Page 29 of Antonio Miles

Griffin leaned forward, arms folded. “What about alarms?”

“Every door has an electronic tripwire. Bad swipe or failed print triggers a silent call to a private response team who’s not the police. The team gets there in under ten minutes.”

“The buyer comes in person this time,” I said. “Not a proxy.”

Knight’s mouth thinned. “Confirmed. The guy’s pure ghost. The closer’s alias is Rainman. He’s ex-military so he fits the stereotype. Rourke called him a freak, and I’ve got nothing to contradict.”

Darby snorted. “What kind of freak? Creeper, or just more psycho than average?” And, yes. My daughter sat in the middle of the badasses and played with the big boys.

“Well, for starters, he doesn’t talk except to give his order.” Knight’s eyes flicked up. “He’s a buyer, not the collector.”

Kass spoke up. “How many inside once the event starts?”

“Ten staff. Three security. All armed. Denton’s men rotate, but they bring in two off-duty cops for every event. The rest are the girls. There will be five held in rotation, with two active for the party at all times. The rest are kept locked in the back.”

I drummed my fingers. “They know we’re coming.”

“Denton’s tripled security since the last run. New cameras, new guards. He’s not running. He’s daring us to make the first move.” Knight’s voice was flat, but there was an edge to it. “He wants to make a show of it.”

Seth grunted. “He wants the city to see us fail.”

“Or he wants to fuck us up so bad we don’t get up again.” Darby’s voice was dry.

Hawk gave a tight nod. “If it was me, I’d rig the outer rooms and funnel you into a kill box.”

Finch rolled his shoulders. “We can deal with that. Layout?”

Knight’s face tightened. “That’s the problem. We have the ground floor and the second floor. After the loading bay, we lose the thread. The interior cameras don’t have a wireless access point. Everything’s hardwired. All the digital footprints stop at the threshold.”

Sully flicked through a set of images on his screen. “You’re saying, we’re in blind?”

Knight shook his head. “Not completely. We know the outer offices. The main lounge, the bar, the manager’s office. After that, there’s a corridor that runs behind the bar. All the doors are badge-only access. Then, nothing. The vault is somewhere at the heart, but nobody’s gotten footage of it.”

I tried not to let my frustration show. “There’s got to be blueprints on file somewhere. It’s in a zoned area.”

“Denton gutted the place before opening. All renovations were managed by a shell company. The city holds plans for the old layout, but it’s useless. No permits, no paper trail, nothing. He paid cash for the work, and the contractors are either dead or not stateside.”

I looked at Kass. “Options?”

“Have to treat every door like it’s the last. Assume overlap fields for the cameras, motion sensors, voiceless alarms. Assume every corridor is a choke point.”

Griffin added, “And the clock’s working against us. Rainman lands twelve hours before the event. If we don’t move before then, we get nothing.”

Knight cut in. “You could go in early, but you risk burning the play. If you wait, you go up against Denton, Rainman, and Iron’s muscle. None of which is ideal.”

Seth was silent but watching me. Waiting on my instructions. We’d gone into worse, but not blind. That’s the part I hated. I looked up at Knight’s image on the monitor. “What have you found out about where the trail above Iron leads?”

Knight’s tone went flat. “Still dead. I built a shadow trace off the payment, but there’s nothing. It should jump to a holding corp or a high-net-worth account, but the money just… vanishes.”

Sully frowned. “That’s not possible. Someone always takes a cut.”

“Not this time. Either it’s laundering on a level I’ve never seen, or the endpoint is something we’re not thinking of.”

“Or he’s got a handler with black budget access,” Kass muttered.

Knight’s jaw ticked. “I need more time. Give me a little more time and I’ll have a name. But if you want to hit Éclipse, you need a way to see the inside.”

Darby pulled a boot off the table and straightened. “No way to send in a scout? Fake a delivery or something, maybe?”