“Negative. No escorts. No flashing lights,” Varro reports, his tone shifting into combat readiness. “They’re pulling into the front plaza now. The two men in the back are definitely private cleaners.”
He came exactly as Iris predicted—arrogant and intensely secretive.
I look at the tall antique clock. Eleven-fifty-five.
I pack the remaining gear into the Pelican case, snap it shut, and slide it out of sight beneath the window drapery.
I turn back to Iris. She’s standing perfectly still in the center of the Persian rug, exactly where Elias bled out. She’s hugging her arms tightly around her waist, staring at the closed doors.
I walk over to her. Reaching out, I grab her face with both of my large hands, forcing her to look away from the door and up at me.
“Listen to me very carefully,” I say, my voice a fierce, vibrating whisper. “He’s going to try to manipulate you. He’s going to lie to your face. He’s going to use every psychological trigger he installed in your head to make you doubt yourself.”
“I know,” she says, her hands coming up to grip my wrists like lifelines.
“Do not let him get within arm’s reach,” I command, my eyes boring into hers. “Keep the desk between you at all times. Keep him talking. Get the confession. And the absolute second he makes a move toward you, the second he threatens you, draw that weapon or drop flat to the floor.”
“And what will you do?”
“I’ll end him,” I vow.
I step back, severing the physical contact. The clock is ticking, and there is no more time.
“I’m right behind that wall,” I promise her. “He won’t touch you.”
“I know,” she breathes.
I turn and walk to the false panel on the plaster column. I pull it open and step backward into the narrow, pitch-black void between the inner wall and the steel safe.
It’s horribly claustrophobic. The void was built for a smaller man. To fit my frame, I have to turn completely sideways, pressing my chest flat against the back of the portrait.
The movement forces my injured left shoulder to compress against the cold, rough brick behind me. The freshly stapled muscle screams in protest, but I lock my jaw, refusing to make a sound. I’ll bleed out inside this wall before I compromise her safety.
I draw my SIG with my right hand, holding it tight to my chest at the low ready. The quarter-inch gap in the decorative molding gives me a perfect, unobstructed view of the room and the double doors.
“I’m set,” I whisper into the comms.
Iris doesn’t reply. She can’t risk speaking aloud now.
She stands alone in the center of the room, letting her arms drop to her sides. She squares her shoulders and lifts her chin,wiping the last lingering trace of fear from her face. She builds the flawless mask of the perfect, poised daughter one final time.
She looks like an untouchable queen waiting to hold court.
Through my earpiece, I hear the rhythmic thud of her heartbeat.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Then, a second sound joins it.
Footsteps in the marble hallway.
They’re heavy. Measured. Deliberate. The distinct, arrogant clack-clack-clack of expensive dress shoes echoing loudly in the empty, dead museum.
The brass handle of the mahogany door slowly turns.
The hinges groan, and the doors swing open.
Judge William Hale steps into the room.
