The burner phone felt heavier than it should have.
Dayo sat in the back of the car, the Austin city limits fading behind them, and turned the device over in his hands. Plastic. Cheap. Untraceable. Felix had bought it with cash at a gas station three states away, activated it on a network that asked no questions, and handed it to Dayo without comment. That was three months ago. The first call had already been made. The debt had already been claimed once Eleanor Vane's name, her address in Chelsea, the hidden floor in Silas's life that nobody else knew about. The old man had paid his debt to Uncle Marcus by handing Dayo that information. The account was settled.
Now Dayo was calling again. Not to claim. To ask. The man owed him nothing anymore. This was Dayo asking personally for a new favor, standing on nothing but the relationship they had built across two phone calls and thirty-seven years of someone else's history his Uncle Marcus.
