At A Bar Called O'Malley's #2

The pub holds its breath. Warm light pools over the booth, but the spill of whiskey still glints on the table like an accusation. Mara sets the receipt down between the glasses, and the code on it feels louder than the music ever did.

Patrick goes still behind the bar, one hand braced on the counter. Darcy shifts toward the door, eyes cutting from the front windows to the service gate, ready for trouble to come back through either way.

The last of the convoy noise fades outside, leaving only the hum of the fridge and the low creak of the old wood. Everyone looks to Scott now, waiting for him to name the leak, to call the traitor, to decide who gets trusted with the pub's last lock.

Scott draws the manifest closer and lays the receipt beside it. The numbers line up with a hard little certainty, the same code repeating in both places like a fingerprint on glass.

He traces the supplier path with one finger, and the route folds inward on itself. It does not point to a stranger. It points to a name already inside the room.

Patrick’s face drains further as he looks from the paper to the bar, then toward the hallway as if the pub itself has started speaking badly.

Mara reaches across and taps one final line on the manifest. Outside, the dead convoy signal leaves a thin silence at the windows, and inside that silence the receipt suddenly feels like evidence, not a warning.

The receipt and manifest lay side by side, the proof plain and bitter. Marcus Thorne's leverage was broken, and the pub stood a little steadier for it, even with trust still bruised among the people inside. Scott O'Malley had named the wound before it could spread, and for now that was enough.