And then I'm going to make sure they never take it from me.
Chapter 6
Liam
She's talking to the pipe.
Not a passing comment — a full-scale negotiation, complete with pauses where she apparently waits for the pipe to respond. I'm standing in the kitchen doorway with two mugs of coffee, and Kari Engstrom is on her back under the sink, knees bent, one sock sliding off her foot, conducting diplomacy with corroded plumbing.
"I understand you're old," she says, her voice muffled and entirely too patient. "I respect that. But you cannot just decide to stop working. We had an agreement."
A wrench clangs against something. She hisses.
"Okay. Okay, that was my fault. I came in too aggressive. Let me try again."
More clanging. A grunt. Her foot twitches, the sock sliding further.
"Listen. I inherited you. I didn't ask for this relationship either. But I need you to carry water from point A to point B. That's your one job. I'm not asking you to do calculus."
A pause. She blows a strand of hair away from her face, though I can't see her face — only hips, legs, that one rebellious sock.
"Fine. You want to be difficult? I have a guy at the hardware store. Walt will know what to replace you with. Someone younger. Someone who actually functions."
The laugh comes out before I can catch it.
Not a half-breath through my nose. An actual sound — short, rough, scraped out of somewhere behind my ribs that I thought I'd sealed off years ago. It fills the kitchen like a gunshot.
Kari goes still under the sink. I go still in the doorway.
She slides out slowly, hair stuck to her forehead, a smudge of rust on her jaw, wrench in one hand. Her eyes find mine — not startled, not amused. Searching. Like she heard something she wasn't supposed to hear and she's trying to figure out where it came from.
My jaw locks. The instinct is immediate — shut it down, rebuild the wall, say something clipped about the plumbing. My body knows the choreography. Flatten the expression. Drop the gaze. Retreat.
But she's looking at me with rust on her face and that damn sock halfway off and the wrench held like she might use it as a weapon or a scepter, and for one full breath I don't move.
"Did you just — "
"Coffee's ready." I set one mug on the counter. "You should call an actual plumber for that."
"I am an actual plumber. As of three online tutorials ago."
I don't look back. I take my coffee to the front porch, sit in the chair with sight lines to both ends of the street, and pull out my phone.
Vance picks up on the second ring.
"The development company — Halcyon Ridge. I need March to run financials."
I give him the harassment pattern, Oren's intel, the sense that someone is orchestrating a campaign. He listens theway Vance listens — extracting what matters, discarding what doesn't.
"I'll brief March. She'll want a full property history." A pause. "Liam. How's your objectivity?"
My thumb presses hard against the side of the mug. "Intact."
He doesn't sound like he believes me.
Before I go back inside, I scan the block. A silver Altima sits at the far end of the street, idling. Tinted windows. No one gets out. Nine-fourteen a.m. By the time I check again, it's pulling away from the curb and turning the corner.
The attic is Margit's filing cabinet and forty years of dust.