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I pull up the timeline I've already constructed. Yesterday, at 11:14 a.m., Petros gives us the name of the property management company tied to the old transfer structure. At 12:07 p.m., Adrianos and I arrive at the office. By 12:19, I confirm the physical records are gone. Four minutes later comes attempted vehicular murder, which is apparently a category my calendar has now acquired.

Sometime overnight, Petros dies. His body is found at 6:41 a.m., and the first public report goes live after eight.

Nothing there is new.

I stare at the timeline until my eyes begin to blur, and then something shifts inside my head. I stop looking at what happened to Petros and start looking at what happened around him.

Aggression is data.

Kalliopi taught me that without ever phrasing it that way. Fraud gets nervous. People do too. A careful thief behaves differently when nobody is watching than when the building catches fire.

OB6 has been careful for years. Patient. Tiny amounts disappearing through clean intermediaries, no dramatic moves, nothing that screams loudly enough to attract attention. Then we get close to Petros and suddenly an office is stripped, a car mounts a sidewalk, and a man ends up dead before breakfast.

That's not coincidence. That's panic wearing expensive shoes.

I sit straighter and stare at the files on my screen. "What did you move?"

The screens don't answer, which seems unnecessarily rude considering the hour.

I open Petros's linked accounts. Most are dead, which is exactly what I expected. Two corporate operating accounts were closed, a managed fund liquidated, three entities dissolved, and one holding company transferred to an offshore administrator whose website contains four photographs of yachts and no useful information. Generally, that's how you know the useful information exists elsewhere.

I compare timestamps and find nothing. I widen the window to twelve hours before his death. Still nothing. Then I push it back to twenty-four.

Something twitches, and I lean closer.

An account belonging to a freight brokerage called Northstar Meridian shows a routine settlement transfer at 4:12 p.m. The amount is ordinary. The recipient is ordinary. I already saw the transaction and dismissed it yesterday.

I open the recipient again. Mercer Clearing Services.

Legitimate. Boring. The kind of financial company that exists entirely to move money between people who will never know its name.

I check another Petros-linked entity. Different business, different bank. At 4:13 p.m., it sends money to Halcyon Settlement Group. Also legitimate. Also boring.

Then I check a third.

4:11 p.m.

Different clearing house.

My pulse changes. "No."

I pull the transaction records onto three screens and place them side by side. The amounts don't match. The senders don't match. The recipients don't match. Nothing about the transactions should connect, which is precisely why they do.

Mercer sends its money onward at 4:26. Halcyon moves its funds at 4:27. The third clearing house does the same at 4:25. None of the money goes offshore, at least not immediately. Instead, it moves into domestic intermediary accounts.

I feel the first clean snap of a pattern locking into place, and every trace of fatigue disappears.

I add another account, then another. Four become six. Six become nine. At some point I stand without realizing I've done it, one hand pressed against the desk as I stare at the web forming across my screens.

Petros wasn't one account. He was a junction. The minute somebody decided he was compromised, the system didn't close around him. It evacuated.

"Come on," I whisper.

I start building a map. Sender to clearing vehicle. Clearing vehicle to intermediary. Intermediary to destination. The first layer looks random, the second is better disguised, but the third is where somebody gets greedy.

Not greedy for money. Greedy for cleanliness.

They consolidated.