Chapter 5 - The Man Who Chose Willa Was Never a Coincidence

Miles backed away from Jared before Jared moved.

"I can explain."

"Start now," Jared said.

The phone had gone silent. Brendan had ended the call exactly when he meant to, leaving the rest of us to destroy one another for him.

Miles rubbed both hands over his face. "I heard about Willa from a security consultant named Brendan Cole."

Hearing Brendan's last name in Jared's hidden basement made my skin crawl.

"He approached me three weeks ago," Miles continued. "Said he had worked with trauma dogs and knew someone who might help Caesar. He gave me the clinic address."

"And you never thought to mention this?" Jared asked.

"I checked her background. Nothing connected her to Victor. Nothing connected Brendan to him either."

"You didn't check hard enough."

I interrupted. "What exactly did Brendan tell you about me?"

Miles hesitated.

"Everything," he admitted. "That you'd lived with him. That you had left. That you had volunteered around working dogs when you were younger. That you could sit quietly longer than most people could tolerate."

Humiliation burned through me.

Brendan had packaged the parts of me he once punished and sold them as qualifications.

Jared watched my face. "Did he hurt you?"

I hated the softness in the question more than I would have hated anger.

"He controlled me," I said. "Until control wasn't enough. Then he started making sure I understood what would happen if I embarrassed him."

No one asked what that meant.

I was grateful.

Naomi crouched beside the prepaid phone. "Brendan may have sent her here because Victor wanted her here."

"Why?" Adrian asked.

I knew before anyone said it.

"Because Caesar responds to me."

Jared's gaze snapped to mine.

I continued. "Maybe Brendan knew enough about how I work with frightened animals to guess I could make Caesar active again. Victor wasn't afraid the dog would die. He was afraid the dog would recover and remember."

"So why send you?" Miles asked.

"To control the timing."

Naomi nodded. "If they choose the person who revives Caesar, they can monitor the process and step in when he leads Jared toward evidence."

Adrian looked toward the camera in the first room.

"Which is exactly what happened."

Jared turned to Miles. "How much did Brendan pay you?"

"Nothing."

"How much?"

"Nothing. He gave me a name because I was desperate."

Caesar moved to Miles and sniffed his coat.

Then he sat beside him.

I looked at Jared. "The dog trusts him."

"The dog trusted Victor once too."

"Maybe. But right now he's not reacting to Miles like a threat."

Jared's anger didn't disappear, but it reorganized itself.

That was another useful thing about him. He could change direction when facts changed, even if he hated doing it.

Naomi finally traced the camera's modem to a relay account registered through a warehouse in Red Hook. Jared wanted to send armed men immediately.

I told him that was exactly what Victor expected.

"So what do you suggest?" he asked.

"Let them think we're still confused."

Naomi smiled. "I like her."

"Everyone likes her," Jared muttered. "It's becoming inconvenient."

We left the basement and returned to the penthouse before dawn.

Caesar ate six more small pieces of chicken and drank water. His improvement was tiny, but it felt like proof that something in him had shifted from surrender to participation.

At 5:40 a.m., Jared's personal physician examined him and confirmed he was weak but stable enough to recover slowly if the eating continued.

I was ready to leave when Jared stopped me near the elevator.

"You're not going back to your apartment."

Every muscle in my body tensed.

He saw it immediately.

"Wrong sentence," he said.

I said nothing.

He tried again. "Brendan knows where you work and likely where you live. I can provide a secure apartment nearby, if you want it. You can refuse."

The distinction mattered.

"And if I refuse?"

"I'll still put someone outside your building, but they won't enter unless you ask."

"Someone I choose."

"Fine."

"No tracking my phone."

"Fine."

"No one follows me into the clinic."

"That may be—"

I looked at him.

"Fine," he said.

I should have gone home anyway.

Instead, I accepted the secure apartment because fear was not the same thing as surrender.

At 7:02 a.m., as I stepped into the elevator, my own phone buzzed.

A message from an unknown number contained a photograph taken outside my Brooklyn apartment less than ten minutes earlier.

Brendan stood beside my front door holding a red leather leash.

The message beneath it read:

May you like

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HE REMEMBERS YOU TOO.

Before we left the basement, I asked Miles to describe his first conversation with Brendan word for word. He remembered more than he expected. Brendan had never called me talented. He called me "predictable around suffering." He had emphasized that I would ignore danger if an animal looked helpless enough. Hearing the phrase aloud made Miles look ashamed. I told him shame was useful only if it changed his next choice. He gave Naomi the burner number Brendan had used and every note he had made about the referral. Jared then ordered no retaliation, no private visit, no message back. That restraint was deliberate. Brendan knew how men like Jared were supposed to react when challenged. If we denied him that predictable response, we might force him to reveal more. It was the first time the group stopped behaving like separate frightened people and started acting like an investigation.