“And?” I said, sipping my coffee.
Caleb nodded, fingers flying over the keyboard as windows and tabs cascaded across his screen. “We had three angles on the entrance. One traffic cam two blocks over, one drone—user-tagged footage from an influencer with a vape sponsorship, of all things—and a probable illegal internal feed from the back hallway. All cached. All scrubbed.” He turned the laptop so I could see it. “Dark web forums have already deleted the threads. I reached out to a contact in Metro ServerCompliance—whispered in the right ears about shutting down that backchannel surveillance company. The botnet that indexed the club’s social tags is down. And the local news stations are running the gang line, nothing else. Then?—”
“Cut to the chase, nerd,” I deadpanned.
Caleb looked up with a raised eyebrow. “It’s all good.”
I let out a slow breath and leaned back in my chair. “Thank you.”
“You want to talk about the shit that went down?”
“No.”
He nodded, sat back, and folded his hands. “Okay. Then let me cut to the chase. JamiefreakingMaddox? On scene. Three bodies and a fire.” He’s a loose cannon. Volatile. He killed three men; he burned the back rooms. That’s not nothing. Why is a former hacker, who is also a pyromaniac murderer?—”
Arsonist,” I corrected.
Caleb cursed. “What was he doing at the club, and did he evenhavean exit plan? Oh, and why did he take down the security at your place, which needless to say, I’ve fixed everything remotely, but the wiring… what he did…”
Caleb was working his way up to a meltdown. “I know,” I said quietly.
“We need to manage him. He could wreck everything if we’re not careful.”
As much as we could manage a live flame.
I didn’t answer. Not right away, because the truth was—Jamiewasa loose cannon, and it scared me, and intrigued me all at the same time. I had a lot to lose—we all did, and Jamie was the unknown quantity.
“Watch him.”
“Already on it,” Caleb said, and turned back to his laptop and screens. Two monitors showed the outside of the apartment Jamie shared with Rio, and the other the garage. “We have internal hookups to the security system, I assume Jamie aka DaemonRaze installed, and so far, he hasn’t cut it off despite knowing we’re in there.” He hesitated, then added, “I’m not happy about this.”
“But you’ll keep an eye on things, yeah?” I said, glancing over.
“Damage limitation,” Caleb muttered, fingers flying over the keyboard again.
Our private elevator chimed, and Sonya came in holding a paper bag, dropping the pastries on the table and tossing me a sharp look. “What the fuck happened last night, Killian?”
All I could do was groan—I didn’t want to gothrough this again. “Caleb can explain,” I said, already moving toward my actual office. “I have court.”
By 9:59 a.m., I was back in full performance mode—file under my arm, mask locked tight, coat buttoned with precision as I entered the courtroom.
Judge Alston didn’t look up as I slid into my seat at the defense table, but I caught the flick of her pen. She never looked at you until you were close to losing.
Across from me sat Martin Calloway.
Silicon Valley transplant. Private equity vampire. A man who’d built three fake holding companies to funnel investor funds into shell corporations. The SEC had noticed when a junior analyst flagged a 1.7 million dollar transaction for“ecosystem regeneration consulting.”
Translation: Calloway had paid his mistress to keep her quiet, and paid off the two hookers he’d nearly beaten to death.
I wished he was there answering for the latter, but, no, like Al Capone he’d go down for financial reasons, not the pain he’d inflicted.
Calloway was guilty. Rotten to the core. And I’d known it the second I shook his hand. So the team and I had laid the groundwork weeks ago. Sloppymotions. Just enough missed objections. Hints of incompetence tucked in like breadcrumbs. The judge would never accuse me of tanking the case—but I knew how to help a guilty man go down.
The plea had come in at 2:48 p.m., right on schedule. Three counts of securities fraud. Ten years suspended to five with federal supervision, full restitution of 5.6 million dollars in investor funds. Probation recommendation: denied. Calloway was stunned, but I’d already packed my briefcase. The poor bastard still thought he might walk. I kept my expression grim.
“Mr. Vance, your client accepts the terms?” Alston asked, peering over her glasses.
I stood. “He does, Your Honor.”
