Page 27 of Make Them Pay

“Yes.”

Knight looks at me the way only someone who’s known you most of your life can. The plan is thin. Three of us against ten armed guards and a locked underground facility. It’s the kind of odds that would make most people walk away. We’ve never been most people.

“It’s what we have,” I say.

“I know.” He folds the map and tucks it away. “Thirty-six hours. I’ll check the outside one more time and confirm the numbers. We go at two in the morning.”

He glances at Enley again, then back at me. “She good?”

“She’s better than good.”

He nods once more and disappears through the fence into the dark, the same quiet way he’s been leaving rooms since we were teenagers.

I sit back at the table and open the Goldenbell network map. The rescue is thirty-six hours away. Between now and then we still have the other half of the plan to finish.

While Knight handles the physical side, Enley and I are going to tear Serafina’s money system apart from the inside. Not just look around. Drain the accounts, expose every dirty transaction, and hand the proof to people who can make sure she never rebuilds. Dean gave me the name of a journalist, Rowan Sands, she’ll be able to blow this wide open if we get to that point.

I start at five in the morning.

Getting past the first layer of protection is straightforward. I’ve done it a hundred times. Inside, the system looks like any ordinary company. Email. Project files. Employee records. The clean face of something that is anything but clean.

The second layer is harder. Someone with real skill built it. I don’t force my way through the front. I use the quiet gap Enley found days ago, the one that lets small, careful traffic slip past without raising alarms. By six twelve I’m inside the part that actually holds the money.

That’s when the first wave of dizziness hits.

One second I’m reading account lists. The next the screen tilts and I have to grip the edge of the table to stay upright. It passes in a few seconds. I blink hard, blame it on too little sleep and too little water, and keep going.

At seven Enley wakes and joins me. She brings two meal packs and a bottle of water, already sharp-eyed and ready.

“Where are we?” she asks, looking at the screen.

“Inside the money side. It’s more tangled than I expected. Layers of companies and accounts meant to hide everything.”

She pulls her chair close. Our elbows touch. Neither of us moves away. The kiss still lives in the air between us and the old pretense of professional distance feels thinner than ever.

We work through the morning. Tracing the money is slow, careful work. Enley’s brilliant at it. The same pattern sense that helped her spot the hidden messages now lets her see the shape of Serafina’s whole system in the mess of numbers and names.

“There,” she says around nine, pointing to a group of accounts that all feed through one overseas trust. “That’s the center. Everything dirty passes through here. Map that and we have the whole picture.”

She’s right. That trust is the spine.

At ten thirty the second wave of dizziness hits harder.

My vision narrows from the edges. My skin feels too tight and too hot. I can feel the heat radiating off my own arms. Fever. The river. Two days ago we crossed cold, dirty water and I’ve been running on almost no sleep since. The infection’s been waiting for the adrenaline to fade.

The timing couldn’t be worse.

“Render.” Enley’s voice is close and worried. “You’re pale.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not. You’re sweating through your shirt.”

She reaches over and presses the back of her hand to my forehead. The contact is brief and clinical, but it still sends a jolt through me that’s got nothing to do with the fever and everything to do with the fact that this is the first time she’s touched me since the kiss.

“You’re burning up.”

“I can work through it.”