Chapter 5

"Mila." Kai coughed, one hand braced on the shelf. "Turn it off. Now."

"Not yet."

"We can't breathe!"

"You can for another ninety seconds." Mila didn't lower the flashlight. "Jaxon ran for the stairwell. I need him to think the room is sealed. If he knows I turned off the gas, he comes back."

Aria's vision swam. The sweet smell was thick now, sliding down her throat like syrup. She pressed her scarf harder against her face.

"Who do you work for?" she rasped.

"Someone who wants Jaxon Pierce in a cell."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you get before you pass out."

Aria staggered. Kai caught her elbow. His hand was shaking, but he held on.

"Sixty seconds," Mila said. She crouched, pulled a small tablet from her bag, and tapped fast. "Do you still have the remote?"

"Yes."

"Press the unlabeled button."

"You said don't press anything!"

"I said don't press anything else. I'm giving you permission."

Aria stared at the third button. Blank. Gray. The kind of button that did something terrible or something miraculous.

Kai's voice was ragged. "Aria. Trust me."

"I'm trusting her?"

"I'm trusting you."

She pressed it.

A heavy clunk echoed through the ceiling. The vent coughed once, then went silent. Fans roared to life. Cold air blasted across the aisle, cleaning the room in one long sweep.

The lights flickered on.

Aria dropped to her knees and gulped air. Kai slid down the shelf beside her, chest heaving.

Mila stood over them, perfectly composed, the gray box still tucked under her arm.

"Congratulations," she said. "You just opened the fire doors."

"And Jaxon?"

"Gone. Probably already on the street." She checked her watch. "You have about four minutes before he sends someone back."

Kai pushed himself upright. "Start talking."

"In the car."

"Mila."

"Mr. Sterling." For the first time, her voice cracked. "I have waited six years for this night. Please let me do it my way."

Something in her face made him stop.

~

They climbed the stairs fast. The bolt on the stairwell door had been thrown back. Mila went first, tablet glowing, whispering camera angles like a pilot calling a landing.

"Second floor, guard on break. Third floor, clear. Hold. Hold. Go."

Aria's lungs still burned. Her legs felt like wet cement. But the cold night air at the top of the loading dock was the best thing she had ever tasted.

Then she saw the alley.

Zoe's car was gone.

"No," Aria whispered.

She spun in a circle. Oil stains. A flickering bulb. An empty space where a small silver hatchback had idled twenty minutes ago.

"Zoe!"

"Aria, wait..."

"Her car was right here!"

Aria ran to the end of the alley. Her phone had one bar now. She jabbed Zoe's name. It rang. And rang. And rang.

Voicemail.

"She said twenty minutes," Aria said. Her voice broke. "She would never leave. She would never..."

"Aria." Kai grabbed her shoulders. "Look at me. Breathe."

"Jaxon took her."

"We don't know that."

"He told us himself! He knew we'd come here!"

"Then he also knew where she'd be."

Her whole body went cold. She hadn't thought of that. If Jaxon had walked into the archive, he had walked past Zoe first.

Behind them, Mila cleared her throat.

"Your friend is safe."

Aria turned slowly. "What?"

"She's at the end of the street. In a black sedan with my driver. Asleep."

"Asleep?"

"A mild sedative. I'm sorry. Ms. Park wasn't going to leave you, and she wasn't going to stay quiet." Mila lifted both hands. "She's unharmed. I swear it on my sister's life."

Kai stared. "Your sister."

"Yes."

"Is that who you work for?"

"No." Mila's red lips pressed thin. "My sister is who I work for. Someone else is who we both answer to."

Aria's phone buzzed in her hand.

A single text from an unknown number.

She's telling the truth. Come.

Below it, an address.

Aria showed Kai. His jaw hardened.

"It could be a trap."

"It could be." She looked at Mila. "Is it?"

"Yes," Mila said calmly. "But not for you."

~

The black sedan was parked three blocks away. Zoe lay across the back seat with her mouth open, one shoe off, snoring faintly. The driver, a wide-shouldered man in a gray cap, nodded once and said nothing.

Aria slid in beside her friend and checked her pulse. Strong. Steady.

She almost cried from relief.

Mila climbed into the front passenger seat. Kai took the other side. The car pulled away from the curb, smooth and silent.

For two blocks, nobody spoke.

Then Mila opened the gray archive box in her lap and lifted out a single sheet of paper.

"This is the memo," she said. "The real one."

Aria's heart stopped.

She took it with shaking fingers. The paper was yellowed and creased. The header read STERLING & PIERCE, INTERNAL. A date. A line about partnership allocation. A paragraph that made her stomach drop.

Then the signature at the bottom.

She read it twice. Three times.

"This isn't Kai's."

"No."

"It looks like his. It's very close. But the K is wrong. He crosses it. This one doesn't."

"I know," Kai said quietly. He was staring at the page. "I've signed my name ten thousand times. I'd never miss the cross."

"Jaxon practiced for weeks," Mila said. "There are forty-one drafts of it in this box. Every one of them failed. The forty-second finally passed."

"Forty-two tries," Kai said.

"He is a patient man."

Aria's throat tightened. She flipped the page over. On the back, a faded sticky note clung to the corner. Handwritten. Block capitals.

The same block capitals from the photograph.

"You wrote the second note," Aria said.

Mila didn't flinch. "Yes."

"HE IS LYING ABOUT THE MEMO. DO NOT GO TONIGHT."

"I wanted to see if you'd come anyway."

"Why?"

"Because someone who comes anyway is someone who still wants the truth more than the comfort." Mila turned in her seat. For the first time, there was nothing calculating in her face. Only exhaustion. "I had to know whether you were the woman my sister described."

"Your sister," Aria said slowly. "Who is she?"

Mila looked at Kai. Then back at Aria.

"The woman in the cream coat."

Silence.

The sedan hummed through empty streets. Neon signs slid over the windows, blue, then red, then blue again.

"The stranger from the video," Aria whispered.

"Her name is Selene Reyes. Jaxon paid her to stand outside that restaurant. He told her it was a prank for a client. Fifty thousand dollars for one night. She was twenty-three, drowning in debt, and she said yes."

"Where is she now?"

"Hiding. For six years." Mila's voice trembled. "Because two weeks after that dinner, Jaxon came back. And he wasn't smiling."

Kai leaned forward. "What did he do?"

"He tried to make sure she never spoke." Mila pressed her palm to her mouth. "She survived. Barely. She's been living under a different name ever since, and she's been building a case, one stolen file at a time, waiting for the one person who could finally use it."

"Me," Aria said.

"You."

The car slowed. They turned into a quiet street lined with old brick buildings. Mila pointed at a narrow townhouse with a single light burning in the top window.

"We're here."

Kai's hand found Aria's in the dark. This time she didn't pull away.

The driver cut the engine. The silence rang.

Mila stepped out, unlocked the front door, and led them up a flight of narrow stairs. The air smelled of antiseptic and old tea. At the top, a door stood half open. Warm light spilled across the floor.

Inside, a woman sat in a wheelchair beside the window, her back to them. Long dark hair streaked with gray. A thin shawl over her shoulders. A cream coat folded neatly across her lap.

Aria's coat.

She would have known it anywhere.

"Selene," Mila said gently. "She's here."

The woman did not turn around. Her voice, when it came, was cracked and soft, and it said something that made Aria's knees buckle.

"I never stole your coat, Aria. You gave it to me. Don't you remember? You were there that night, too."