Page 85 of Marked By the Mob

The moment the door closes, I sag in my chair. “Jesus Christ. They were evaluating me. Like I’m a horse they’re thinking of buying.”

“Yes.” Rurik’s jaw is tight. “And now they know we won’t negotiate. Which makes you either worthless to them or worth taking by force.”

The thought sends ice through my veins.

I excuse myself and head upstairs, my legs shaky. In the privacy of the bathroom, I unfold Krystal’s note.

Tomorrow, 2 p.m., the café on Birch Street. Come alone if you can. We need to talk. K.

I flush the note down the toilet and splash cold water on my face. My reflection looks pale, frightened. I barely recognize myself.

When I emerge, Eduard is waiting in the hallway. His expression is serious, troubled.

“We need to talk,” he says.

My heart sinks. “About what?”

“Cole’s login. The one that was used to access your files.” He pauses, his gray eyes searching mine. “My resources finally traced how it was compromised.”

“And?”

“It was accessed through a supervisory override. That kind of access requires Deputy Assistant Director clearance.”

The words don’t make sense at first. Then they do, and the world tilts.

“Langford,” I whisper.

Eduard nods slowly. “Langford.”

36

EMMA

The evidence against Langford sits on the laptop screen like an accusation I can’t ignore. Eduard’s intelligence contact traced the supervisory override that accessed Cole’s credentials straight back to Deputy Assistant Director clearance. Only three people in the Bureau have that level of access to our division’s systems, and Langford is one of them.

I stare at the financial records I pulled up earlier, the ones showing his brother-in-law’s security firm laundering auction money. The connection is there, undeniable and damning. But my mind keeps circling back to the same desperate questions.

What if it’s a mistake? What if someone hacked his credentials the same way they used Cole’s? What if there’s an explanation I haven’t found yet?

I close the laptop harder than necessary and press my palms against my eyes. The pressure helps, barely. My head pounds from too little sleep and too many revelations crashing down at once.

Langford was there when my parents died. He held my hand at their funeral. He encouraged me to join the FBI when I was drowning in grief and rage. He’s been the one constant in my life since I was sixteen years old.

He can’t be the mole. He just can’t.

But the evidence doesn’t lie.

I check the time on my phone. One-thirty. I need to leave soon if I’m going to make the meeting with Krystal at two. The café on Birch Street is about twenty minutes away, and I still need to go over the information the men want me to pass along.

A knock at the bedroom door pulls me from my thoughts. I call out permission to enter, and all three of them file in. Rurik’s pale blue eyes find mine immediately, assessing. Eduard moves to lean against the desk, his gray eyes serious. Artur drops into the leather recliner near the window, his usual grin absent.

“We need to go over the plan again,” Rurik says, his voice flat and controlled.

I nod and stand, crossing my arms over my chest. The fitted black sweater I’m wearing suddenly feels too tight, too warm. “I remember what you told me.”

“Tell us anyway,” Eduard says quietly. “We need to be certain.”

I take a breath and recite the information they’ve carefully constructed. False shipping routes through Portland that will lead Volkov’s people to empty warehouses. Fake meeting schedules with captains who don’t exist. Financial transactions that look legitimate but will dead-end if anyone tries to trace them.