The client's name was Rebecca Torres.
She sat across from me in the coffee shop on Atlantic Avenue — the same neighborhood where Marcus had mentioned his murdered informant, the cold case that still bothered him. The irony wasn't lost on me.
"I need someone to disappear," Rebecca said. Her voice was steady, practiced, the tone of someone who'd thought about this conversation for a long time before having it.
"Disappear how?"
"Relocated. New identity, new city, money to start over. Nothing violent." She paused, her hands wrapped around a coffee cup she hadn't touched. "She has evidence of things I've done. Things that could ruin me."
"What kind of things?"
"Does it matter?"
"It matters to the price."
Rebecca's expression flickered — surprise that I wasn't immediately moral, then relief that this was a transaction rather than a judgment. "Fraud. Embezzlement from a nonprofit I used to run. The money went to my ex-husband's medical bills — stage four cancer, no insurance, eighteen months of treatment that insurance companies laughed at. I took what I needed. She found out."
The Memory Palace filed the details automatically. Embezzlement from a charity. Medical expenses that explained but didn't excuse. A witness who needed to disappear before she could testify.
"How much evidence does she have?"
"Enough. Financial records, emails, account transfers. She was my bookkeeper before she figured out what I was doing." Rebecca finally took a sip of her coffee. It must have gone cold by now. "She's threatening to go public if I don't pay her what she thinks she's owed."
"Blackmail."
"That's what I would call it. She calls it 'fair compensation for keeping quiet.'" Rebecca's jaw tightened. "I can't pay her forever. And I can't go to prison — I have two kids, no family support. If I go away, they end up in the system."
The ethical calculation was complex. Rebecca had stolen from a nonprofit — real victims, real harm, people who'd donated to help others and had their money redirected to medical bills they didn't know about. But she'd done it to save her husband's life. And the witness was a blackmailer, not a whistleblower.
"Three thousand dollars," I said. "Half now, half when she's relocated."
"That's more than I expected."
"You're asking me to make a federal witness disappear. The complexity justifies the price."
Rebecca nodded slowly. "How does it work?"
"New documents — identity, work history, references. A destination city where she has no connections. Enough money to establish herself for six months. And a conversation where I make it very clear that coming back, contacting you, or discussing this with anyone would be unwise."
"Unwise how?"
"Unwise in ways she'll understand when I explain them."
Rebecca studied me across the table, weighing whether she could trust someone who offered services like these. The Eyes of Deals flickered at the edge of my awareness, but I kept it suppressed. I didn't need to read her true desires. Her desperation was visible without supernatural assistance.
"Do it," she said. "I'll have the money tomorrow."
---
The relocation took five days.
Dmitri provided the documents — his first major job since recovering from Moran's hospitality, and he threw himself into it with the particular dedication of someone proving he was still capable. The destination was Phoenix, far enough from New York that accidental encounters were unlikely, warm enough that a new start might actually feel like one.
The target — Sandra Chen, no relation to the Meridian accountant — was surprisingly cooperative once I explained the alternatives. Prison for blackmail, or a new life with $15,000 seed money. She chose the obvious option.
"How do I know you won't just take the money and disappear me permanently?" she asked.
"You don't. But I have a reputation to maintain. Dead witnesses become police investigations, which create complications I don't need." I handed her the ticket and the new passport. "Phoenix is nice this time of year. Try the Mexican food."
She left on a Thursday morning. By Thursday afternoon, her apartment was cleaned out, her phone was disconnected, and every trace of Sandra Chen's existence in New York was being systematically erased.
Clean. Professional. Exactly what I'd been hired to do.
And absolutely devastating if Marcus ever found out.
---
The payment arrived via the usual channels — cash in a safety deposit box, accessed with a key Rebecca dropped at a predetermined location. Three thousand dollars, bringing my total to nearly eight thousand. More money than I'd had since transmigration. Enough to feel almost stable.
I celebrated with dinner at a restaurant I'd been meaning to try — Korean barbecue in Flushing, the kind of meal that required active participation and rewarded attention. The meat sizzled on the grill, the banchan was endless, and for one evening I let myself feel successful rather than paranoid.
Vex watched from beneath the table, accepting scraps of beef I passed to her discreetly.
"That job was compromised," she said.
"The execution was clean."
"The ethics weren't." She looked up at me with those ancient green eyes. "You helped a guilty woman escape consequences. The blackmailer was wrong, but she wasn't wrong about the crime."
"Everyone deserves representation. That's a fundamental principle of justice."
"That's something lawyers say when they defend people they know are guilty." Vex accepted another piece of beef. "You're not a lawyer. You're a fixer. The line you crossed isn't the same."
She was right. I knew she was right. The Rebecca Torres job sat in my stomach beside the Korean food, souring what should have been a celebration.
But the money was real. The capability was proven. And the complications — if there were any — wouldn't surface for months.
"I do what I have to do," I said.
"Everyone says that. Usually right before they do something they can't undo."
I finished my dinner in silence, trying not to think about Marcus's hands on my skin or the particular way he looked at me when he thought I wasn't watching. He believed I was a security consultant who sometimes worked in gray areas. He didn't know about the black.
If Sandra Chen surfaced — if she talked, if she left evidence I didn't know about, if the paper trail I thought I'd erased still existed somewhere — Marcus would find out. He would discover that the man he was falling for had helped a criminal escape justice. And everything we were building would collapse.
But that wouldn't happen. I'd been thorough. I'd been careful. I'd done everything right.
The money in my pocket was real. The capability was proven. And the consequences — if there were any — wouldn't surface for months.
I paid the check and walked out into the Queens evening, trying to enjoy the success I'd earned and failing to shake the feeling that I'd just planted seeds I couldn't see.
Clean exits leave traces you don't notice until it's too late.
I really should have remembered that.
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