Eight-thirty in the evening. New York traffic had thinned out, leaving behind a low, steady hum. Jude rode through the streets and pulled up outside a storefront on a commercial strip, three blocks from where Satsuki was parked.
The bell above the door rang. Hughie looked up from behind the counter. He blinked, his posture straightening before a smile broke across his face.
"Jude! What are you — are you shopping for something?"
"No. Just wanted to check in." Jude settled against the counter. "How's Robin?"
"She's good." Hughie's eyes crinkled slightly at the edges. "She was pretty shaken right after, but she's mostly back to herself. No lasting trauma, I think." He shook his head. "You and Clark were really there at the right moment. I keep thinking I should have asked for a photo."
"We'll get you one." Jude watched him. "Someone from Vought International came to see you yesterday."
"Oh. Yeah. Douglas, right? Middle-aged, suit, polished." Hughie leaned heavily against the counter. "He came to the store, then went to find Robin separately. Said he was from their PR department. Wanted to compensate us, get a read on the situation. Asked a lot of questions about you and Clark, too."
"What did he offer you?"
"Ten thousand each. Me and Robin." Hughie lowered his voice. "And he said they'd do a public apology. On TV. He asked us to say we understood and accepted it."
Jude tilted his head. "Vought International making a public apology. That's unusual."
"Robin and I thought so too. We were still angry about what A-Train did. But Robin thought about it, and..." Hughie spread his hands. "We're trying to figure out moving in together. Renting costs money. Neither of us thought we'd win a case against a company that size. The legal fees alone..."
"You took it."
"We took it."
"That's reasonable," Jude said.
It was. Without a deep personal stake to outweigh the math, taking the settlement made sense for two young people trying to build a life in an expensive city. He and Clark were the exceptions to that calculation. Nothing about their situation was normal, and the money they held belonged to a universe they would eventually leave behind.
The public apology. That was the condition he had set. Vought actually delivered.
He could work with that. Vought's obsessive image management was a liability as much as an asset. They could not afford to be seen breaking a promise to the people they had wronged. The apology was real, on record, and now part of the landscape. Sacrificing A-Train's approval rating by a few points was substantially cheaper than the alternative.
Jude's ears caught a shift in the ambient noise outside. Heavy footsteps on the pavement. They did not approach the door. They paused, settled, then moved around the side of the building toward a large tree by the curb.
They stayed there.
"I should get going," Jude said. "It's getting late. Tell Robin I said hi."
"I will. Hey, you weren't kidding about the autograph, right?"
"Next opportunity." Jude raised a hand. "Take care of yourself, Hughie."
The bell rang as he stepped out into the night.
Jude hummed a tuneless melody as he walked, keeping his pace slow and steady. Scattered foot traffic moved along the commercial strip. He glanced at the tree as he passed it.
A man stood behind the trunk, hidden in the shadows. A cigarette glowed orange. One hand rested in a coat pocket. His body was angled slightly, tracking movement on the street.
Professional. But not completely undetected. Jude had smelled the gunpowder while he was still inside the store.
He kept walking, kept humming. He took the route he had mapped out in his head, turning into a side street that narrowed into a quiet, empty stretch of brick and asphalt. Behind him, at a steady distance, footsteps adjusted to match his pace. They were very light. Barely a scrape against the concrete.
Jude stopped in the middle of the alley and turned around.
"If you've got something to say," he called out, "this works. Not many people around."
Silence stretched out. It was a long pause. A less composed person would have moved earlier.
Then, footsteps approached. A figure rounded the corner, walking with heavy, deliberate strides. He did not rush, and he did not hesitate.
The man was broad-shouldered and thick-bearded, wearing a long coat over a plain shirt and scuffed jeans. He looked at Jude and grinned. The smile reached his eyes, crinkling the corners in dark amusement.
He drew a gun from his coat. The motion was smooth, practiced. He chambered a round and raised the barrel in one fluid sequence.
"Right then," the man said. "I'll ask, you'll answer. Simple."
Jude looked at the gun, then up at the man.
"I led you to a quiet alley," Jude said. His tone flattened. "I could have taken a different route, lost you in the foot traffic, made you work for it. Instead, I walked directly here and told you to come out and talk." He kept his eyes locked on the man's face. "And your response is to point a gun at me. Do you talk to everyone this way, or am I special?"
The man blinked, his grin slipping for a fraction of a second.
He let out a short, sharp laugh. "Fair point," he said. "But I'll be straight with you. I just like talking to people this way. It helps. So what?"
"My name is Jude." Jude said it simply, offering it like a handshake. "And you are?"
"Not here to make friends."
"Noted." Jude watched him step forward. The man stopped roughly six meters away. It was a calculated distance, far enough to shoot before a target could close the gap, but close enough to guarantee a hit. The man settled his weight on his feet, perfectly at ease.
"Last time," the man said. The amusement bled out of his voice, leaving a flat, hard edge. "I ask, you answer."
Jude looked at him for a long moment.
"In that case," Jude said, "it seems I can only communicate with you in a way that you can understand."
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