She stopped and looked at it. Ronan stood beside her. She felt him looking at it, too. And she felt without looking at him, without needing to see his face, the specific weight of what he was experiencing. His house. His people inside it. The calculation of what could be salvaged and what couldn’t. Sergei, he said, status.
Sergei was on his earpiece. Three confirmed down on our side. The attackers pulled back from the north fence when the response team pushed. East fence is still active. He paused, listening. They’re not trying to hold ground. They came in, hit the east wing, and they’re retreating. “They weren’t trying to take the house.
” Ronan said. “No, they were trying to flush it.” Sergei lowered his hand from his earpiece. “Drive us out into whatever they have waiting on the road.” Into the convoy trap that didn’t exist anymore, Violetta thought. Which meant when the trap failed to fill, they would pivot. They would look for the alternative route.
They would look for where the people who didn’t take the convoy had gone instead. They had, she estimated, between 30 and 60 minutes before Vay’s people recalibrated. “The federal contact.” she said to Ronan. “Yes.” “Call them now, not when we’re somewhere safe. Now. Immich has we may not get to somewhere safe before Vay figures out we didn’t take the bait.
” She looked at him. “If your contact can get authorization to move on Hale Biotech’s offices and Holloway Capital simultaneously, if they can secure Grant and the board and the financial records before Vay can trigger the contingency, the contingency.” “She has one. She has a contingency for every scenario.
She’s been three steps ahead for 4 years. If she can’t get to me, she burns the evidence. That’s what she does next.” She watched his face. “She burns everything that connects her to this, and then she takes what she can take from Hale Biotech and she disap- pears. She’s probably had an exit built for 18 months.” Ronan looked at her for a moment.
The smoke was still rising behind them. The cold was significant, and she could feel it working on her. Not dangerously, not the hypothermia of two nights ago, but insistently. He made the call. She listened to one side of it. Crisp, direct, no ornamentation. Names, locations, the shape of what was needed, the favor being called in with the blunt efficiency of a man who knew exactly what the debt was worth and wasn’t willing to negotiate it down.
30 seconds. He hung up. Two hours, he said. For what? For a federal team to be in position at Hale Biotech and Holloway Capital. He pocketed the phone. Two hours is what he can do. Then we need to keep Vay from burning the evidence for two hours. How? Violetta had been thinking about this since the tunnel. The shape of it had been assembling itself with the specific clarity that extreme pressure sometimes produces.
Not inspiration, just the mind working very fast through the available pieces and finding the configuration that fit. We give her something to chase, she said. Not the convoy, not a route. Me. Ronan went very still. She needs me gone before the trust activates at birth. The birth is Yuan said within three weeks, possibly less given the stress on my system.
Vay knows that. She knows she’s running out of time. Violetta kept her voice even. If she thinks she has a clean shot at me, a real one, no convoy, no armed escort, just me, she comes out of her position. She stops managing from a safe distance and she moves. And when she moves, she exposes herself. And your federal contact has two hours to get into position.
She held his gaze. The moment she’s visible, she’s vulnerable. She’s spent four years being invisible and she’s very good at it, but she’s not good at the part that comes after. You’re talking about using yourself as bait. I’m talking about ending this before she can execute whatever her next contingency is. Her voice was steady.
Her hands were not entirely. I’m not doing it alone and I’m not doing it without a plan, but yes. Ronan looked at her for a long moment. The smoke rose behind him. The cold pressed in from all directions. Somewhere inside the estate his people were managing a firefight, and he was standing in a tree line with a pregnant woman who was, she understood from the look on his face, surprising him again.
The Prater text, he said finally. Verify it. If it’s real, if Prater is real and he has the files and we can get them in front of your contact before Bay burns the evidence, then we don’t need to bait her out. The testimony does the work. She looked at him. But if the files don’t materialize in time, then we talk about bait, he said.
He held her gaze. Not before. She nodded. Sergey was already on his phone working the Gary address, pushing whatever network he had in that direction. Ronan was looking at the smoke. He had the expression of a man who was done calculating the cost of things and had moved into the part where you just work the problem with whatever you have left. His phone rang.
He answered, listened. She watched his face change. Not dramatically, just a tightening around the eyes. The specific compression of a man receiving information that makes the situation worse in a way he hadn’t fully prepared for. He lowered the phone. Prater’s at the address, he said. He’s real. He has the files.
A pause. He also has a woman with him. He says she came to him 2 days ago. Said she had additional documentation. His eyes found Violetta’s. She identified herself as an attorney, former Hale Biotech legal department. Violetta frowned. Who? Her name is Dana Foss. He held her gaze. She says she was the junior attorney whose credentials you used to file the internal complaint 14 months ago.
