Chapter 11 - The Line Between Help and Risk

 

Rain tapped the windows like code.

Dwayne cleared the dining table and spread everything out in rows. Printed photos. Screen grabs. Timestamps from old messages. A crude map of the park and the warehouse street. He stood over it with a marker in his hand, eyes steady, mind running faster than his pulse.

Marcus paced behind him, coffee cooling in one hand. “You want to tell me what I’m looking at?”

“Signal and noise,” Dwayne said. “We separate them, then we move.”

He drew three neat circles on a sheet of paper and labeled them.

Sienna.
Handler.
Me.

He added a fourth.
Observer.

Marcus stopped pacing. “Observer?”

“The man who waved at you,” Dwayne said. “He didn’t chase, he signaled. That’s not panic behavior, that’s control. He wanted us to know we were being watched. Which means surveillance, not muscle.”

Marcus frowned. “So they knew I was there the whole time.”

“Before you parked,” Dwayne said. “They wanted to feed you confidence. False control. That’s the first layer of manipulation.”

He wrote under each name:

Sienna: Predictable timing. Short meets. Never lingers.
Handler: Calm posture. Tactical restraint.
Observer: Access to cameras. Telecom. Movement data.

Marcus leaned forward. “You think they’re some kind of agency?”

“Could be private,” Dwayne said. “Government, corporate, or freelance. Doesn’t matter. They act like people who can walk through walls.”

He circled one word: access.

“That’s the key. They know when I leave the house. When I check my phone. When I change routes. That’s not luck. That’s monitoring. Layered surveillance with behavioral modeling.”

Marcus stared at him. “You sound like you’re describing one of your old systems.”

“I am,” Dwayne said quietly. “Someone’s using my own logic against me.”

He went still for a long moment. Then his voice dropped. “That means they’re watching anyone who talks to me. Including her.”

Marcus tensed. “Aaliyah?”

Dwayne nodded. “If they know about her sessions, they’ll trace her too. The office, the texts, even her calendar. They’ll want to know how much she knows and how much she means to me.”

“You think they’ll come after her?”

“They won’t need to,” Dwayne said. “All they need is to record her hesitation. Watch who she calls after a session. See if she protects me or reports me. Either way, they’ll build a psychological profile.”

“So what do we do?”

“We get ahead of it,” Dwayne said.

He flipped to a clean page and began to write.

Rules

1. No assumptions. Verify everything.

2. No device chatter that sounds emotional.

3. No meetings on their clock.

4. Fear doesn’t pick the next move.

5. Protect Aaliyah without alerting her she’s being watched.

Marcus frowned. “You’re planning to tell her?”

“I have to,” Dwayne said. “We need her insight. She’s trained to read people. If she helps us decode their behavior patterns, we can predict their next step.”

“That’s risky,” Marcus said. “She’s part of your file now. You reach out the wrong way, they’ll see it.”

“I know,” Dwayne said. “That’s why I’ll reach out in a way that looks normal.”

He opened a small box from the drawer and took out a sealed prepaid phone. No contacts. No synced apps. No GPS. No ID.

He typed:
This is D. Requesting information about cancellation policy for after-hours consult.

Marcus squinted. “You’re pretending to be a client?”

“I’m pretending to be harmless,” Dwayne said. “If someone’s scanning her messages, this reads like a standard inquiry.”

He added one more line.
Topic, cognitive pathways.

Marcus tilted his head. “That code for something?”

“It’s the name of a book on her shelf,” Dwayne said. “She’ll recognize it immediately. It means I need analysis, not therapy.”

He hesitated before pressing send.

Marcus caught the pause. “You worried they’ll intercept it?”

“I’m worried they already have,” Dwayne said. “If they’re in her systems, even a single text can flag her.”

He sent it anyway.

The message vanished into the static silence of the room.

Minutes passed. Neither spoke. Rain whispered against the glass.

Marcus finally said, “You really think she’s the one who can help?”

“She’s the only one who might see what I can’t,” Dwayne said. “And she deserves to know the danger she’s in.”

The phone buzzed once.

The reply came from Aaliyah’s number, but something about the tone was off.
Short. Cautious. Almost mechanical.

Aaliyah: After hours only. No devices. Come alone.

Dwayne stared at it for a long moment. Relief flickered, then drained away.

“She got the message,” he said quietly. “Or someone wants me to think she did.”

Marcus folded his arms. “And you’re still going?”

“Yes,” Dwayne said. “Because if she’s under surveillance, I’ll see the signs. If they’re watching her, I’ll find the bleed, camera drift, light shifts, reflections in glass. They always leave a trace.”

Marcus hesitated. “You think this is a game of chess.”

“It is,” Dwayne said. “Except every move costs someone their life.”

He gathered the papers into a stack, folded the map, and tucked the marker into his pocket.

Marcus watched him, uneasy. “You sure you can handle this?”

“I have to,” Dwayne said. “Because if they’re watching her, it’s not just my problem anymore.”

He turned off the light and stood by the window for a moment, studying the reflections in the glass, the faint movement of cars, the flicker of streetlights, the ghostly outline of himself looking back.

“They want control,” he said quietly. “So I’ll give them something to control.”

Marcus frowned. “Meaning what?”

“I’ll feed them the wrong pattern.”

He opened the door, stepped into the hallway, and spoke without turning back.

“Let’s go. I need to know who’s watching who.”