Rune pushed the folder the rest of the way across the table.
The name on the page was Asa Solis.
For several seconds, Marin forgot about her ribs, the bandages beneath her shirt, and Galt breathing nervously through Rune’s phone.
She saw only those two words.
Asa Solis.
Her brother.
The brother who had vanished fourteen months earlier without taking his winter coat, without emptying his bank account, without saying goodbye.
Marin had called hospitals.
Shelters.
Police stations.
Old friends.
Employers.
She had walked neighborhoods until her shoes split and taped photocopied pictures to poles until rain turned his face into gray streaks.
Nothing.
Now his name sat beneath Marsh Prosser’s debt records.
Her hand began to shake.
“What is this?”
Rune reached over and ended the call with Galt.
Galt’s voice vanished mid-question.
Rune pulled the folder closer, but not away from her.
“I didn’t know this was here until today,” he said.
“The records came from one of Prosser’s storage offices.
My people were looking for everything connected to the robbery.”
Marin touched the page with one fingertip.
Next to Asa’s name was a date.
Fourteen months earlier.
And beneath it, a short notation tied to one of Prosser’s properties on the industrial edge of Charlotte.
East Yard.
Rune’s eyes hardened.
“I know that place.”
Marin looked up.
“Is he dead?”
Rune did not soften the answer with false comfort.
“I don’t know.”
Her throat closed.
“But if Prosser wrote him into an active ledger instead of crossing him out,” Rune continued, “there’s a reason.”
“What reason?”
“Leverage.”
The word made the room feel colder.
Rune turned back several pages, following dates and payment marks.
Galt’s debt had not begun the week of the robbery.
It had been growing for more than a year.
Fourteen months earlier, when the debt was still small enough to hide, Asa had come to the diner late one night to walk Marin home after her shift.
She remembered it now because Galt had been unusually tense.
Two men had sat in the corner booth without ordering anything.
Galt had disappeared into his office with one of them.
Asa had noticed.
Marin had not.
She had been exhausted, counting tips and complaining that the freezer door would not stay shut.
Asa had told her to wait outside while he used the restroom.
He never told her that he had actually gone to Galt’s office.
Rune’s records filled in the part she had never seen.
Asa had witnessed one of Prosser’s collectors threatening Galt over an overdue payment.
He had confronted Galt afterward and demanded to know why men like that were being brought near employees.
Galt panicked.
Instead of protecting his workers, he gave Prosser Asa’s name.
