Chapter 161: The Message

Liam lowered his phone, the words still burning behind his eyes.

Ask Dexter about Ben.

He slid it into his pocket without a word. Across the street, the black sedan slipped around a corner and was gone, swallowed by the city’s late-night current.

Jack watched the empty road a moment longer before turning back. "Who was that?"

"The watcher."

"I figured that part out."

Liam almost smiled and then his phone buzzed again. Both men looked down at once.

Not the unknown number this time.

Dexter.

Come with me.

Liam glanced up. Dexter was already walking away, no explanation offered, no hesitation in his stride. Liam followed. Jack fell in beside him.

"What did he say?"

"Nothing." That’s not like you.

"I got another message." Jack’s expression shifted. "From him?"

Liam nodded.

"What did it say?" Ask Dexter about Ben.

Jack went quiet not shocked. He knew exactly who Ben was. "So we’re finally at that name."

"You’ve been thinking it too?"

"Since the message." Neither said anything else. They reached the car, where Dexter stood beside the open rear door like a man who’d been waiting all night for this exact moment.

"Get in." Liam slid across the seat. Jack climbed in after him. Dexter took the front, and the driver pulled into traffic without being told.

For the first few minutes, no one spoke. The city bled past the windows in long streaks of gold and red. Then Dexter’s voice cut the silence, flat and clipped.

"Turn left." A pause. "Three blocks." Another turn. The streets thinned, grew quieter, until only the hum of the engine remained.

Finally, Dexter said the name himself.

"Ben."

Liam caught his eyes in the rearview mirror.

"You shouldn’t have received that message," Dexter said.

"Why?" Because whoever sent it knows something they shouldn’t."

Jack leaned back against the seat. "About Ben?"

"Yes." What exactly?

Dexter didn’t answer. He turned to the window instead, his reflection ghosting over the passing streetlights. "We’ll talk somewhere private."

The car stopped outside a building with no sign, no guards, nothing to mark it as anything at all. Yet the moment Dexter stepped out, two men appeared and opened the door without a question between them.

An elevator carried them underground, and when the doors opened, Liam stepped into a different world entirely a long concrete corridor lit by soft overhead lights, cameras tucked into every corner, men stationed at intervals who acknowledged Dexter with nothing more than a glance and let him pass.

At the end of the hall was a room built for conversations that were never meant to leave it. A table. Three chairs. A wall of dark screens. Nothing else.

Dexter sat. Liam took the chair across from him. Jack lingered by the door until Dexter said, without looking up, "Sit." He did.

Dexter set his phone on the table, screen down, like a man laying down a weapon he didn’t trust himself to hold.

"Tell me exactly what the message said."

Liam repeated it, word for word. Dexter listened without a flicker of expression, and when Liam finished, he leaned back in his chair.

"Interesting." That’s the second time you’ve said that, Jack said.Because it is." Dexter’s gaze moved to Liam. "Did the sender say anything else?"

"No." Nothing?

"Nothing."Dexter nodded slowly, then turned to Jack. "You remember Ben."

"Of course I do."

"Good." His eyes returned to Liam. "Then you understand why that isn’t a name I want appearing in a message from someone who’s been watching you."

Liam leaned forward. "What aren’t you telling me?"

"I’m trying to determine whether there’s something I don’t know," Dexter said, and something in his voice made the words land harder than they should have.

He tapped the table once. "He’s careful." Again. "Patient." A third time. "And he knows enough about you to know exactly which name would make you stop and think."

Jack’s jaw tightened. "So Ben could be bait."

"Exactly."

Liam said nothing. That possibility had already crossed his mind. The second one the one he hadn’t spoken aloud was worse. That someone out there knew something about Ben that neither he nor Dexter did.

"Have you contacted him?"

"No." Why?"Because if the watcher wants me to contact Ben, I won’t."

A faint, humorless smile touched Liam’s mouth. "Good." Dexter’s eyes narrowed. "You agree?" "If someone hands me a direction, I don’t walk it just because they expect me to."

"Same," Jack said.

"Then we’re thinking alike," Dexter murmured. He reached beneath the table and produced a thin folder, sliding it across without ceremony.

Liam didn’t open it right away. "What’s this?"

"Everything I’ve confirmed tonight."

Inside were no photographs, no dramatic annotations only names, times, locations, terse observations. Clean. Professional. The work of people who knew precisely what they were hunting for.

Liam scanned page after page. Nothing obvious. No Ben. No watcher. No thread connecting anything at all. Then he stopped on a date.

"Why this?"Dexter hesitated a fraction too long before answering. "Because three days ago, someone asked one of my people about you."

"Who?" We don’t know.

"Then how do you know they asked about me?" They used your name."

Jack leaned in. "Where?"

Dexter turned one of the pages around to face them. "That’s the problem. It wasn’t someone looking for Liam Sterling."

Liam’s eyes dropped to the page. One word sat alone in the center of it.

Liam.No surname. No business. No address. Just the name bare, and somehow more unsettling for it.

"That’s specific," Jack said quietly.

"Too specific," Dexter said.

Liam closed the folder. "Whoever this is doesn’t need my full name." They already know you.

Silence settled over the room like dust. Then one of the screens behind Dexter flickered to life, and every head turned toward it.

A street. Empty. Rain falling in slow silver lines beneath yellow streetlights. A voice crackled through the speaker.

"Boss."

"What?" Dexter didn’t take his eyes off the feed."We have something."

The camera pushed in. A figure stood beneath an awning across the street black coat, hands buried in his pockets, face swallowed by shadow.

Jack was already on his feet. "Is that him?"

The figure lifted his head. For one heartbeat, his face caught the light.

Then the screen went dark.

Dexter didn’t move. "Where’s that camera?"

"Four minutes out."

"Get a car."Jack moved toward the door. Liam didn’t. His eyes stayed fixed on the dead screen, on the afterimage burned into it.

Then his phone buzzed once in his hand.

Everyone froze.

One message.

You asked about Ben.

A second followed, arriving like the second half of a blade. Now ask yourself why Dexter hasn’t told you everything.

Liam raised his eyes slowly. Dexter was already watching him, and for the first time that night, neither man said a word.

For the first time, Liam wondered if the watcher wasn’t trying to lead him toward someone at all.

Maybe he was trying to turn him against the one man Liam had trusted to handle it.