The gigantic server room I was navigating hummed with industrial white noise, equipment pretending to have a pulse.
I slipped between white tower racks, boots silent on cold tile. Fluorescent lights overhead threw harsh glare across everything, sterile, clinical, deserted. The kind of deserted that should have been perfect.
Anti-static flooring absorbed sound. Cooling fans masked my breathing as I wove through the equipment rows.
Three weeks chasing Dresner’s financial network through half of Europe, hitting dead end after dead end. Numbers laundered through so many shell companies they might as well have been ghosts. Every trail went cold. Every lead turned to smoke.
This breadcrumb to Luxembourg had been the first solid hit in days, physical records stored in this data center because Dresner was paranoid enough not to trust purely digital archives. The man covered his tracks with obsessive precision, but paranoia created patterns. Patterns could be exploited.
Assuming I could actually access the workstation.
Xavier managed to get out.
Good for him. One less weapon in the fight, one less liability to manage. But he was just trying to survive.
Survival didn’t interest me. I wanted demolition.
Xavier had Clare to break his conditioning. Wolfe had Selina. Ronan had Maeve.
I broke mine alone. No catalyst. No woman whispering promises of humanity. Just me, Dresner’s codes, and a burning need to watch his empire crumble.
Dresner still doesn’t understand how I did it. Good. Let him wonder. Let him fear.
Dresner thinks he’s safe because his conditioned dogs are off the leash. He’s wrong. He just forgot that some dogs don’t run when the gate opens. Some turn around and bite the hand that fed them poison.
Row forty-two. The workstation should be...
A sound cut through the drone of machines.
Keyboard clicks echoed from somewhere near the center terminals. Quiet breathing. Someone working, settled in, comfortable.
Damn it.
Froze mid-step, recalculating. I’d checked the schedule before infiltrating, no appointments listed for after-hours access. The building should have been down to skeleton security, rotating patrols every thirty minutes. I’d timed my entry for the gap.
Apparently, someone had confidential clearance that didn’t show up on the public schedule.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
Which was currently occupied.
Eased forward, staying low between equipment racks, letting the hum of cooling fans mask any sound. The data center stretched wide, maybe forty by sixty feet, with rows of machinery along one wall and computer terminals clustered in the center.
Leaned out, just an inch.
A woman sat at the center workstation.
She was beautiful in a way that didn’t belong here, professional suit, visitor’s nametag catching the monitor’s glare, gray irises focused on a stack of documents. Dark hair pulled back in a severe bun that should have looked harsh but somehow made her look like she was in control of everything, including the temperature of the room.
Not maintenance. Not security.
Watched closer. She was photographing documents with a phone and taking notes, her movements quick and efficient. Turn the page. Snap. Verify focus. Turn the page. No hesitation. No double-checking. The kind of methodical precision that came from doing this a thousand times before.
An investigator. Or an auditor.
Someone who understood money the way I understood killing.
She’d been here a while. Settled in, comfortable. Her purse was on the desk, a coffee cup beside it. Legitimate access, then.
