C2 The Number on the Door

Roxy took three photographs of the picture before she did anything else.

One went into an encrypted folder on her phone. One was sent to Dani with a single message: Do not ask questions by text. The third she uploaded to an account her father didn't know she had, an account designed for school projects and the occasional anonymous tip about teachers who sold exam answers.

Only after the copies existed did she study the image.

Warehouse 17. A loading bay with a broken light. Knox, Julian Cross, and the blurred figure. The photograph had been printed on ordinary paper, but the warehouse sign matched the number on an old work order hanging in her father's office. She had seen it for years without caring.

Now she cared.

Her father's shop sat between a bakery and a tire wholesaler on a road the city had recently marked for redevelopment. Mercer's Motor Works had faded blue shutters, a rattling sign, and a coffee machine that produced something closer to burnt mud. Roxy loved it more than any polished showroom in town.

When she arrived, her father was closing the side gate. Daniel Mercer had broad hands, silver at his temples, and a permanent line between his brows that deepened whenever he was worried.

“You're late,” he said.

“School tried to educate me. It took longer than expected.”

He smiled, but it didn't last. A dark sedan stood across the road, engine running. Its windows were tinted. When Roxy looked directly at it, the driver pulled away.

Her father watched it disappear.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“Nobody.”

“That's a strange car for nobody.”

“Roxanne.” His warning voice. The one he used when he wanted a subject closed.

She followed him inside. The office smelled of oil, old paper, and the cinnamon gum he chewed when he worked late. On the wall above his desk hung the work order she remembered. Warehouse 17. Six years old. The customer field had been blacked out, but the date and her father's signature remained.

“You worked there,” Roxy said.

Her father took one look at the photograph in her hand and stopped moving.

The silence answered before he did.

“Where did you get that?”

“Someone put it in my backpack and then threatened you.” She laid it on the desk. “I copied it. So if you throw it in the furnace, you'll have to live with the fact that I'm not stupid.”

He didn't look at her. He examined the picture as if it might open its mouth and speak.

“Did anyone follow you?”

“I don't know.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“Dani knows not to text about it.”

Daniel pressed his palms against the desk. “Listen carefully. You stay away from the Vale family. You don't contact that boy. You don't go near Warehouse 17. If anyone asks about this, you didn't see anything.”

“That sounds like a lot of instructions for something you claim to know nothing about.”

“Roxy, please.”

The please unsettled her more than shouting would have. Her father rarely begged. He could be stubborn, funny, and embarrassingly sentimental about old motorcycles, but fear was a language she almost never heard from him.

“What happened there?” she asked.

He turned the photograph over. His thumb covered the words on the back. “A shipment went missing. There was a fire. A man died.”

“Who?”

“I don't know.”

“Dad.”

“I said I don't know.” The sharpness in his voice landed between them. He looked sorry immediately, but he didn't take it back. “I repaired a generator there. That's all. I left before the fire.”

“Then why is your name on this work order?”

“Because I did a job. That's how work orders function.”

“Why did you keep it?”

He had no answer ready. That, too, was an answer.

A knock struck the shop's front door. Both of them turned. A man in a neat suit stood outside holding a leather folder. He wore the expression of somebody who had practiced delivering bad news until it sounded like a favor.

“Daniel Mercer?” he asked when Roxy opened the door. “I'm with Vale Urban Development. We sent a notice regarding the property purchase proposal.”

“We didn't accept a proposal,” Daniel replied.

“This is a revised offer. The city has approved the first phase of the North Quay redevelopment, and your parcel is part of the access corridor.”

“My shop isn't for sale.”

The man placed the folder on the counter. “There is also an outstanding lien attached to the property. The offer would settle it.”

Roxy watched her father's face lose color. “What lien?”

“A business loan transferred to our client six months ago. The amount has accrued interest.”

“We don't owe Vale Urban Development anything,” Daniel said.

“The documents say otherwise.” The man slid a sheet forward, tapped a signature, and left a business card beside it. “You have ten days to respond before the matter is referred to legal recovery.”

After he left, Roxy read the paper. Her father's signature looked right. The loan number did not. The document listed an original lender called North Quay Freight, a company she had never heard of, and gave the date as the same week as the warehouse fire.

The pieces didn't merely overlap. They fitted too neatly.

“Dad, did you borrow this money?”

“No.” His voice was low. “I never signed this.”

“Then someone forged your name.”

He sat down hard. For a moment she saw not a father who could fix any engine with a bent screwdriver, but a man who had been cornered by something he couldn't repair.

Roxy photographed the notice and the old work order. “I'm going to find out who owns North Quay Freight.”

“You are going to do nothing.”

“That's not happening.”

“Those people don't play by school rules.”

“Good. I was getting tired of school rules.”

His hand closed around her wrist, not hard enough to hurt, but desperately enough to stop her. “You don't understand what they'll do to keep that fire buried.”

Roxy looked at his hand until he released her.

“Then you'd better start explaining.”

He stared at the old work order. “I can't. Not yet.”

That night, Roxy searched the business registry, redevelopment notices, and public court records. North Quay Freight had dissolved seven years earlier. Its outstanding assets had passed through three companies before landing with Vale Urban Development. The last transfer had been signed by Julian Cross.

At 11:43 p.m., a new email appeared in her anonymous-tip account. No greeting. No signature. Just a scanned ledger page with one line circled in red: MERCER, DANIEL — WITNESS RETAINED.

Under it, someone had typed: Your father didn't leave before the fire. He went back in.