LOGINThe plan came together in twenty minutes, in a windowless records room on the ground floor of Terrai Medical Center.It was Director Voss's idea. The silver-haired man stood before a floor plan of the hospital, his fingers tracing it corridor by corridor with the composure of an old general who refuses to show how tired he is."The man who helped the culprit escape did it in a janitorial uniform," he said. "That means he already knows this building's layout, or has someone inside who does. We can't move Miss Valena to any room on record in the system.""Then which room?" Sean asked."Seventh floor. The research wing." Voss tapped a spot on the plan. "It hasn't been opened to the public yet. Only six people hold access cards, and you're one of them. No patients, no cleaning schedule, and the private elevator can only be summoned from this floor.""And room five-oh-seven?""Stays lit." The corner of Voss's mouth lifted, thin and cold. "With a patient who won't complain."Sean frowned. V
On the fifth floor of Terrai Medical Center, a treatment room with soft lighting and ivory-colored walls held two beds. In one, Marta slept with a neat bandage on the back of her hand. In the other, Valena lay with a thin oxygen tube beneath her nose, the blanket drawn up to her chest, her face pale yet calm in the glow of the night lamp.Sean sat in a chair at her bedside, still wearing the coat that smelled of smoke. In his hand were a clinical chart and a pen he had not used in the past hour. Now and then his eyes shifted to the monitor beside the bed, oxygen saturation, heart rate, respiratory rate, then returned to the sleeping face. Every steady number loosened his chest a little.The clock pointed to two in the morning."Doctor..."The voice was so weak it was almost inaudible. Sean straightened at once. Valena had opened her eyes, halfway, and looked at him with a gaze clouded by the remnants of the sedative."I'm here." Sean took the small hand lying limp on the blanket. "How
Slap!A hard slap landed across the face of the man sitting on the cold floor of an old warehouse.The sound echoed between the moss-streaked brick walls and the stacks of rotting wooden crates, then vanished, swallowed by a silence that smelled of oil and seawater. The only light in the place came from a rusted hanging lamp swaying gently overhead, casting pale yellow shadows across the cracked, damp cement floor."You are so stupid!" Richa shrieked.Her voice had never been that high. For years, the people who worked under her had known her as a woman who spoke softly and neatly, in sentences chosen like knives in a drawer, clean and ready for use. So when she shouted, the two men in black suits standing at the warehouse door lowered their heads at once, as though something sharper than a shout were drawing near.The man kneeling before her merely bowed his head, his face battered. His temple was split, his lip torn, and beneath the collar of his shirt, still damp from lake water, b
"Marta?"Sean answered before the second ring had finished. His voice was calm, but his chest had already turned hard as iron."Doctor..." Marta's voice broke on the other end, her breath ragged, and behind her came the crackle of burning wood. "There's a fire. From the back, from the pier. I smelled the smoke earlier, but only now has the fire spread to the kitchen. Director Voss's officers are putting it out, but...""Where is Valena?""With me. In the bedroom. Doctor, the smoke is coming in...""Get her out right now. Through the front door. Don't wait for anyone." Sean was already running toward the stairs of the monitoring room, Voss and the head of security hurrying behind him. "I'm coming. Fifteen minutes."The call ended. There was no time for anything else.\*\*\*The road to the lakeshore seemed endless.Sean's car shot through turn after turn at a speed he had never used in his life, while Voss, seated in the passenger seat with a radio in his hand, gave short, calm orders
Chapter 56"We have three hours," Sean said quietly, his phone still pressed to his ear. "Thank you, Rafael. Pass along any news."The call ended. He lowered the phone slowly and, for a few seconds, simply stood in the doorway of the glass living room, looking at the girl who still sat on the sofa with a letter against her chest. Valena noticed nothing. Her face was puffy, her eyes half closed, her lips holding a small, serene smile, the kind that appears only on someone who has just received an embrace from the past.Sean could not bring himself to break that calm. But he had made a promise."Valena."Valena opened her eyes. Just from seeing Sean's face, the smile on her lips slowly faded. She sat up straight, folded the letter back into its envelope with careful fingers, and kept it in her lap like something she wanted to protect with her whole body."Something has happened," she said. It was not a question."Rafael just called." Sean knelt before her and took both her hands in his.
Chapter 55Three days later, Mr. Greene kept his promise.He booked a plane ticket to Machrie Terrai Aveneu in secret, under the name of a mountain clinic in the north that he visited every year for his heart examination. No one in his office suspected a thing. When he took his leave of Radic Cousin that morning with a weary face and a feigned cough, the young secretary only nodded politely and switched on his computer with fingers that were slightly too nimble.But Aldens Greene had not survived forty years in the world of law without learning to read people. He knew exactly who would contact whom the moment his back disappeared behind the elevator doors.At the airport, he was not alone. Two men in gray jackets sat on opposite sides of the waiting area, one reading a newspaper whose pages he never turned, the other busy with his phone. Rafael had arranged it. Meanwhile, across the city, a courier in a neat suit, paid by Rafael, delivered a false file to the office of Greene and Asso







