaurant or a bar. Then Owen Blackthorn’s voice cut through, clear as a bell.
“—the Voss estate is overvalued by at least sixty percent. The mineral rights alone are worth more than the surface property, but the trust has them bundled together. If we can force a fire sale, we cherry-pick the assets.”
A second voice, younger. Dorian. “The trust requires unanimity among the trustees. Killian won’t agree.”
“Killian won’t have a choice. I’ve been patient with that boy, but patience has limits. If he won’t sell, we make him sell. There are ways.”
“What ways?”
“His son, for one. The boy turns six next week. A visitation issue. A custody retainer. Something that forces him to liquidate to cover the legal fees. You squeeze the right pressure points, people break.”
Cassidy’s face went pale. “When did you record this?”
“Three years ago. Owen didn’t know I had my phone running. It’s inadmissible in court—illegal wiretapping, no warrant, no chain of custody. But it’s the truth.”
“So what do we do with it?”
Killian leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “We can’t use it in a courtroom. But we can use it to force them into a response. If they think we have more—if they think we have proof of their broader schemes—they’ll act. And when they act, they’ll make a mistake.”
“You want to bait them.”
“I want to finish them. The Blackthorns have been operating in the shadows for three generations. Owen built his empire on threats and backroom deals. Dorian is worse—he doesn’t have his father’s patience or his restraint. If we push the right button, Dorian will come for us directly.”
“And then what?”
Killian pulled a folded document from his jacket pocket. A single page, printed on heavy bond paper. It looked official—seals, signatures, legal language.
“I need you to look at this.”
Cassidy took it, her designer’s eye running over the layout. “This is a fake.”
“Yes. I had a specialist draft it. It’s a signed affidavit from Owen Blackthorn’s former financial controller, swearing that Owen concealed assets during the divorce proceedings that funded the early acquisitions. It references accounts in the Caymans, shell companies in Delaware, the whole thing.”
“It’s beautiful work,” she said, and there was a note of professional admiration in her voice. “The typography is right. The notary seal is convincing.”
“It’s convincing enough to make Dorian panic. If he sees this, he’ll believe his father was hiding information from him. And since the controller in question died last year in a boating accident, there’s no one to verify it.”
Cassidy’s hand trembled slightly. “You’re going to feed this to Dorian.”
“I’m going to let him find it. Flynn will plant it in a secure dropbox that Dorian’s people monitor. They’ll think they intercepted it. And when Dorian reads it, he’ll assume his father was planning to cut him out of the inheritance.”
“That’s playing with fire.”
“It’s the only move we have. The Voss inheritance is tied up in the trust. As long as the trust exists, the Blackthorns can leverage it against us. But if Dorian thinks his father is bleeding the company to set up his own foundation, he’ll move to protect his position. He’ll come for us directly.”
“And we’ll be ready.”
“We’ll be ready.”
Miriam had appeared at some point, Jace’s hand in hers. The boy had Rex on a leash, the dog panting happily at his side.
“Jace wants to take Rex for a walk,” Miriam said. “I told him we’d stick to the rooftop. It’s enclosed.”
Killian nodded. “Stay within sight of the stairwell. Flynn will have someone on the roof.”
After they left, Cassidy turned back to Killian. The night had deepened, the glass reflecting their silhouettes against the city skyline. She was close enough that he could smell her shampoo—something floral, familiar, a ghost of the woman he’d married.
“If this works,” she said, “we lose the company. The trust will collapse. We’ll be starting from zero.”
“I don’t care about the company. I never did. It was my father’s dream, not mine.”
“What do you care about?”
He looked at her, really looked at her, and saw the exhaustion in her eyes, the fear she was working so hard to hide. Saw the woman who had raised his son alone for six years, who had built a life from the ashes of their failed marriage, who had every reason to hate him and had chosen not to.
“You,” he said. “And Jace. That’s all I’ve ever cared about. Everything else was just noise.”
She kissed him then. It was not a gentle kiss. It was desperate and hungry and tasted like tears. Six years of separation collapsed into a single moment, the weight of their shared history pressing down on them like the concrete walls of the loft.
When she pulled back, her hands were shaking.
“If this works,” she whispered against his lips, “we lose the company. But we get them.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then we lose everything.”