He doesn't listen to the note, he folds it and tucks it into his wallet like a dare, a small scrap that smells of Maya's handwriting and rain, and when Leo says maybe it's cleverer to leg it and plan, Jace shakes his head, he has never been good at running from the sound of someone's name being used like a weapon, "she told me don't come looking because she wanted to keep me safe, I'm not going to let her script me into obedience," he says, voice hard but maybe softer than he thinks, and Leo just swears and says all the things friends say when they're trying not to be scared
The cold store sits where the city forgets itself, warehouses stacked like old promises, the air smells of brine and old cardboard and something chemical that makes you think of hospital floors, they move in with flashlights and the kind of quiet that sticks to your clothes, Amira knows a man who knows a man and she's good at the small, invisible favours that used to cost less than a conscience, she slips through a side gate and the padlock surrenders like an old soldier
Inside is a cathedral of chill, racks of boxes, frozen pallets humming like sleeping machines, the light from their phones makes shadows like paper cutouts, and Jace walks with a feeling in his chest that is neither hunger nor fear but a bruise that wants to show itself, "If this is a stunt, I will cut out the throat of everyone who smiles about it," he whispers, ridiculous and honest, and the thermals make their breath white and small
They find a van with no plates under a tarpaulin, some crates stamped with a small, unfamiliar logo, the same symbol he has seen three times now, tattooed wrist, business card, stamped crate, it is a brand of menace that has learned to be tidy, Leo kicks the door and the sound echoes like a drum, a camera above them tilts and for a second a red dot blinks on as if the room itself has remembered to watch
Then the phone buzzes, unknown number, Maya's voice, raw and quick, "Jace, don't come in, listen to me, whatever you think you know, stop, you are exactly what they want, go, leave, pretend you never got this," and she sounds panic-brittle, the words snapping like thin wire, "they tie it to you, they make you the man who tried to rescue and they hang you with the rope" and the line dies with a click that sounds like a nail through a lid
He should go, of course he should go, the sensible thing is to retreat and build a proper plan with lawyers and men who talk in suits, but he is already there and the commitment of being there tastes like courage, and besides he hates being told what to do by people who don't hold his hands through it, "We check the back, quietly," he says, and Amira gives him that look, equal parts exasperation and faith, and they move, boots whispering over oil stains
A camera in the corner watches them like an uninterested god, its lens reflecting a pale moon of light, and Jace wipes his palm on his jeans and finds a scrap of Maya's scarf pinned under a pallet, fabric warm with someone's breath, and his throat closes around a sound that might be a prayer, he lifts it like it might shatter if he squeezes too hard
Leo finds the camera bag, strap torn, lens cap gone, and inside the pocket a Polaroid, one of those cheap instant things with the white edge that always makes faces look smaller, it's Maya, smiling even blindfolded, and on the back a message in hurried handwriting, "remember, not rescue" — the words feel like a pivot and Jace's head spins because the ledger keeps adding lines and none of them are neat
Then the phone on the floor lights, a video auto-plays from an unknown sender, the frame is grainy, Maya's face, pale where the blindfold has left ridges, she mouths but there is sound, "Jace," she says, the voice in the clip like someone in an underwater room, "if you come you'll make it worse, Argos will escalate, Dean will wash his hands in your name, they are building a case that needs a hero to bleed, don't be that man" and she smiles, the smile doesn't reach her eyes, "I need you to listen, don't come" and the video cuts to black and a line overlays, "phase five, engagement"
Someone breathes out behind them and the cold hits with teeth, footsteps skitter like rats, and a figure steps from between the pallets, gloves, a jacket with the same mark faint on the cuff, face half shadowed, "Mr Kavanagh," the voice is flat as an invoice, "you shouldn't have followed the compass you were given" and Jace feels the air thin like a curtain being pulled across a stage
He says a name, the one he shouldn't, the one that sounded like an echo in the studio, "Dean," and the man's laugh is small and mechanical, "we use many names for our contractors, don't make it personal," he says, but there is something in the way he says it that smells of uniforms and civic seals, "you need to leave, Mr Kavanagh, for your sake, not hers" and the sentence hangs like a trap disguised as mercy
