Chapter 160: The Man Across the Street

The figure disappeared.

Jack was already moving. He crossed the room in three strides and reached the window, but by the time he looked across the street, the glass sat empty, dark as the rest of the block, the pane still faintly warm where the earlier light had struck it.

"Damn."

Dexter stepped beside him, unhurried, hands still in his pockets. "Don’t chase." I wasn’t.

"You were."

A faint grin touched Jack’s mouth. "Maybe."

Liam remained beside the desk, eyes fixed on the dead monitors. The timing was too clean. Lights on, cameras dark, then the figure.

Whoever it was hadn’t panicked when Dexter’s men breached the building. They’d waited, watched, and made sure Liam knew they were there.

"Check the exits," Dexter ordered.

His men scattered, one down the main stairs, another toward the rear stairwell, two more taking the windows, boots quick and quiet against the old floorboards.

Dexter looked at Liam. "They knew we’d come." Yes."And left before we got here."

"Probably."

Jack glanced over. "Then why leave the cameras running?" To let us find them.

Jack frowned. Dexter’s expression darkened.

"A trap."

"Maybe." Liam picked up the black notebook again, still open to the same section. Dates, vehicles, locations, routines, the ink faded just enough to suggest weeks of use rather than a single afternoon.

Whoever wrote it hadn’t been collecting random information. They’d been building a picture, page after page and patient.

He turned a page. Nothing. Another. Still nothing.Then a photograph slipped from between the pages and landed on the desk, face up, catching the last of the light through the blinds.

Jack reached for it first. His expression changed. Not the warehouse. Or the industrial park. Not even the villa.

It was Liam, standing outside Victoria’s house, shot from across the street.

Jack looked up. "This is recent."

Liam took it and studied it without changing expression. The angle was distant, taken from inside a vehicle, the windshield’s edge just visible at one corner, Victoria’s house clearly framed behind him. Someone had been watching him there too.

Dexter stepped closer. "That’s not from the warehouse."

"No." When was this taken? Liam checked the light and the shadows. "Yesterday morning."

Jack folded his arms. "So they followed you."

"Not necessarily." Liam set the photograph beside the notebook. "If they’d followed me, they’d have needed to know where I was going before I arrived."

Dexter understood immediately. "They already knew." Liam nodded, and the room went quiet around it. Even Dexter’s men, still moving through drawers and cabinets, seemed to slow for a beat before picking back up.

A tail could be shaken. A surveillance team could be found, eventually, if you had the patience and the right people.

But if someone already knew his movements before he made them, the problem wasn’t outside the walls. It was information.

Dexter turned to his men. "Check the building again. And the vehicles, every one within three blocks." Yes, boss.

Jack headed for the stairs. "I’ll take the rear."

"Don’t go alone."

Jack shot him a sideways grin. "Relax. Not trying to win another fight by myself." He disappeared down the stairwell, footsteps fading fast against the concrete.

Dexter watched him go. "He’s different. Since the last fight." He said it plainly.

Liam looked back at the photograph. Dexter’s voice dropped. "There’s something else. One of the men downstairs found blood."

"Fresh?" Not much. But yes."Where?"

"Rear entrance." They moved. The rear corridor was narrow, almost fully dark, dust thick enough to catch what little light slipped through the cracks overhead.

A faint trail marked the concrete near the exit. Not enough to suggest a serious injury. Just a few drops, dark against the pale stone.

Dexter crouched. "Someone was hurt." He touched two fingers near the darkest of the drops, not quite dry, and said nothing else about it.

The door stood slightly open, cold air slipping through the gap. Jack was already outside, looking back at them.

"Footprints."Liam stepped through. Fresh impressions crossed the dirt behind the building and vanished into an alley.

Jack crouched beside them. "Two people."

"Sure?" One set’s heavier. The other barely leaves a heel mark. He stood, brushing dirt from his knee. "They weren’t running."

Liam looked down the alley. "They might have wanted us to find this."

"Again?"He nodded.

Dexter pulled out his phone. "Get a vehicle around the block." One of his men moved to comply, then Dexter froze. "Wait."

Everyone turned. At the end of the alley sat a black sedan, engine idling low, exhaust curling faint in the cold air, no driver visible behind the tinted glass.

Jack smiled without humor. "There it is."

The same sedan. The same one from the warehouse. The engine revved and the car shot forward. Jack moved on instinct, but Dexter’s hand closed on his shoulder. "Let it go."

The sedan tore around the corner and vanished, tires screeching once against the cracked pavement before the sound swallowed itself in the distance.

"You’re letting him escape?"

"No." Dexter was already dialing, phone pressed to his ear before Jack finished the sentence. "I’ve got three cars waiting ahead." For the first time, Jack’s grin returned. "That’s more like it."

"Move," Dexter said into the phone.

Seconds later, engines roared somewhere beyond the buildings.

Liam stayed still, looking back through the open rear door at the blood, the photographs, the notebook laid out like pieces on a board no one had asked him to play. Everything had been placed too neatly for an accident. This wasn’t an escape.

It was an invitation.

His phone buzzed. Unknown number, the screen bright against the shadowed alley.

One message.You’re looking in the wrong place.

A second arrived right after.

Ask Dexter about Ben.

Liam’s eyes went still. Not fear. Recognition.

He locked the phone before Dexter could see the screen, the motion small enough to pass for nothing at all.

Across the alley, the sound of pursuing engines faded into the distance, swallowed by the hum of a city that had no idea what had almost happened on this block. Liam looked toward the road.

The watcher was gone. Somewhere behind him, Dexter was still barking orders into his own phone, voice sharp and businesslike, as if nothing about the last ten minutes had changed anything at all.

But something had.

But the game had just become personal.