LOGINDiaz arrived at eight the following morning as she had promised.She had two agents with her this time, both of whom waited in the corridor without being asked to. Grace let Diaz in, made coffee, and sat down at the kitchen table. Aiden stayed. Diaz had not asked him to leave and Grace had not suggested it and Diaz looked at this arrangement and accepted it in the silent way she accepted most things, as an observed fact that she would incorporate into her assessment and move on."The traffic has settled," Diaz said. "The increased communication we were monitoring in the Volkov network has dropped back to baseline levels in the last thirty-six hours. Which means one of two things.""They've made a decision and stopped discussing it," Grace said."Or they've moved to a more secure channel we haven't identified yet," Diaz confirmed. "We don't know which. We're proceeding as if both are possible simultaneously." She set a folder on the table. "In the meantime, there is new evidence I want
For the next four days Grace did not leave the penthouse.Diaz had not specifically instructed her not to. But she had been precise about the increased communication traffic in the Volkov network and she had been precise about the Torres problem and Grace understood, without being told directly, that the period between the arrest and whatever came next was the most dangerous stretch they had been through. Not because anything had happened. Because nothing had happened yet.That kind of quiet had a shape to it that she had learned to recognise.Emma came on the second day with a bag of groceries and the expression of someone who had decided to be useful rather than emotional about the situation, which Grace was grateful for. Rachel called each morning with legal updates, brief and professional, the two of them rebuilding something between them slowly and from scratch, with the careful deliberateness of people who understood that what they were rebuilding was not what they had before.L
The property management company had twelve employees and a registered address in the financial district and had been managing Aiden's building for two years.Floyd had a full background check on every member of staff by seven the following morning. Grace read through it at the kitchen table while Aiden made coffee and the building outside the window went about its ordinary early business, people with bags and dogs and takeout cups moving through the street below in the cold grey light.The current building manager was a man named Carl Webb. Forty-one. Previously employed by a hotel chain in Frankfurt and a residential complex in Zurich. Clean record. Excellent references. Both references, when Floyd called them at six in the morning, were answered by people who confirmed his employment in the particular smooth way of people who had been briefed on what to confirm.Floyd had flagged them both as potentially fabricated.The property management company itself traced back through two hold
Floyd did not react.That was the first thing Grace noticed. She had become expert at reading Floyd's face over the past months and the absence of surprise on it now told her something important. Floyd was not shocked. Floyd had suspected. Or she had known, at least at the level where a good detective knows things before they have the evidence to say them out loud."How long have you been watching him?" Grace asked.Floyd looked at her steadily. "Three weeks. Since the parking structure. Since Mason was never there and Tessa Designs was hit simultaneously." She paused. "The level of operational precision that required — it needed someone who knew the plan in advance. Someone who knew where you would be and when. Torres was the only person outside this room who had both pieces.""You didn't tell me," Grace said."I didn't have enough. Not until now." Floyd looked at the list in Grace's hand. "Sophia's payment record is the confirmation. Everything else was inference."Grace set the pape
The interview room at the station was small and fluorescent and smelled faintly of the kind of institutional cleaning product that never quite masked what it was covering. Grace had been in enough of these rooms over the past months that she no longer noticed the smell until she was already seated.Sophia was on the other side of the table.She looked different from the woman Grace had known for seven years. Not older exactly — though there was something in her face that had not been there before, a quality of having passed through something and come out knowing things she had not known going in. She was thinner. Her hair was shorter, cut close to her jaw in a way that made her look more angular and less careful than she used to be. She had always been careful with her appearance in the particular way of a woman who understood that appearance was a form of armour.She had clearly stopped thinking about armour.She looked at Grace when she came in and she did not look away and she did
Floyd found the camera footage within forty minutes.It was not at Mason's lawyers' offices. It was three streets north of them, at the junction of Crane Street and the Aldgate service road — a camera mounted above a cashpoint, angled slightly downward, catching the pavement on both sides of the junction in the grey-green of its night vision.Sophia, at six fourteen in the morning.She was wearing a delivery company jacket two sizes too large and a dark baseball cap pulled low. She had done something to her hair — pinned it flat, or perhaps cut it, Grace could not tell from the footage — and she was moving with the particular economy of someone who has been practising this walk in their head for a long time. Not hurrying. Not hesitating. Just moving.Under her arm: a manila folder, thick with paper.She turned left at the junction and walked out of the camera frame.Floyd pulled the next camera along the route. Then the next. It took twenty minutes to stitch together the full picture
The next morning, there was a knock on the door. Grace opened it. Sophia stood there with a bright smile and a red envelope."Good morning, Grace! Merry Christmas Eve!""Morning," Grace said carefully."I'm planning a special couples' dinner tonight. Just the four of us. You, Aiden, Mason, and me."
They walked back to the cabin in silence. Snow was falling softly. The air was cold but Grace barely felt it. Her mind was still on dinner. On Mason's face when he looked at her. On Sophia crying.Aiden opened the cabin door. They walked inside. He locked it behind them.Grace took off her coat. "T
Grace was sitting by the window when she heard car doors slam outside. She looked out and saw two women getting out of a taxi. Her heart jumped.Emma and Rachel.Her friends.Well, her real friends. Not like Sophia.Grace watched them pull suitcases from the trunk. Emma was wearing a bright red coa
Grace came back to the cabin. Her hands were still shaking from what she found. But she had to act normal. Had to pretend everything was fine. Aiden was awake. He was making breakfast. "Morning," he said. "Where did you go so early?" "Just a walk. Needed to clear my head." "You okay? You look p







