Still here. Still standing. Still Charlotte Richardson, whoever the fuck that is anymore.
The coffee is getting cold. I drink it anyway. Every drop. Down to the sugar sludge at the bottom that sticks to my teeth.
I fold the empty cup flat and put it in the trash. Then I fish it back out and put it on the nightstand next to the cigarette.
I don't know why.
Yes you do.
I ignore that voice. I've gotten good at ignoring that voice. Three years of practice. Three years of telling myself that wanting things is dangerous and needing people is fatal and the only person Charlotte Richardson can rely on is herself.
But the coffee was good. And he remembered the sugar. And the spoon.
And he smelled like cedar.
You're fucked, Charlotte.
I know. I know I am.
I count the ceiling tiles again. One hundred and twenty-six. Minus two. One hundred and twenty-four.
The number hasn't changed.
But in that brief interaction… something in me shifted.
Fuck.
Chapter Three: Claudio
Ihearthedoorbefore the alarm.
East service corridor. The one that runs behind the laundry room and connects to the maintenance tunnel that feeds into the building's original ventilation system. Built in the seventies, retrofitted twice, sealed with a keypad and a deadbolt that I personally upgraded eight months ago because the old lock was garbage and garbage locks get people killed.
The keypad beeps. Not the error tone. The access tone. Three short pulses and a click, which means someone punched in the correct six-digit code, which means someone who has the correct six-digit code is walking through a door that should be sealed at two in the morning on a Sunday.
I'm at the workbench. Glock in pieces. My hands stop moving before my brain catches up, which is how I know my body has already made the decision my mind is still mulling over. Ireassemble the gun in nine seconds. I've timed it before. Nine seconds from scattered parts to loaded weapon, safety off, round chambered. My personal best is seven, but seven requires a clean bench and dry hands, and right now my palms are sweating.
My palms don't sweat.
I text Leone. Two words.East service.Then I pocket the phone, check the magazine, and move.
The corridor outside the armory is empty. Emergency lighting only at this hour, red strips along the baseboards that turn everything the color of a photo room. The compound is quiet in the way it's always quiet after midnight: the low hum of ventilation, the distant clank of pipes settling, the occasional murmur of guards at the east gate passing a thermos back and forth. Normal sounds. Baseline sounds. The sounds I've memorized over twelve years of sleeping light and listening hard.
The footsteps in the service corridor are not baseline.
Three sets. Possibly four. Moving in a stacked formation, heel-toe, weight distributed to minimize sound. They're good. Not street muscle, not Castillo thugs in stolen body armor. These are trained operators moving through a building they've studied, following a route they've rehearsed.
They're heading for the east wing.
Charlotte's floor.
I take the back stairwell, three steps at a time, my feet thudding with each landing. Two flights down, through the fire door, into the maintenance level where the pipes are exposed and the ceiling is low enough that I have to duck at the junction. The concrete is cold through my boots. The air tastes like rust and old water and impending fucking death.
I reach the service corridor junction and press my back against the wall. From here, I can see twenty feet of hallway. Red light. Concrete. And three shapes moving in tight formation, weapons up, night vision rigs pushed onto their foreheads because the emergency lighting gives them enough to work with.
The first one is the point man. He's got his muzzle sweeping left to right in a pattern that tells me military training, probably private sector, the kind of operator who did three tours and then went mercenary because the pay is better and the rules are fewer. He's six feet, maybe one-eighty, moving like a man who's done this enough times to stop being scared of it.
I let him get close.
