Page 95 of Operation: Defiance

Chapter Twenty-Two

Asher

Raine falls asleep less than ten minutes after eating. It’s not a deep sleep. Her body doesn’t trust that yet. But it’s something more than the splintered, nightmare-ridden minutes she’s been surviving on for God knows how long.

For now, that’s enough.

I retrieve my laptop and the thumb drive from the safe behind a hidden panel in the closet. Time to find out what else I stole from that fucking black site besides a woman they were about to erase.

It takes me longer than it should to line up what I’m seeing. Ten years ago, one sleepless night wouldn’t have cost me a step. Now, the wear shows in places caffeine can’t touch.

The one advantage age gives me? Patience.

Once the pattern emerges, it’s impossible not to recognize it.

My initial read was right. Three different corporate entities in one physical location.

Northbridge Containment, LLC, Kovacs Resolution Partners, and Coherent Path, Inc.

I choke back a laugh. They’re not even trying to hide what they’re doing.

Northbridge turns pain into information. Kovacs makes problems disappear, but keeps them breathing.

They’re both vicious, but they have a use for the people they break.

Coherent Path? They’re something else entirely.

I start with the ID of the man I was hired to extract. Detainee 7C-914.

His intake is filed under Northbridge. They did a full workup. Baseline vitals, risk assessment, and a neat little paragraph on “asset value” that boils down to “he pissed off someone with a hell of a lot of money and barely any patience.”

The first few days don’t show anything unusual. Sleep deprivation. Stress positions. A couple of “interviews” that probably asked the questions with fists.

Someone breaks out the alligator clips on day three and calls it “enhanced questioning.”

That should have been enough to make most men spill all their secrets.

But on day five, there’s a single line that doesn’t belong.

Detainee 7C-914: Transfer to Coherent Path, Inc.

That’s not how this works.

If someone pays Northbridge to handle a problem, Northbridge handles the problem until one of two things happen—it stops being a problem or the money runs out.

Bodies don’t bounce between these companies without a reason. Pain follows the money.

Did someone order my target moved? Or was this a fuck-up?

I mark the transfer line and scroll to the next page. The language changes immediately. Notes like “sleep deprivation” and “enhanced questioning” disappear, replaced by strings of characters that mean nothing. At least to me.

PR-CX/ M-43 / N-21

M-43 / M-43 / CX-7

N-21 / N-21 / N-21 / CC-2

I find a reference to something called a “Procedure Index,” but it must have been stored in a directory I didn’t have access to, because it’s not on the drive.