Inside: rows of safety deposit boxes climbing the walls, and in the center, a digital archive terminal that hums quietly. The blue glow of the terminal screen casts shadows across my hands as I approach. I move to the terminal, pulling the secure drive from my purse. My fingers dance across the keyboard as I begin the download sequence. Reyes watches from the doorway with the satisfaction of a man who's made himself essential.
The money appears first on screen, dollar signs flashing past too quickly for me to read properly. Millions, I would guess. The numbers blur together as I download, my mind already calculating what this means, what it could buy. Freedom. Distance. A new life entirely.
Then the records begin loading. Financial documentation going back years. This is the leverage, the protection, the thing that makes me valuable enough to keep alive or dangerous enough to kill. The soft whir of the hard drives fills the vault as gigabytes of evidence flow into my drive.
Milo's voice cuts through the vault's hum: "Reyes made a phone call. Forty seconds to a flagged Markovic number."
I glance around. I hadn’t even noticed he had left. My breathing spikes, and adrenaline makes my fingers tingle.
Logan buzzes in my earpiece: "Time to get out of there. You have maybe twenty minutes before the Markovic response. Could be less if they have local assets."
I look at the download progress bar. Sixty percent. Not enough.
"I need a few more minutes," I tell them, already making triage decisions. Priority files first. The records that prove connections, the account structures. The granular transaction logs can wait if they have to.
"You have what you have," Logan says. "Gunner's tracking two cars that just changed direction. Could be a coincidence."
Could be. But we all know it's not.
Reyes will be back any second, and I need to look exactly as overwhelmed as when he left. The progress bar crawls forward: seventy percent, seventy-five. Each percentage point feels like an hour.
The vault door opens. Reyes returns, smoothing his hair. His smile is warm, paternal, completely normal. The expression of a man who just committed betrayal with a forty-second phone call and returned to continue his performance without missing a beat. He's not nervous. Not guilty. Just smiling like he's been smiling all day, confident that selling me out carries no consequences for him.
"Finding everything Julian promised you, my dear?" he asks, coming to stand behind me. Close enough that I can feel his breath on my neck.
"Almost done," I say, letting my voice shake slightly. "There's so much more than I expected."
"Julian was thorough," he agrees. His hand settles on my shoulder. "But don't worry. I'll help you structure everything properly."
Eighty-five percent. Ninety.
The final files transfer, and I eject the drive, smooth and quick despite the scream building in my throat. Reyes is standing right behind me, smiling his helpful smile, having just signed my death warrant with a phone call he made as casually as ordering lunch.
He holds his hands out for the drive.
“I’ll keep that safe for you, dear.”
I slip the drive into my purse, madly trying to think of a something to say to deflect him.
“I’ll hold onto it until lunch,” I manage to say.
"Perfect," he says, squeezing my shoulder. "I know a wonderful place nearby."
Logan in my ear: "Move. Now."
I close the vault and let Reyes guide me out. The drive weighs nothing in my purse and everything in my mind.
I spent six months imagining this moment. The drive in my hand, Julian's secrets contained, the leverage that would finally make me untouchable. In every version, I felt something large — triumph, maybe, or relief, or the freedom of a debt paid. What I actually feel, walking through marble corridors with Reyes's hand at my back, is Gabriel. His arms around me in the rectory kitchen. His voice sayingterrified and honest is an improvement. The drive is thirty million dollars and a key to a door I've been locked out of for a year, and all I can think is that I want to show it to him. Not to prove I was right to chase it. Just because he's the person I want to tell things to now, and that is a much more frightening thing to be carrying out of this vault than the money.
We leave through the same hushed corridors, Reyes's hand burning against my back with each step. Then we're through the doors and on the street, where October air hits like a slap after the vault's climate control.
Reyes steers me toward a black town car idling at the curb, his hand still proprietarily at my back.
"I thought we might discuss your options over lunch," he says, reaching for the car door. "There's a private room at Le Bernardin waiting for us. You look like you could use a glass of wine."
"You're right about that," I say, letting exhaustion color my voice.
Just as his hand presses against my lower back to guide me toward the car, a familiar silver Audi screeches to a halt directly in front of us. The passenger door flies open.