"Where is she," Jace says because you ask that before you think of anything else, and the man jerks his chin to a steel door with a small window blacked out, "in there for now, she's safe enough if you obey simple rules, we're not in the business of breaking people without need," he says, the words oddly sincere and monstrous at once, "we're in the business of leverage, and you have become very valuable to many parties" and Leo swears, low and hot, "then give her back" he says, stupid, brave, useless
"Compliance is cheap," the man answers, "and drama is costly, Mr K, you go public and we escalate, you stay quiet and she remains intact, choices, each with a price, you always were someone who understood numbers" and Jace hates that it is true, he does know numbers like prayer, he knows weights and measures of hearts and companies, he knows how quickly currency can sand a face
He wants to throw himself at the man, to tear the fake civility from his throat, but Amira grabs his arm, small and hard, "Don't," she says, eyes furious, "they are baiting, they want you to act, every impulse you answer becomes evidence" and he hears it, a cold clearness slicing the boil of male impulse, "we get a lawyer, we get cameras, we make this public in the right order" she says, voice small and steady like someone reading a map at night
The man folds his hands like a prayer, "or we'll release a dozen frames showing you with the missing funds, or a clip from last night making you appear to bribe your way out, you think you can spin that, we can make pixels swear," and his phone buzzes with a small chime and he holds it up like a priest with a relic, an image flares, a still of Jace in the hostel, a frame cropped cruelly to suggest purpose, "phase six," the overlay reads, clinical and patient
Jace feels the floor move under him, the choice is a blade with two edges both sharp, he could step back and build a cunning refutation with legal men who smell of starch and coffee or he could leap now and risk the thing he has at the centre of his chest, "Give me one hour," he says, because he needs to do something and words buy time and time is a thing he still has a little of, "and no tricks, you hold off anything else in that hour and if I don't come back you keep her" and the man considers like someone weighing coins
"An hour," he says, and the tiny red dot in the corner of the ceiling camera blinks as if to record the promise, "one hour, Mr Kavanagh, and no alarms" and he steps back into shadow and the steel door closes with a small clunk like a coin in a slot
They walk out into the bruised morning and the air tastes of salt and cheap coffee and the city feels like a script with holes, Leo's phone is a chorus of missed calls and a text from Sienna that reads "play the martyr and the world will eat you" and Jace thinks of the confession he uploaded, the radio host, the cameras, the legal men who measure every word, he thinks of Maya's face in the Polaroid smiling and saying remember not rescue, and he realises the ledger has been rewritten in a language he barely understands now, someone else is authoring the margins
He hails a taxi with hands that don't stop trembling, the meter clicks like a metronome he can't slow, the hour begins to eat itself in minutes, and he sits and looks at his reflection in the window and for once he doesn't like the face he sees, it is raw and unvarnished and maybe salvageable, maybe not, and he whispers to himself like a prayer, "one hour" and the car pulls away
At the docks the foreman waits with a face like a man who has seen storms and kept a boat afloat, "You were a fool to come," he says, not unkind, and Jace thinks of that and chooses to be foolish anyway, he can't un-choose the sound of Maya's voice telling him to stay away, he can't un-choose the way her hand had felt on his wrist, light as a claim, so he runs by instinct through alleyways and lifts and a door that smells of chilli and old paint, he finds a man who knows servers and cameras and pays him in cash like it's a conversation about sin
Back at the cold store he checks the feed, the camera is down for a blink and then comes up, a grainy shot of a windowless room, and in the corner a silhouette moves and for a second he swears he can see Maya, hair a dark cloud, but it's only a pallet shifting, and his phone rings, unknown number, and he answers thinking it might be her, it is not, it is a tone, a voice distorting a sentence into static, "We warned you, you don't get to be both the rescuer and the witness," and then a click like a tape being cut
He looks up and there is a van idling at the entrance, he sees the driver cast a glance at him, phones are out, fingers hovering, and as he reaches for his own phone to call Leo the van door slides open and a camera on a gimbal pokes out like a mouth willing to speak, a lens that focuses until the world narrows to a circle and a hand waves a card with the same neat symbol, "Mr Kavanagh, smile" it says, and the lens blinks bright, catching him mid-breath, and the last thing the chapter leaves is an image floating into the ether, his face wide-eyed and raw, and a caption that will hang over everything, "rescue attempt failed, hero arrested on scene" and the screen goes black.