He found Lena standing at the end of the bar and shook her hand with a hundred folded flat against his palm.
She pocketed it without breaking stride.
“Under the third hymnal, front of the church.
The one I showed you.” He kept his voice low and level.
“Tonight.
You bring back what’s there.
That’s all.”
“That’s all.” Lena didn’t ask what was under it.
Three years running the front of the Crazy Horse had taught her the shape of a favor she wasn’t supposed to understand.
“Consider it done.”
“You never saw me tonight.”
“I never see anybody, hon.
That’s how I still got the job.”
“I mean it, Lena.
Tonight especially.”
“I know you do.
You got that voice on, the serious one.” She tucked the folded bill into her apron without looking down at it.
“You want me to worry about anything, or just carry a piece of paper?”
“Just carry it.”
“Then that’s all I’m doing.” She looked at him a second longer than the transaction required, the way a woman looks at someone she’s decided not to ask questions about.
“Go on.
I got a floor to run.”
She’d taken the job on a reference from a cousin of a cousin, the usual arrangement, and she worked the floor with no questions about anything that happened in the back office.
Forties, tired around the eyes, patient enough to know when to look and when to look elsewhere.
He believed her when she said done.
The church off the side street was cold in the evening.
He’d found it on the second day, doors unlocked until nine, the pews empty on weeknights.
Bad acoustics, stone walls that swallowed sound before it traveled.
Old wood, candle wax, the stillness of a room empty for hours.
Votive candles flickered near the altar and threw dancing shadows across the marble.
The confessional stood to one side, its curtain drawn.
Stained glass caught the last of the evening light and cast colored patterns across the stone floor.
Nothing in the room could be wired.
He sat in the third pew and let the stillness hold him.
Three days he’d spent working the problem of reaching Adriana without the Bureau hearing it.
Every option broke.
Talking near the recorder, out.
Writing anything that could be found, out.
A phone that might be tapped, out.
The answer had to be deniable, unrecordable, harmless if it were ever intercepted.
The paper was blank, unlined, torn from a notebook he’d bought with cash two towns over.
The hand was his, Adrian’s, but he printed in block capitals, the letters you use when you don’t want the hand recognized.
Cheap ballpoint.
Cash.
Untraceable.
He wrote: I know.
Don’t say anything.
Don’t say anything to anyone.
There is a plan.
I will tell you where to be next.
You are not alone.
No names.
No signature.
Nothing anyone could use.
He folded it once, twice, and slid it under the hymnal in the third pew.
Then he stood, crossed himself out of muscle memory, Christopher’s body knowing the gesture even where Adrian’s soul stayed ambivalent, and walked out into the evening.
Streetlights coming on.
Hands in his pockets.
Just a man leaving a prayer behind him and going home to his fiancee.
Lena picked the note up that evening, as arranged, and carried it to the club in her coat pocket.
Adriana found it at midnight.
He watched from the bedroom doorway.
She sat on the edge of the bed, the note open, the nightstand lamp throwing a pool of yellow across her lap.
Her face moved through shock, then fear, then confusion, then a slow dawn of recognition that was almost hard to watch.
She pressed a hand to her mouth.
The paper trembled.
She read it a second time, her lips moving without sound, and a third time after that, slower, as if repetition might change what the words actually meant.
Someone else knew.
She wasn’t alone in the wire anymore.
She looked up.
He met her eyes and shook his head once.
No words.
Not now.
Not near the recorder.
She nodded, barely a movement, and it was an agreement.
She understood.
She wouldn’t speak.
She wouldn’t ask.
She’d wait for the next note, the next instruction, the next piece of a plan she couldn’t yet see the shape of.
The wanting in the body hummed under the moment, a low bass note beneath the relief.
He’d told her.
Not in anything the Bureau could use, but he’d told her.
The isolation was broken.
He crossed the room and sat beside her.
She handed him the note.
He held it, then folded it into his pocket.
The trust in her eyes had a weight to it that filled the room.
He touched her face.
She leaned into his hand.
No words.
None needed.
He stayed until her breathing slowed into sleep.
Then he rose, carried the note to the kitchen, held it over the sink, and lit it with a match.
The paper curled and blackened, the same as the draft he’d burned in the chapel bathroom, the flame brief, the evidence gone.
He washed the ash down the drain and stood in the dark, the refrigerator humming, the Crown Vic’s engine turning over on the street below as the night shift arrived.
The first piece was in place.
He had a partner now, even one forged in silence and ash.
He went back to bed and lay down beside her, eyes open in the dark, already running the next moves.
The next note worded tighter.
The next exchange somewhere safer.
He was building a network the Bureau couldn’t see, and the first node was live.
He woke before she did.
The sink was clean, no trace of ash.
He made coffee, stood at the window, watched the Crown Vic change shifts.
At Satriale’s the coffee went cold in front of him again.
Paulie had a gambler on his mind.
“Kid owes me since the Fourth of July,” Paulie said, jabbing a finger at the counter like the counter had cosigned.
“Now he don’t answer.
You believe that?
A man doesn’t answer his phone, that’s disrespect.
That’s worse than the money.”
“How much?”
“Eight hundred.
Plus the vig, call it a grand.” Paulie’s eyes narrowed.
“And you know what today is?
Almost the thirteenth.
I’m not chasing money the day before the thirteenth.
That’s how you wind up in a trunk.”
“So go see him.”
“I’m gonna go see him.
It’s the principle.
You start letting people not answer, next thing nobody answers.” He snapped his fingers.
“It’s respect.
Money you can always get back.
Respect, once it’s gone, it’s gone.
My father, God rest him, had a guy stiff him once.
One guy, one time, nineteen sixty-something.
Talked about it till the day he died.”
“So this is about your father now.”
“Everything’s about somebody’s father, Chrissy.
That’s the whole business.”
“You want me to come with you?”
“Nah.
This one’s mine.
I just needed to complain about it first.” Paulie drained his coffee and set the cup down hard enough to rattle the saucer.
“That’s what coffee’s for.
Complaining and caffeine.”
“Two great tastes.”
“Now you’re getting it.”
Christopher made the right sound at the right time and let the performance run itself.
It was seamless.
Underneath it, the plan was already moving, the first node live and quiet in the dark where no wire could reach.
hey — quick one before you close the tab.
if the cliffhanger is killing you, the future already exists.
you just need a ticket through.
every chapter the second i finish writing it.
see you in the next loop.
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P.S.
— in a parallel timeline, the rest of this story runs completely free on unwrittenrealm.com.
just saying.
that timeline also has more chapters.