In short order, I’m returning with two steaming mugs of chocolate magic.
We sit in silence and sip at our drinks. I’m ninety-nine percent certain my female is readying herself to finally tell me what happened. Meanwhile I study her lovely profile in the firelight. The curve of her rounded cheek. The way her glasses catch the glow. I want to pull her into my arms and tell her she’s safe now, that I’ll protect her from whatever’s chasing her. But I hold back. She needs space.
“Someone I cared about died,” she says suddenly. The words are quiet, directed at the fire, not at me but I hear them clearly and the pain underneath.
My hands clench into fists but I don’t move, just listen.
“He died because of what we knew,” she continues. “Because we were going to do the right thing together. His name was Jonas Webb. Dr. Jonas Webb, the head of Special Collections atthe university—the rare books collection. We’d worked together a lot over the years. I studied Victorian literature and spent hours in the archives with those manuscripts. A manuscript I’d studied before—a first edition Brontë—there was something that felt off about it compared to the last time I’d used it. The paper, the ink, were wrong. I mentioned it to him and he agreed it felt almost tampered with and started checking other items in the collection.”
Her voice gets quieter and I have to lean forward slightly to hear.
“They were forgeries. Multiple priceless manuscripts had been replaced with forgeries. Someone was stealing from the collection and selling the originals. But it was worse than that.”
She finally looks at me, those dark eyes full of pain and fear. “The theft was connected to the university’s endowment fund. Millions in ‘donations’ that were actually being used to launder money. We found the paper trail. Donors were claiming massive tax deductions for donations to preserve the collection. But those same donors were buying the stolen manuscripts for their private collections. University administrators were taking kickbacks. It was huge—tax fraud, theft, money laundering. Millions of dollars.”
I process that. This isn’t some small-time theft. This is organized crime at the highest level.
She takes a shaky breath. “Some of the people involved... they’re powerful. A US Senator. Billionaires. Tech CEOs. People with the resources to make problems disappear.”
Fuck. My jaw clenches but I keep my expression neutral, so she won’t see the rage building in my chest.
“Jonas wanted to go to the FBI. We compiled everything—financial records, emails, proof of the forgeries, sales records. We had an appointment scheduled and we were going to turn it all over together.” Her voice breaks on the last word and myheart cracks with it. “The appointment was on a Friday. That Wednesday night, I got a call from campus police. Jonas was dead. They’d found him in his office. They said it was a suicide, that he’d hung himself in his office.” Tears start running down her cheeks. She doesn’t wipe them away, just lets them fall.
And I understand.
“Jonas didn’t kill himself,” she says fiercely. “Someone killed him and made it look like suicide. Two days before he was supposed to turn over evidence that would destroy powerful people.”
My hands are fists now. The rage is building, hot and fierce. Someone killed this man and now they’re hunting Anna.
Anna continues, her voice breaking, “He had a wife and twin daughters. A sabbatical planned in Greece. Jonas would never kill himself. He loved his family and his work too much.” She hugs her knees and I can see her trying to hold herself together. “Someone knew. Someone knew we were going to the FBI. How else would they know to kill Jonas exactly two days before our appointment? Either there’s someone inside the FBI feeding information to these people, or someone at the university tipped them off, or our phones were tapped. I don’t know. But someone knew. And Jonas died for it. Why did he have to die instead of me? Jonas was the one with a family who would miss him. I don’t have any family and I was single at the time. Both of us were going into the FBI, if they were going to get rid of the evidence they should’ve taken us both out. I think the only reason he was killed instead of me, was because he was the one who contacted the FBI.”
The cabin is silent except for the crackling fire and Anna’s shaky breathing.
“So I ran,” she whispers. “Because I’d decided that if I went to that FBI appointment without Jonas, I’d be dead too. I didn’t know who to trust and I still don’t. It was too coincidental thathe was murdered right after he’d made that appointment for us to go in. Senator Vance sits on the Senate Finance Committee, she has oversight over the IRS, over federal law enforcement budgets. What if she has someone in the FBI on her payroll? What if I turn over the evidence and it just... disappears? Or worse, what if I end up like Jonas—another ‘suicide’?” She looks at me again. “The evidence is the only leverage I have. It’s the only thing keeping me alive. As long as I have it and they don’t know where it is, I’m valuable alive. The moment I hand it over to anyone—FBI, journalists, anyone—what’s to stop them from just killing me?”
Everything she’s saying makes perfect sense.
“You were smart not to trust them,” I say.
She blinks at me, surprised. “You think so?” Her voice is small, uncertain. “I’ve spent three years wondering if I made the wrong choice. If I should’ve just gone to the FBI anyway. I wonder if I’m a coward for running instead of fighting.”
“You’re not a coward.” My voice comes out harder than I intended but I need her to hear this. “You stayed alive and kept the evidence safe.” I lean forward. “If you’d gone to the FBI three years ago, using the same contact that Webb used, they would’ve killed you and made it look like another suicide, or an accident. The evidence would’ve disappeared and these people would still be stealing and laundering money.”
“But Jonas died for nothing,” she chokes out. “His wife thinks he killed himself. His daughters will grow up thinking their father abandoned them?—”
“Jonas died because those humans are murderers,” I interrupt. “Not because you survived.”
I take her hand in mine. “And now you have something you didn’t have three years ago.”
“What?”
“An entire commune of orcs who can protect you. We can do this right. Make the evidence public in a way they can’t suppress, using multiple news outlets at once. Upload everything to secure servers. Make it so big that even Senator Vance and the others can’t cover it up.”
“You really think that could work?”
“Yes. But we need to be smart about it. Strategic. Tell me more about these humans. Who are we dealing with?”
She takes a breath, straightens slightly, and I realize she’s relieved to finally tell someone and not carry this alone anymore. “Senator Bree Vance is a major donor to the university, she bought rare Whitman manuscripts for her private collection. Her whole political career is built on being an ‘arts patron and education advocate.’ If this comes out, she loses everything. Her seat, her reputation. Prison time.”
