PART 8:

I need you to sit down before I tell you the rest. Tell me standing. Tanner looked at him for a moment. Then he looked at Rowan briefly and she understood that look. It was the look of someone deciding how much of a thing to say in front of a variable they hadn’t fully accounted for. She stays.

Lutaniano said Tanner accepted that. He moved to the window, put his back to the view he couldn’t see because the city was behind the glass and he was facing the room and he said it without preamble. Marco Duca was an FBI informant. He had been for 14 months before he died. The apartment was silent enough that she could hear the ventilation.

Lutano’s expression didn’t change. That was the most frightening thing she’d seen all night. “He came to us,” Tanner continued, voluntarily. “He wanted out of the organization, and he was willing to trade information for structured immunity. He was a good informant, careful, reliable, and he had access that took us years to build toward from the outside.” He paused.

His cover held for over a year. And then it didn’t, Luciano said. His voice was completely level. His identity was compromised. We don’t fully know how. Even now, there was a breach in the handling chain. Another pause. He was killed within 72 hours of the breach. Pierce’s organization facilitated it, not as the principal, as a service.

The order came from inside your own network. Rowan held her breath. Luciano turned away. He walked three steps toward the window and stopped. His back was to the room. “Who?” he said. “That’s the part I need to be careful about,” Tanner said. “Because the person who compromised Marco’s identity is someone who has been inside your organization for the entirety of the four years since.

” She watched Luchiano’s shoulders. They didn’t move. Nothing about him moved. “Who?” he said again. Enzo Vitali. Tanner said he’s been a paid FBI informant since 6 months before Marco died. We believe the compromise was accidental. He didn’t know Marco was also working with us, but the information he passed that week trying to protect his own position was enough for someone inside your network to identify Marco as a leak.

He kept his voice measured clinical. We can’t prove intent. We can prove information transfer. and we can prove that in the four years since Vitalia has been deliberately feeding us incomplete intelligence to maintain his position with us while protecting your operation. Rowan looked at the door. Enzo was downstairs.

Enzo who had ridden with them from the beginning. Enzo who had been on his phone constantly. Enzo who had known every step of what they were doing tonight. “He knows we’re here,” she said. Tanner looked at her. “Yes, he’s been reporting to you tonight. He’s been reporting to a contact. Whether that information has been coming to us accurately, I honestly couldn’t tell you.

He said it with a directness she didn’t expect. Vitalia is a man who serves his own survival above everything else. Right now, he’s probably trying to calculate which outcome tonight keeps him safest. And which one does? She said. Tanner’s expression didn’t shift. Luciano turned around. She had been watching his face all night, and she had learned its vocabulary.

And what she saw now was something she had never seen on it before. Not rage, not grief, not calculation, something underneath all of those things, the thing that existed before a person decided how to respond to something that had fundamentally reordered what they knew to be true about the last four years of their life. You sat on this for 4 years, he said to Tanner. We were building a case.

My brother was dead and you were building a case. Your brother made a choice to work with us. That choice came with risks that he understood. He was 26 years old. Yes, Tanner said, and to his credit, he didn’t dress that up. Luciano crossed the room in five steps, and Rowan moved without thinking, putting herself one step to the left.

Not between them, but close enough that it changed the geometry of the room, and something about that movement made Luchiano stop. He looked at her. She didn’t say anything. She just held his eyes. He stopped. He stood there for 4 seconds and she could see him doing something that cost him something. Pulling back from an edge that he’d been moving toward without making a decision to move. He pulled back.

He breathed once slowly through his nose. “What do you want from this?” he said to Tanner. His voice was back to flat. Cooperation, Tanner said. From both of you. Miss Vale, you’re a material witness to Pierce’s documents. We need a formal statement and we need you available for proceedings. In return, you get full immunity for anything connected to tonight. He looked at Luchiano.

From you, I need the financial operational records from the last 3 years, the accounts, the structures, the movement records. In return, I’m prepared to offer a conversation about the scope of federal interest in your specific activities going forward. A conversation, Luciano said, it’s the most I can offer tonight.

It would be more tomorrow and significantly less if Pierce gets to Wyoming before we can intercept. Is he already moving on Wyoming? We have people on the road, but Pierce has a 2-hour lead and a private aircraft registration we didn’t have until 40 minutes ago. Tanner picked up his glass again. This drive, what Rowan found, it’s the documentation spine of the whole prosecution.

But without Pierce in custody to face it, it’s a slower process. The mountain compound has an archive room. If he gets there and burns it, the drive is circumstantial, and the case extends by 2 years minimum. Rowan looked at Luciano. He was looking at the floor with his jaw set, and she could see him working through something that had too many moving pieces.

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