CHAPTER 18

Friday arrived with the particular tension of a day everyone involved had been quietly dreading and looking forward to in equal measure. By six o'clock, the group thread had gone almost entirely silent — the calm before what Gavin had, unhelpfully, taken to calling "H-hour," a term Viktor had immediately banned him from using out loud in the building.

Elena had spent most of the afternoon unable to focus on anything else, checking her phone under her desk between meetings like a teenager waiting for a text back. She'd told herself, more than once, that it was ridiculous to be this invested in the logistics of moving one dog three floors down and out a service elevator. It didn't stop her from checking again five minutes later.

Viktor positioned himself in the security office, monitors arrayed in front of him, a direct line to Marco's radio open on the desk. Gavin sat two floors up in an empty conference room, laptop open to Mark's calendar and the building's badge-access logs, ready to flag any deviation from the expected schedule. Carter waited in the lobby, ostensibly working late, actually watching the elevator bank with the studied casualness of a man who had never once in his life looked casual on purpose.

Carter waited in the lobby, ostensibly working late, actually watching the elevator bank with the studied casualness of a man who had never once in his life looked casual on purpose. He'd already run through, in his head, four separate cover stories for why he'd still be in the building at seven on a Friday, none of which he expected to actually need, and all of which he was quietly grateful to have ready anyway.

"Lobby's quiet," he murmured into his own earpiece, more for his own reassurance than anyone else's benefit. "No sign of Mark. Downtown meeting should have him occupied another hour, easy."

"Should," Gavin echoed, not entirely reassuring.

"You're a real comfort, you know that?"

"I try."

And Chloe — Chloe was the one walking toward the penthouse floor at 6:52, a soft-sided carrier slung over one shoulder and a bag of treats in her jacket pocket, having volunteered herself for the actual extraction with an enthusiasm that had worried Viktor considerably more than it had reassured him.

"You're clear," Viktor's voice came through her earpiece, low and steady. "Housekeeper's car left the garage two minutes ago. You have roughly eight minutes before Mark's calendar has him wrapping his dinner meeting downtown."

"Copy that." Chloe's own voice was a hushed whisper, though there was nobody around to overhear her in the empty hallway. "I feel like I should have a code name."

"You have a badge and a time limit. That's what you have."

"Boring, but noted."

The penthouse door, as promised, was unlocked in the particular way of a household staffed by someone who trusted the building's security more than they trusted their own memory for keys. Chloe slipped inside, and found Barnaby waiting just past the entryway — ears up, tail wagging with the desperate hope of a dog who'd learned, recently and painfully, not to expect much from the people who came through that door.

"Hey, buddy," Chloe murmured, crouching down, offering a treat before she reached for the leash hanging by the door. "Bet you're sick of this place."

Barnaby's whole body wagged in response, and something in Chloe's chest tightened at how easily he came to her, how starved he clearly was for even the smallest kindness. She took a moment longer than she should have, just crouched there scratching behind his ears, letting him lean his whole weight into her hand — and then made herself move, because sentiment was a luxury they didn't have eight minutes for.

"We're moving," she murmured into the earpiece, clipping the leash on and gathering his food bowl, his bed, the few things scattered around that were unmistakably his. "Elevator in ninety seconds."

---

It was at the ninety-second mark, exactly as she reached for the door, that Gavin's voice cut through the earpiece with an urgency that hadn't been there a moment before.

"Chloe, hold. Hold position."

"What's wrong?"

"Mark's calendar just changed. Dinner got moved up — he canceled the downtown meeting twenty minutes ago and I only just caught the update. He could be in the building right now."

Chloe froze, one hand on the door, Barnaby's leash taut in the other, every instinct screaming at her to just go, to just get out before the math got any worse. "How sure are you?"

"Not sure enough to bet your job on it," Gavin admitted. "But sure enough that I wouldn't take the main elevator."

"There's a service elevator at the end of the hall," Viktor's voice cut in, calm in a way that somehow made the situation feel both more and less dangerous at once. "West corridor, past the utility closet. It's slower, but it doesn't run past the lobby. Take it."

Chloe's heart was hammering as she scooped up Barnaby's bed under one arm, guided him toward the service corridor, every soft click of his claws against the marble floor sounding, to her ears, like a siren.

"Moving," she breathed. "If Mark walks in on an empty apartment and a missing dog in the next ten minutes, we are all in so much trouble."

"Then let's make sure he doesn't," Viktor said, and for the first time all evening, there was an edge of genuine urgency in his voice. "Carter — eyes on the lobby elevator, now. If Mark's headed up, I want to know before he's in the car."

Carter's voice came back tight, controlled. "On it." He straightened from where he'd been half-slouched against the lobby wall, pulse suddenly loud in his own ears, scanning the entrance doors with an intensity that would have looked deeply suspicious to anyone actually paying attention. For one drawn-out moment, nothing happened — just the ordinary hum of the lobby, a security guard flipping through a magazine, the soft chime of an unrelated elevator arriving and departing on the far side of the atrium.

"Anything?" Gavin's voice, tighter than before.

"Nothing yet. Might've been a false—"

Somewhere on the penthouse floor, a service elevator door slid open, and Chloe Bennett stepped inside with a stolen dog, a racing heart, and the growing, giddy certainty that this was, without question, the most alive she'd felt in years.

The doors began to close.

That was when the lobby elevator, twenty floors below, chimed open — and Mark Vance stepped out.