"Thank you."
I pull out the wooden chair opposite her and sit down, putting the table between us like a physical barricade. The LED lantern sits between us, casting deep shadows across the scarred wood.
"You found the broker?" I set my arms on the table.
She nods, opening her eyes. "His digital alias is tied to a logistics firm in Miami. But he's just the middleman. The firewall. I'm looking for the principal."
"The man who signs the checks."
"Exactly." She sets the mug down. "The principal is the one who ordered the hit on the witness four years ago. He's the one who ordered the hit on me. If we take out the broker, the principal just hires another one. We have to sever the head."
She turns back to the keyboard.
I watch her work. The long night stretches out, wrapped in a strange, terrifying intimacy. We aren't exchanging life stories.We aren't talking about the past. The stakes are too high for casual conversation.
We're communicating entirely through the data, hunting a ghost side-by-side in the dark.
I've been alone for so long. Operating in total isolation. I convinced myself that my exile was permanent, that no one could ever understand the necessary darkness of what I do. I accepted that I would die alone, likely bleeding out in an alley after a contract went bad.
But Addy understands the darkness. She's staring right into it, analyzing the brutal, clinical math of murder for hire, and she isn't flinching. She doesn't look at me like I'm a monster. She looks at me like I'm the weapon she needs to win a war.
It is the most dangerously seductive thing I have ever experienced.
The silence of the cabin is broken only by the rhythmic, frantic clicking of her keys and the heavy crackle of the woodstove.
Hours bleed away. I feed the fire. She follows the money.
At 0330 hours, the cabin goes dead quiet.
Addy suddenly stops typing.
Her hands hover over the keyboard, her fingers trembling slightly. She goes perfectly still, her eyes locked on the monitor.
"Wyatt."
She doesn't look at me. She just stares at the glowing screen as if she's looking at the face of the devil himself.
I'm out of my chair in a second, rounding the heavy table to stand directly behind her. I brace my scarred hands on the back of her chair, leaning over her shoulder to look at the monitor. The heat radiating off her skin is an immediate, violent distraction, but I force my focus to the data.
The screen displays a single, decrypted offshore shell company profile.
"The phantom manifests, the crypto wallets, the broker's logistics firm..." Her voice is a breathless, fractured whisper. "They aren't isolated entities. It's an entire ecosystem of corruption. And they all route back to a single, massive holding corporation in Zurich. I bypassed the final firewall."
I stare at the name glowing on the screen. The letters burn themselves into my retinas.
Ares Global Logistics.
It's a massive, untouchable private military contractor. They don't just move illegal weapons or run narcotics. They overthrow governments. They orchestrate proxy wars. It is the kind of corporation that buys sovereign politicians and operates entirely above the law.
They are the ones who put a hit on my federal witness four years ago.
"You found him." The realization hits me with the force of a physical blow.
"I found the principal." Addy pushes back from the table.
The movement catches me off guard. Her chair slides back, and she turns, suddenly trapped between the heavy wooden desk and my body.
I don't step away.
