Page 17 of You, Only You

"I had you pegged as a 'plain grilled chicken, no seasoning' type."

The look he gave me could have frozen the lo mein mid-delivery. "I'm going to pretend you didn't say that."

The lo mein, for the record, was transcendent. I ate it sitting cross-legged on the floor because the table was covered in documents, and Will ate his kung pao chicken at his end of the table, and at one point, he reached over and stole a noodle from my container without asking, which was either a declaration of war or the most intimate thing that had happened between us. I couldn't decide which.

"Verdict?" I asked, watching him chew.

"The noodles are adequate."

"Adequate. Right."

"The hygiene situation remains concerning."

"But the noodles are adequate."

He didn't answer, but he stole a second one, and I let him, and we went back to work, and something about the evening felt different after that. Warmer. Like we'd passed some invisible checkpoint that had nothing to do with evidence or trust or the case. Like we'd just been two people arguing about dinner, and that was allowed.

By day five, we had a pattern, a horrifying, undeniable pattern. But patterns weren't proof. They were circumstantial, deniable, the kind of thing expensive lawyers could explain away with corporate complexity and plausible ignorance.

"We need a direct link," Will said, pacing in front of his wall of connections. "Something that ties Reeves personally to the transfers. Not his companies. Him."

"His signature would be nice. Maybe a memo that says 'please continue trafficking humans on my behalf.'"

"I'll add it to the wish list."

I rubbed my eyes, exhausted. We'd been at this for eight hours, fueled by gas station coffee and the last of the kung pao chicken, which Will had apparently been saving and which I'd eaten while he was in the bathroom. He hadn't said anything about it. He'd just looked at the empty container, looked at me, and hid something away behind those blue eyes.

"Tell me about Bates," I said, partly to take a break from the screen and partly because the question had been nagging at me. "The FBI agent. Why him?"

Will stopped pacing. For a moment, I thought he wouldn't answer.

"Three years ago," he said finally, "I was building a case against a hedge fund manager named Morrison. Insider information scheme. He was using it to bankrupt small medical supply companies, then buying their patents for pennies. Destroyed six businesses. Put four hundred people out of work."

"Charming."

"He had a deputy mayor in his pocket, and three members of the city council." Will leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "The evidence I'd gathered was compelling but wouldn't survive scrutiny. I needed someone inside law enforcement who would actually investigate instead of burying it."

"And Bates was that someone?"

"Bates was newly assigned to financial crimes. Ambitious, but not yet cynical. I fed him one thread, anonymously, and watched to see what he'd do with it."

"And?"

"He pulled it. Kept pulling until the whole thing unraveled. By the book. Every warrant, every subpoena. Morrison went to prison for twelve years." Will's expression was unreadable. "When the case closed, Bates never publicly credited the anonymous tip. But he left a channel open. A signal that he knew where the evidence had come from, and he understood why."

"So he's your inside man."

"He's a good agent who recognizes that sometimes the system needs a nudge to see what's in front of it." Will met my eyes. "He doesn't approve of my methods. But he respects results."

"And you think he'll take this seriously? Trafficking is a lot bigger than hedge fund fraud."

"Which is exactly why he'll take it seriously." Will pushed off the wall, something fierce in his expression. "Bates has a daughter. Sixteen years old. When he sees those photographs... he'll move heaven and earth."

I absorbed that, adding it to my growing file on how Will Steele operated. He didn't just hunt predators; he studied everyone. Their pressure points, their motivations, what would make them act instead of look away. It was manipulative. It was also effective.

And it occurred to me, not for the first time, that he'd probably studied me the same way. That the moment in his office when he'd mentioned my father, the Marcus Webb detail, all of it had been deliberate. Designed to see what I was made of.

The thought should have made me angry. Instead, it made me wonder what he'd concluded.