Page 32 of Rust of Control

Jude watched him go. Then he looked at Nate, just briefly, and Nate gave him the small nod that meant yes, that was right. Jude looked back at the table.

"Vance is the seam," Ghost said. He had a new window open, the venue list down the left side, dates down the right. "Every disappearance in the last eighteen months, the ones we can place at a show, they all fall within seventy-two hours of a Vance-booked event. Every one."

Nate pulled a chair to the wall.

They worked through the morning.

Ghost had the Windsor contact now, a name from Easton's prison grapevine that had taken three weeks and two intermediaries to verify. He put it on the board without ceremony: Milo Varga. Mid-level. Not the top of the chain but high enough to hold Rand's marker and set the timeline. Ghost had a phone number, a registered Windsor address that was almost certainly a front, and a partial financial trail linking to two accounts Rand had been moving money through.

"Varga's been pushing the pace," Ghost said. He was at the board with a marker, circling, connecting, his handwriting small and exact. "Rand owes him. The debt's been climbing since the embezzlement got unwieldy. He's been stealing from the band to pay Varga and it hasn't kept up. So Varga tightened the schedule. More kids, faster. That's why the gaps closed."

"How close is Rand to defaulting?" Nate asked.

"He already has, technically. Varga's been patient because Rand's been useful. The venue access, the cover, the front-of-house credibility." Ghost tapped the board. "That's gone now. Jude's gone, the band's not booking, the credibility evaporates. Varga's going to want what he's owed in some other currency."

Nate looked at the board. Rand's name sat at the center of it, three lines out: to Varga through four intermediaries, to the venues through Vance, to six red-ended faces. Three lines. Three different years of the same operation.

"He'll try to give Varga something," Nate said. "Buy himself more time."

"Yes," Ghost said.

"What's he got left?"

The room went quiet for a moment. Ghost pulled the cap off the marker and put it back on.

"Jude," Zain said from the corner. He'd been there the whole time, sleeves up, phone face-down on his knee. "Rand's got Jude. To Varga, Jude's a commodity with an established value. Known face, small family in the city who'd make noise fast enough." He paused. "Rand's been selling strangers to pay his debts. If the strangers run out, he uses what he has."

Nate kept his face still.

He was good at it. Marcus had taught him, and he'd had med school and the military before that, and he used it now the same as he used it for everything else: because the work didn't stop for what you felt about it. What he felt was cold. A fury that'd burn the building down if he let it. He didn't let it. He tucked it away and looked at the board.

"When?" he asked.

"Soon. He reached out to Varga's people two days ago through an intermediary. We intercepted it. He made an offer. Varga hasn't answered yet."

"He will."

"Yes."

Nate looked at the board a moment longer. Then he looked at Marcus, who'd been watching him from the corner with the stillness he got when he was deciding something.

"He's in this house," Nate said. Not a question, not an accusation. Just the fact on the table so everyone in the room knew he knew they knew it.

"He is," Marcus said. "And he stays here. Nobody leaves without a crew member until this is closed." He held Nate's eyes. "You knew what you were bringing in when you brought him here."

"I did."

"Then act like it."

Not a rebuke. Marcus saying I trust you, now do the job. Nate had been on the receiving end of that long enough to know the difference.

"What do we know about Varga's window?" he said. Back to Ghost. Back to the board.

***

He told Jude that night.

Not everything. Enough. Jude was at the kitchen table with the notebook open, working on something else now, a page of lyrics with three lines crossed out for every one that stayed. He closed it when Nate sat down.