A New Leash On Life

By noon Mary has a list.

It is written on the back of a building directory she tore out of the foyer. Grant’s handwriting would have made it look like a grocery run. Mary’s makes it look like a campaign.

Paige: college soccer, left-footed, not gun-shy, bad at staying still.

Noor: events logistics, spreadsheets, can talk a drunk donor into a check, wants an assignment immediately.

Harlow: nightlife, faces, who is lying, who is performing, useless at dawn, dangerous after dark.

Willa: med-adjacent, used to volunteer at a clinic, can wrap a wound without fainting, will overthink a locked door.

Jaycee: local streets, skate-park geography, the Explorer’s habits, Kyle’s old routes.

Tessa: quiet memory, floor plans, she already has both penthouses mapped in her head like an apology.

The original twenty fill the rest of the page. Who can shoot. Who can cook. Who can stand a watch without turning it into a conversation. Who should never be sent downstairs alone.

Grant reads it once and does not compliment her. Mary does not need it.

“The suite is secure,” she says. “The lot is not.”

He looks through the glass.

The Explorer has been in the same painted space since last night. Heat is starting to come up off the concrete. Garret is awake. Jose is awake now too. They have not left. They also have not come to the door like men with a plan. They have the posture of people waiting to be told whether they are employees or stains.

Jaz’s voice comes from the stair feed.

“They’re arguing. I can’t hear words. Jose keeps pointing at the building. Garret keeps shaking his head.”

“Bring water,” Grant says. “Not kindness. Leverage. I want them standing when I talk.”

Eve takes the bottle. Paige asks to go with her and Grant almost says no on instinct, then looks at Mary’s list and says yes. Tall, fast, and a college athlete. If the two men are going to stare, they can stare at someone who belongs to the house.

Grant takes the private stair himself.

The lot smells like hot metal and last night’s decision. Kyle is gone from it. The absence has not made the Ford any prettier. Jose flinches when the service door opens. Garret tries to look bored and only looks young.

Eve sets the water on the hood and steps back. Paige stays at Grant’s shoulder without being told, which is either just her nature or being claimed. It doesn’t matter.

Grant does not raise his voice. Thirty floors of glass are doing that for him.

“You had all night to drive away,” he says. “You didn’t. So either you want something from this building or you are too scared of the street to lose the one advantage you have. Which is it?”

Jose wipes his mouth.

“We want in,” he says. “Not like— not like your girls. Just a roof. Food. The car’s ours. We can run stuff. Be lookouts. You saw what the city’s like.”

Garret’s eyes tick to Paige and away, then to Eve, then to the ground, which is the first smart thing he has done since the intersection.

“Kyle was the one who wanted to grab,” Garret says. “I’m not doing that. I like being alive.”

“Good instinct.” Grant rests two fingers on the Explorer’s side mirror and feels the cheap plastic want to give under the new strength. He does not let it. “Here is the only version of in you get. You keep the car. You sleep in the car. You do not come upstairs. You do not speak to my women unless one of them is carrying an order from me. You run errands I name and routes I name. If you see another man collecting, you do not make friends. You come back and you tell me what he looks like, how many he has, and whether he looks tired.”

Jose squints.

“That’s it?”

“That is more than Kyle got.”

The name sits on the concrete between them. Jose looks at the empty stretch of lot where the body was and then at the water bottle like it might explain the math.

Garret asks the question anyway.

“Why us?”

“Because I need wheels I do not have to walk beside, and because two extra pairs of eyes on the street are cheaper than another hole in my wall.” Grant lets that be the whole compliment. “Also because if someone else out there is changing the way I changed, I want to hear about it before he parks in this space.”

That gets both of them still.

“Changing?” Jose says.

Grant does not show them his hands. He does not tell them about the map. He does not say twenty.

“Claiming is doing more than the broadcast sold,” he says. “Maybe to me. Maybe to other men. I don’t know the rule yet. I know I do not want to learn it from somebody standing in my lobby.”

Garret nods too fast, which means he understands enough to be afraid and not enough to be useful yet.

“There’s already something,” he says. “Last night, before we almost hit you. We passed a grocery on 12th. Guy out front had six or seven women on him. Didn’t look like he knew what to do with them. A van further down had a man arguing with two girls who were still— you know. Still themselves. He looked worse than us.”

“Names. Descriptions. Direction.”

“White guy, beard, red backpack, grocery. The other one was older. Van. Dark blue. Heading toward the river.”

Mary would already be writing that down. Grant files it and feels the itch of the next number he does not have.

“You two go eat what Eve gives you. Then you take the Explorer three blocks and back. No detours. No heroics. You are proving the car starts and that you return it.” He glances at Paige. “If they do anything but that, you come get me.”

“Yes, Grant.”

Jose opens his mouth, thinks about a joke, and closes it. Garret takes the water like it might be revoked.

Grant is already turning back to the door when Garret says, quieter,

“The grocery guy. He didn’t look tired.”

Grant stops.

“Say that again.”

“The rest of us look like we got hit by a truck. He didn’t. He was standing there like he’d slept. Like it was easy.” Garret swallows. “I thought he was just high. Now I don’t know.”

Mary’s theory runs through his mind.

Other men. Other counts. Other bodies that might be paying out.

Grant looks up the side of his own building, twenty-four women somewhere above him, a map only he can read, strength he is still treating like a grenade with a loose pin.

“Three blocks,” he says. “Then you come back and you tell me if that grocery is still occupied.”

He takes the stairs two at a time because he can, not because he needs to, and hates that the difference is becoming a habit.

Mary is waiting in the foyer with the directory list and an eyebrow already up.

“Well?”

“They keep the car. They stay outside. They run a three-block test.” Grant hands her the descriptions like they are already late. “Beard, red backpack, seven women, grocery on 12th. He didn’t look tired. And a blue van toward the river with two apparently unclaimed.”

Mary’s face does not change much. It does not have to.

“Then we are not the only ones growing,” she says.

“No.”

“And twenty-four still did not upgrade you.”

“No.”

She glances at the list, then at the cut wall, then at him.

“So we use the tools we have. And we find out whether the man on 12th is just sleeping well, or whether he hit a number too.”

Grant goes to the glass.

Below, the Explorer coughs alive. Paige watches it roll toward the exit like a dog that has been told to stay. Twenty-four points of claimed women tilt through the penthouses as his focus moves.

He does not know if the grocery man looked well-rested because he claimed twenty, or ten, or fifty, or he just had a good night’s sleep. That seems like a rare thing in this chaos.

He knows he needs to find out and deal with it one way or another.

And he knows, standing in a penthouse that no longer has vacancies, that the next woman he claims may not happen without bloodshed.

But he won’t have a choice.