Rain needles the alley mouth. The Man with the Clean Collar reaches the black sedan, and the waiting driver cracks the window as if expecting him.

Dallas Fontaine moves at once, cutting through the puddled shadow before the door can close and the car can roll.

Murderbone surges beside him, low and silent. The courier snaps his head back, caught mid-step, one hand still on the sedan handle.

The driver stays behind the wheel, tense and ready, while the alley light catches a dispatch badge clipped inside the courier's coat. A folded route slip peeks from his breast pocket.

The sedan idles, trapped between the wall and Dallas's line of sight, with the courier caught in the open and the next lead still in his hands.

Dallas hits low and hard, driving the courier off balance. The man with the clean collar slams into the wet pavement beside the sedan, breath knocked out in a sharp grunt.

Murderbone barrels in a beat behind him, teeth bared, and crushes the courier's shoulders before he can roll free. Rain spatters off coat fabric and slick asphalt.

The driver jerks the sedan in place but does not pull away, trapped by Dallas in the narrow alley mouth. The route slip shifts loose from the courier's pocket and skids near Dallas's knee.

Murderbone leans his weight down and the courier stops fighting, pinned face-first in the rain. The folded slip lies in reach, and the black sedan idles with its window cracked, the driver watching for Dallas's next move.

Dallas strips the badge free first, then snatches the route slip from the wet pavement. The courier flinches under Murderbone’s weight as the revolver comes up to his temple.

The courier swallows hard, eyes fixed on the barrel. The driver freezes in the sedan, one hand halfway to the door handle.

Rain ticks on the hood. Murderbone keeps the courier flat while Dallas holds the gun steady, the route slip slick between his fingers.

Dallas tilts the slip into the dim light of the sedan's headlights. Beneath the scrawled address, a precise timestamp is stamped in heavy, indelible ink, marking the ledger's next movement for exactly 02:00 tonight.

Dallas lowers the slip, turns from the courier, and cuts through the rain toward the alley side of The Rusty Anchor.

The blue metal door sits under the second landing, half-hidden by a sagging awning and a spill of yellow light from the bar above.

Murderbone shadows Dallas's heel, hackles tight, while the idling sedan keeps its headlights fixed on the wet pavement behind them.

Dallas reaches the landing and finds a chipped dispatch badge reader bolted beside the door, rimmed with fresh scrape marks.

He palms the badge, and the lock gives with a dry click, the door easing inward on a dim stairwell.

Inside, the stairwell smell turns to paper, oil, and stale coffee, while the driver in the sedan shifts hard enough to rattle the window.