Chapter 19

ISABELLA

"Don't touch it." Christian appeared from nowhere and stepped between me and the table.

The package sat open right there. I had not even heard him come in.

"What is your problem?" I asked, staring at his back as he blocked my view.

"That drive could be rigged," he said, not turning around.

"Rigged how?" I asked, taking one step closer anyway.

"Malware. A tracker. A program that burns everything the second you plug it in." He finally turned. His eyes were flat and serious. "So step back."

I stepped back. Not because he told me to. Because he was right and I knew it.

Dante walked in right after, his phone already to his ear. Antonio came in behind him, quiet as always.

"Fen is on his way," Dante said. He looked at the drive without touching it. "Nobody opens that until he clears it."

"Agreed," Antonio said.

I said nothing. I just crossed my arms and waited.

Fen arrived in less than twenty minutes. He was young, maybe twenty-five, with quick eyes and a worn laptop bag over one shoulder.

"Where is it?" he asked, not bothering with greetings.

Christian pointed at the table. Fen set his bag down and pulled on thin gloves before picking up the drive.

"Good. Nobody touched it." He looked at me. "Did you?"

"No," I said.

"Good," he said again. He connected the drive to a separate machine he pulled from his bag. It was not a regular laptop. It had no internet connection and no personal data on it. Just tools.

"How long?" Antonio asked.

"Thirty minutes. Maybe less." Fen was already typing. "I need quiet."

The room went silent.

We moved to the tech room down the hall while Fen worked. It had screens on every wall and smelled like cold air and old coffee.

Dante turned to me the moment the door closed.

"That drive is a trap," he said. "Someone chose what to put on it. Someone chose to send it to you. They are pulling us in a direction they already picked."

"I know that," I said.

"Then you know we should destroy it."

"No," I said. My voice came out harder than I planned. "No, we should not."

"Sarah," he started.

"It was addressed to me, Dante. Those are my father's files."

"You don't know that," he said.

I looked at him. "Someone thought I should have them. That is enough for me."

Dante shook his head slowly. "That's exactly the kind of thinking that gets people killed in this world."

"Then maybe I should be scared," I said. "But I am not destroying it. Not until I know what is on it."

Antonio held up one hand. "Enough." He looked at Dante. "She has a point. If there is something real on that drive, we need to know."

Dante said nothing. He moved to the far wall and stood there with his back to us.

That was not a yes. But it was not a no either.

I noticed Christian watching me while we waited. Not the door. Not the hallway. Me. Every time I moved, his eyes followed.

"What?" I said finally.

"Nothing," he said.

"You keep staring."

"I keep watching," he said. "There is a difference."

I did not answer that. I looked away first. I am not sure why.

Fen came in forty minutes later. He set his laptop on the main table and turned the screen toward us.

"Clean," he said. "No malware. No tracker. No kill switch. Whoever sent this did not want it destroyed. They wanted it read."

"Good or bad?" Antonio asked.

"Depends what's on it," Fen said. "Files are encrypted. I started the decryption. Some will open fast. Some will take hours."

"We wait," Antonio said.

Dante moved from the wall. He did not say anything, but he sat down. That meant he was staying.

We all watched the screen. The progress bar moved slowly. Then one file unlocked ahead of the rest.

"That one is ready," Fen said.

"Open it," I said.

Fen looked at Antonio. Antonio gave a small nod. Fen clicked.

It was an audio file.

I leaned forward. The file name had no label. Just a date and a string of numbers.

"Play it," I said.

Fen pressed play.

And then I froze.

The voice that came through the speaker was low and careful. It was tired. It was trying to stay calm. And I knew every sound of it, every pause, every breath.

It was my father.

Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. I think I stopped breathing.

"He's describing someone," Fen said quietly, leaning closer to the screen.

"I hear it," Antonio said.

My father's voice kept going. He was careful with his words. He said a person inside the police force was passing intelligence to a syndicate. He said it had been going on for over a year. He said he had proof but he could not go to his superiors because he did not know who to trust.

The recording was dated three weeks before his death.

My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat on the table so nobody could see.

"Sarah." Christian said my name low, like a warning.

"I'm fine," I said. I was not fine.

My father's voice kept talking. Then it stopped mid-sentence. Not because the file ended. Because a door opened somewhere in the background of the recording. There was a pause. His voice dropped. It became almost a whisper.

Then the recording cut off completely.

The room was very quiet after that.

"Someone walked in on him," Fen said.

"Or he heard something," Antonio said.

"Or both," Dante said from his chair. His voice was different now. Lower.

I stared at the screen. The audio bar sat at the end. The file was done. Three weeks before he died, my father had made a recording he never sent to anyone. And now it had found its way to me.

"He knew," I said. My voice came out flat. "He knew someone was watching him."

Nobody argued with that.

"Second file is opening," Fen said.

I looked up. Another file had unlocked while we were listening. This one was not audio.

"It's an image," Fen said. He clicked it open.

The photo loaded slowly. It was taken outside. Daytime. A police precinct, clear in the background. Two men standing close together near the side entrance. One of them I did not know. The other one had a name I had heard before, a name connected to the syndicate my father had described.

But it was the first man I could not stop looking at.

His face. The angle. The way he stood.

I had seen this face before. Not in a file. Not in a news story.

In my room. In the photograph that had appeared on my table the night I arrived at the estate. The one I had never owned. The one that had vanished before anyone else could see it.

"Do you recognize him?" Antonio asked.

I opened my mouth. Then I stopped.

Because if I was right about who this man was, then nothing about my father's death had been an accident.

"Sarah," Dante said. His voice was sharp now. "Who is he?"

I looked at the screen one more time. My throat felt tight.

"How is that possible?" I asked, staring at the face on the screen as my whole body went cold.