Chapter 68. The Silent Exchange

Now familiar, the suitcase had changed from a terror into a tool. Sabe spent hours hunched over the data slate, his mind navigating the familiar-unfamiliar corridors of his own appropriated work. He reverse-engineered not just the schematics but the mind that had designed them—his own. He found the seams, the elegant flaws, the hidden whispers he'd left in the code like a painter signing a corner of a canvas. A plan, fragile and razor-edged, began to form.

But a plan needed more than blueprints and code. It needed human movement. The silent courier of the suitcase had proved the villa was part of a living network. That network needed to have a weak point, a place where the digital spiderweb touched the physical world.

“The plans indicate that there is a private jetty,” Sabe said, tracing a line across the villa’s digital model. “Not for the main house. It is accessed by a lower garden gate and separated from the main security circuit. Therefore, it’s for discreet arrivals and departures. If Marcus is moving pieces on the board, that’s where he’d do it.”

Anton studied the model, the CEO in him assessing logistics. “It’s exposed. Lake side. Anyone could watch from the water.”

“Or from the public promenade, two hundred metres across the bay,” Sabe said, zooming out. “It’s a calculated risk. Privacy with an escape route. Tonight. If there’s activity, it’ll be after dark.”

The decision was made: They would no longer be passive recipients of gifts and attacks. It was time to hunt.

As dusk bled into a cloudy, moonless night, they took up position. Not at the jetty itself, but in the shadows of a boarded-up boathouse on the public promenade, giving them a panoramic, if distant, view across the black water. The chill was penetrating, a damp cold seeping through layers of clothing. Sabe was a statue beside him, a pair of high-powered night-vision binoculars held steady in his hands, his injured arm braced against his chest. Anton watched him, not the lake. In the greenish glow reflected from the lenses, Sabe's face was all stark angles and concentrated will, a man who'd turned his fear into a weapon.

Time stretched, measured in the lap of wavelets and the distant lonely cry of a waterfowl. The grand villas upon the other shore were jewel boxes of light, the Villa du Lac a dark silhouette amongst them, most of its windows shuttered. Anton's mind churned with the horror of the hybridized prototype, the intimate violation of the framing. The cold air felt like justice, waiting to be breathed.

"Movement," Sabe whispered, the word barely audible.

Anton strained his eyes. A pinpoint of light appeared at the villa's lower garden gate, bobbing as it descended the stone steps to the private jetty. A flashlight. Then another. Two figures. The magnification and night vision brought them into surreal clarity. One was tall, broad-shouldered, pacing with an impatient, familiar restlessness. Marcus

The other was smaller, carrying a compact, hard-sided case. A courier.

Sabe’s breath hitched. “That’s not a Zorya heavy. Too nervous. Look at his posture. He’s local. Independent.”

The meeting was short. No handshake. Marcus stopped his pacing and held out a hand. The courier, after a furtive glance around, offered the case. As Marcus took it, he passed a thick envelope back. A transaction. Simple. Clean.

This was it: the link. The case might contain anything—final payment, access codes, even a physical sample of the weaponized chip. It was the thread they could pull to unravel everything.

"We need to intercept him when he leaves," Sabe murmured, already calculating angles, routes off the promenade. "Before he disperses into the city."

But as Marcus turned to go, a third shadow detached itself from the deeper blackness beneath the stone steps of the jetty.

It moved with a fluid, terrifying silence, a shark gliding through dark water. One moment the courier was turning, clutching his envelope, a man who'd just completed a lucrative, nerve-wracking job. The next, he stiffened. His free hand flew to his side, then to his throat, a silent, jerky pantomime of confusion.

He collapsed onto the weathered jetty planks without a sound.

The killer didn’t hesitate. He stooped, pried the envelope from the slackening grasp of the courier, and was gone in an instant, back into the shadows that had spawned him, melting into darkness in the garden. All in under five seconds. A blink. A stolen breath.

Across the water, Anton's own breath stopped. It was a violence so efficient, so impersonal, that it was far more chilling than any dramatic shootout.

Halfway up, Marcus had frozen, looking back at the body. His face was a pale oval of shock in the dim light. This was not his deal; this wasn't corporate espionage; this was murder. He hesitated for only a second, then turned and ran up the steps, the stolen case clutched in his hand, and disappeared into the villa's garden.

The scene on the jetty was still. The flashlight had fallen from the courier's hand, its beam painting a stark, lonely circle on the dark water.

“He’s gone,” Sabe said, his voice flat, the binoculars lowering. “The killer. A professional. He wasn’t after the case Marcus took. He was after the envelope. Or he was silencing the courier. Or both.”

"We have to. We have to call someone," Anton stammered, this CEO now confronting a crime scene.

“We can't,” Sabe said, his mind already racing past the horror to the implications. “We are the most wanted suspects on the continent. The police find us here, with this view? We're finished. This is a message, Anton. A clearer one than the suitcase.”

“From who? For who?”

“For Marcus. ‘You are not in control. Your transactions are not private. You are expendable.’” Sabe’s eyes were fixed on the dark jetty. “And for us. ‘We are watching. We are cleaning the house. You are next.’”

The silent transaction was over. It had not been one of money for goods. It had been one of a life for a warning. The courier received the receipt.

Sabe finally moved, tucking the binoculars away with quick, efficient motions. “We need to go. Now. Before a patrol boat notices the body or a villager sees the light.”

They retreated from the boathouse shadows, their own movements feeling clumsy and loud in comparison to the ghostly violence they had just witnessed. 

The walk back to the safehouse was a blur of cold and dread. The cozy room now felt like the antechamber to a tomb. Anton sank onto the edge of the bed, his hands trembling. He'd seen cutthroat boardroom tactics, hostile takeovers played like chess. 

He had never seen a man's life extinguished as an administrative footnote. Sabe stood at the window, not looking out, just staring at his own reflection in the dark glass. "The third player," he said. "The one Rico warned us about. The one who wants you gone permanently. They're not just assassins. They're a strategist. They're managing the operation, tying up loose ends. Evelyn wants power. Marcus wants revenge. This person… They want a clean slate. And they're starting to erase the witnesses." He turned to Anton, his face grim. "The villa assault… it's not about the prototype anymore. It's a race. We need to get to Marcus and that case before the cleaner does, because once Marcus has served his purpose, he'll end up on a jetty with a knife in his side, and every secret he carries dies with him." 

The stakes had just telescoped into something even more horrifying: they were no longer just recovering stolen property or clearing a name, but scrambling to intercept a secret before it was permanently deleted from the world—along with the man who carried it. The shadows by the jetty had deepened, swallowing not just a courier, but any remaining illusion of order or rules. They were in the kill box now, and the only way out was through the heart of the villa.

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