Updated Mar 23, 2026 • ~7 min read
Chapter 6: Scorched earth
DOMINIC
The call came at eleven forty-three on a Thursday night.
He was in his home office reviewing a contract dispute when Marcus — the security Marcus, whose actual name was Marcus Reyes and who had been with him since the beginning — said: “We have a problem.”
Dominic said: “Where.”
Marcus said: “Hargrove’s people took her.”
He was on his feet before the sentence finished.
He said: “When.”
Marcus said: “Twenty minutes ago. She left the Tribune at eleven-fifteen. She was alone. She was supposed to go straight home. The tail lost her on Seventh between the construction scaffolding and the parking structure — they herded her in. We have the tail’s camera but the feed cuts out inside the structure.”
He said: “Which structure.”
Marcus gave the address.
He said: “Who’s on site.”
Marcus said: “Kowalski and two others. They’re on the perimeter.”
He said: “Pull the building’s interior feeds. Get me what’s inside.” He was already moving, pulling on his jacket, running the building’s layout in his head from a survey he’d had done three months ago for unrelated reasons. Parking structure, four levels, the second level had a maintenance corridor that connected to the adjacent office building’s service entrance. Hargrove’s people would know the structure but they would have moved fast — this wasn’t a planned extraction, this was an opportunistic grab, which meant they were improvising.
Improvised operations had gaps.
He said: “Tell Kowalski second level, maintenance corridor, east side.”
Marcus said: “You’re going yourself.”
He said: “Yes.”
Marcus said: “That’s not standard—”
He said: “Call it.”
There were six minutes between the call and his arrival at the parking structure. He came in through the service entrance of the adjacent building, which his man on the door managed without incident, and moved through the maintenance corridor to the second level.
He heard them before he saw them.
There were three of Hargrove’s people — he had expected two, which meant they were running a larger operation than the improvised theory suggested, which meant Hargrove was more aware of the investigation’s progress than he had accounted for. One man at the exit ramp as a lookout. Two with her against the concrete wall near the elevators.
She was standing.
This was the first thing he registered — not that she was afraid, though she was, but that she was on her feet and not on the ground, which meant she had not broken in the six minutes since they’d taken her. One of the two men with her had a grip on her arm. The other was talking.
She was looking at the man talking with the expression he recognized from the booth at Obsidian: the cataloguing look. She was memorizing faces and details even here, which was either very good training or the specific quality of a mind that couldn’t stop doing its job.
He moved through the gap between two concrete pillars.
The lookout at the exit ramp saw him first — too late, because Dominic had been in parking structures before and knew which shadows to use.
What happened in the next four minutes was not something he would describe to her in any detail. He had people with him — Kowalski had come through the east entrance thirty seconds behind him — and the practical outcome was that Hargrove’s three men were no longer in a position to be a problem, and she was standing in the center of it all with blood on her jacket that was not hers and the expression of someone processing an extreme amount of information very quickly.
He went to her.
He said: “Are you hurt.”
She said: “No.” Her voice was controlled — the panic-management voice, the one he’d identified in the first conversation. “One of them grabbed my arm. I’m fine.”
He looked at her arm. There would be a bruise.
He said: “Can you walk.”
She said: “Yes.” She looked at the three men. “Are they—”
He said: “Alive. Contained.” He paused. “They won’t be a problem.”
She looked at his hands.
He was aware of what his hands looked like.
She said: “You came yourself.”
He said: “Yes.”
She said: “Why.”
He said: “Because there wasn’t time to delegate.”
She looked at him with the journalist’s look. He held it.
He said: “Come on.”
He took her to his car. His driver took them to his penthouse in the Upper East Side, which was the safest location he had access to and was not a decision he had made in advance or would have made in advance but was the correct one now.
She sat in the car with her hands in her lap and said nothing. He watched the city through the window and thought about the gap in his operational assessment — Hargrove’s people had been more active, more aware, moving faster than his intelligence had suggested. He needed to recalibrate.
He also thought about her, standing against the concrete wall with her feet on the ground, memorizing faces.
He did not say any of this.
She said, after three minutes: “Hargrove knows about the finance director.”
He said: “Yes.”
She said: “How long.”
He said: “Longer than we thought. This wasn’t improvised.”
She absorbed this.
She said: “The story needs to move faster.”
He said: “Yes.”
She said: “I have enough for a preliminary filing with the organized crime unit. If I file that—”
He said: “It protects you from direct physical pressure. It also signals to Hargrove that the situation is escalating.”
She said: “He’s already escalating.”
He said: “He is.”
She looked at him.
She said: “You went scorched earth in there.”
He said: “I went proportionate.”
She said: “Those men—”
He said: “Will not be available to Hargrove for an extended period.” He paused. “I don’t harm people without cause.”
She said: “That is a very specific definition of harm.”
He said: “Yes.” He held her gaze. “I know what I am. I’ve never pretended otherwise.”
She was quiet for a moment.
She said: “You have blood on your shirt.”
He said: “I know.”
She said: “You came yourself.”
He said: “We covered this.”
She said: “I want to understand it.”
He looked at her.
He said: “The alternative was waiting for Kowalski.”
She said: “That’s not why.”
He said nothing.
She looked out the window.
She said: “I’m going to need to write about tonight.”
He said: “I know.”
She said: “Not your name. The structure. What Hargrove’s people did.”
He said: “I know.”
She said: “You understand that means—”
He said: “It means you’re a journalist and you document what you witness. I understand that.” He paused. “I told you in the booth: if you find something that implicates me, you print it.”
She said: “This doesn’t implicate you.”
He said: “Correct.”
She said: “But it’s part of the story.”
He said: “Yes.”
She was quiet.
She said: “Okay.”
The car stopped at his building.
He got out and opened the door and she stepped out onto the sidewalk and looked up at the building and then at him.
She said: “This is your place.”
He said: “It’s secure.”
She said: “I’m not arguing that.” She looked at the building again. “I just want it noted that I know exactly what this is.”
He said: “What is it.”
She said: “Necessary.” She paused. “And extremely inconvenient.”
He said: “Come inside.”
She went inside.
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