جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 90

"You don't get to call me that anymore. You lost that the moment you sold my agency's original files to Julian Sterling for a million dollars." "I know." His voice cracked, raw and unrehearsed. "I know exactly what I did. I'm not here to pretend otherwise." "Then why are you here." He glanced up and down the street, a fast, nervous scan that reminded her uncomfortably of the way Merlin's men checked a room before letting anyone important walk into it. "Can we go somewhere? Not here. Not out in the open." "No." Zariel crossed her arms, planting herself exactly where she stood, refusing to give him the comfort of a private conversation he clearly wanted for reasons that had nothing to do with her comfort. "Whatever you need to say, you can say it right here, where anyone can see us, because I learned my lesson about giving you the benefit of privacy." Something in his face crumpled, but he nodded, accepting the terms she'd set without further argument. "I need money," he said fina

Somewhere across the city, in a rented room paid for in cash under a name that wasn't his own, Marcus Evermore sat alone with an old flash drive he'd never actually handed over the first time, the one piece of real leverage he'd kept back out of some instinct even he didn't fully understand, turning it over and over in his shaking hands, trying to decide whether it was worth more to him alive or dead. The water stain above Marcus's bed looked like a broken wing. He had been staring at it for almost an hour. The rented room smelled of damp walls, stale coffee, and fear. His burner phone vibrated again. Unknown Number, third missed call. Marcus didn't touch it Instead, he looked at the small black flash drive lying on the nightstand beside him. "So this is what my life's worth," he muttered. His voice sounded strange in the tiny room. A laugh escaped him. It wasn't funny. His fingers shook as he picked up the drive. He plugged it into the battered laptop resting on the chair beside th

"One car," Reyes said. "Maybe two. It is hard to tell in this rain." He looked at the rearview mirror. He looked at the road. He looked back at the mirror. "Are you good," he asked. "Marcus," she said. "I need you focused on getting to the tower. I cannot do both." "We left him behind." She reasoned "He told us to leave." He replied "They had guns, Reyes." She closed her eyes briefly and opened it back immediately, trying not "He knew what he was doing. He is a professional." "He is one man against three." "He bought us time," Reyes said. "Do not waste it by panicking." She turned in her seat and looked through the back window. Streetlights smeared across the glass like wet paint. She could not spot any distinct headlights following them. Her phone rested in her palm. The screen glowed faintly in the dark cabin. "Call him again," Reyes said. "I have been dialing him for six minutes." "Keep trying." Zariel pressed the contact name. The phone dialed. It rang once. It rang

"Enough to be worth checking before forensics seals the room." Merlin closed the tablet. "There is something else. The intruder wore gloves. Standard enough. But he also wore shoe covers, the kind we issue our own men for evidence integrity. That is not something a stranger buys online." Zariel's stomach dropped. "You're saying it was one of ours." "I am saying whoever it was understood how our own people move through that building well enough to imitate them." Merlin's jaw worked once. "I do not like what that implies any more than you do." "Badge logs," Zariel said. "Every level-four override in the last six months. Somebody had to walk through a door to get down there." "Already pulling them." Merlin didn't look up from the screen. "It will take hours. Some of the older logs were migrated to a new system last spring and half of them did not survive the transfer cleanly." "Convenient timing for a system migration." "I thought so too." Kaelen was quiet for a moment. "Pull every

"Then we will have learned that before it costs us anything more than tonight." He had not looked up from the phone. "I would rather know the shape of his suspicion than guess at it." The buzzer sounded four minutes later. "You understand what you are asking," Silas said, standing in the doorway of the study like he'd been poured into the space rather than walked into it. He hadn't taken off his coat. "You want me to hear evidence pulled from an active internal investigation, off the record, while I am simultaneously auditing you for fraud." "I am aware of how it sounds," Kaelen said. "I did not say it sounded like anything. I am stating the facts of the arrangement so there is no confusion later about what was agreed to." Silas's eyes moved once around the room, the case boards, the ledger fragment sealed in a plastic sleeve, Zariel standing near the window with her arms crossed and then back to Kaelen. "What is in it for me?" "The truth," Zariel said. "Isn't that the whole point