The Thin Line

Red had always trusted patterns. A clean sequence. Cause and effect. 

People liked to believe in chaos, but the truth was nothing happened without a reason. If you traced the blood back far enough, there was always a hand that spilled it. 

And yet, Lincoln's involvement in the André job wasn't adding up. 

She shouldn't be searching it. 

She shouldn't be doubting lincoln. 

But she couldn't stop now.Could she? 

She sat in a dimly lit café, stirring a spoon through coffee she had no intention of drinking. Across from her, a broker lounged against his seat, rolling a sugar packet between his fingers like he had all the time in the world. 

"You're digging in places you don't need to, Red," he mused. "Didn't think you were the type to question orders." 

She smiled faintly. "I don't. But I like knowing whose orders I'm following." 

The broker chuckled, tearing open the sugar packet. "Fair enough. But you're looking at the wrong guy. Lincoln never touched this one." 

Red's fingers stilled against the rim of her cup. 

The broker leaned forward slightly, voice dropping into something lower, more amused. "There was no contract under his name. No file. No message. The money came in direct—anonymous." He stirred his espresso lazily. "Far as the books are concerned, Lincoln was never involved." 

That didn't make sense. 

Lincoln controlled the jobs he accepted. He never let blind offers slide through his network. And yet, somehow, someone had moved past him. 

Red kept her expression neutral. "Someone took a risk." 

The broker smirked. "Or someone didn't want the paper trail leading back to them." 

Her stomach twisted. 

Lincoln wasn't sloppy. If this was a game, then he was playing from outside the board. 

The broker downed his espresso in one smooth motion, then set the cup aside. "If I were you, I'd stop looking where you're supposed to and start looking where you're not." 

Red stood, dropping a few crumpled bills onto the table. The broker whistled low. "Hit a nerve, did I?" 

She didn't answer. Didn't give him the satisfaction. 

Because the problem wasn't just that Lincoln might be innocent. 

The problem was that someone had deliberately kept his name out of this. 

And Red didn't know if that made things better—or much, much worse. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________ 

Red found Lincoln exactly where she expected—leaning against his desk, sleeves rolled up, cigarette burning low between his fingers. The room smelled like stale smoke and old paper, just as it always had. The same desk, the same chair, the same man who had once pulled her out of the gutter and made her into something sharper. 

And yet, nothing felt the same. 

"You took your time," he muttered, tapping ash into a tray. His voice was even, unreadable. "You look pissed." 

She was. 

"Where is André?" 

Lincoln exhaled, slow and measured, before meeting her gaze. Steady. "What?" 

"Don't play dumb with me." 

"I'm not," he said simply. No offense, no denial, just a flat statement of fact. "André's missing?" 

Red's jaw tightened. "You know damn well he is." 

Lincoln sighed, rubbing his forehead like she had just handed him another problem on top of a dozen others. "I don't have him, Red." 

It was the way he said her name. Not defensive. Not annoyed. Just tired, like he'd had this conversation in his head already and was disappointed it was happening out loud. 

It felt wrong. 

Or maybe it felt right, and that was the problem. 

Red had spent years learning to read lies. But Lincoln had spent years teaching her how to lie. 

"You'd say that either way." 

He studied her, then shook his head, laughing under his breath. "You always did have a sharp bite." He flicked his cigarette into the tray. "If I wanted André gone, I'd have done it clean. You wouldn't be here asking questions." 

It was cold. Logical. Exactly the kind of answer she'd expect from him. 

And it was true. 

He feigned ignorance like a mask 

Her doubt driped like ink 

Staining the truth she's too afraid to see. 

She wanted to call him a liar, to tear this whole room apart until she found a crack, a misstep, something that gave her permission to doubt him. 

But he didn't look like a man covering his tracks. 

He looked… disappointed. 

Not in himself. In her. 

Red folded her arms, pushing against the hesitation coiling in her ribs. "I don't trust you." 

Lincoln's mouth twitched into something that almost resembled a smirk. "Good." A pause. "Means I did my job right." 

The words cut sharper than they should have. 

And yet, as she turned to leave, her certainty felt thinner than before. 

Because if Lincoln was lying, he was doing it perfectly. 

And if he wasn't— 

Then she had just wasted precious time accusing the only person who had ever been on her side.