PART 12:

A line of vehicles at the entrance. suited security at the gate. Checking a list, the van turned off before the front entrance and followed the service road around the north perimeter. No decorative lighting back here, just motion sensor utility lights and a chainlink gate that Reva opened remotely with a code she’d pulled from the catering company’s contractor access system. The van stopped.

Daniel killed the engine. “Comms check,” Reva said. Aurora touched the earpiece, smaller than anything she’d ever seen. nearly invisible. “Check,” she said quietly. “I’m with you the whole way,” Reva said. “Camera feeds are live. Security rotation puts two guards on the east wing corridor at 10:15. You have a 12-minute window between rotations starting at 10:03.

The server room is the third door on the left past the climate control unit. You’ll hear it before you see it. It runs loud. Code for the hard drive 7741. Don’t type it until the device shows a blue light. Blue means it’s paired. Then the code. Then wait for green. 11 seconds. If it takes longer than 20, pull it and go.

Incomplete is better than caught. Aurora nodded. Picked up the camera bag. Her hand was steady. That frightened her again. The steadiness. She’d read enough about adrenaline to know that the absence of visible shaking sometimes meant the body had gone somewhere past ordinary fear into something more focused and more dangerous. She opened the van door.

Lucian’s hand closed briefly around her wrist, not restraining, just present. The contact lasted two seconds. “Come back,” he said. She looked at him at the hard face and the winter eyes and the two weeks of history between them that had the density of something much longer. “She thought about Elena in a kitchen at 3:00 in the morning, making tea she didn’t drink.

” “I will,” she said. She got out of the van. Om. The service entrance opened without resistance. Reva’s voice quiet in her ear, confirming the door staff were rotating at the loading dock on the opposite side. Aurora moved through a corridor that smelled of catering heat and fresh linens. Past a staging area where servers in white jackets arranged canopes with focused precision, past a linen closet and a staff bathroom and a door that required a key card.

Reva unlocked remotely with three words. Door now. Go. And then she was in the service corridor that ran parallel to the east wing. And everything became very quiet and very specific. She counted doors. 1 2 the climate control unit. She heard it before she saw it. A low mechanical roar that vibrated the floor slightly through the soles of her shoes.

Third door on the left. Locked. Of course. Reva working 4 seconds. It’s on a different system. Biometric backup. I can’t remote access. Aurora’s stomach dropped. Then I need Damian, she said. Aurora, where is he? A pause. Main hall, north end with Ashford. She turned around, walked back the way she came, through the staff door, through the staging area.

A server glanced at her. She lifted the camera slightly, smiled, the professional smile of someone documenting a work event, moved on into the connecting corridor between the service wing and the main hall’s anti-chamber. She stopped at the corner. Through the open archway, she could see the edge of the main hall. Candle light, the murmur of 40 voices, the geometry of wealth gathered for a private purpose.

She couldn’t see Damian from this angle. She stepped forward one inch. Two. She saw Richard Ashford first. White hair, upright posture, the bearing of a man in his own domain. He was talking to two men she didn’t recognize. Older, the expensive suit stillness of people accustomed to serious rooms. Then she saw Damian. He was 20 ft from Ashford, holding a drink he wasn’t consuming, scanning the room with those quick searching eyes she now understood had always been doing something other than what she thought.

His gaze reached her corner. She pulled back. Her heart was a fist in her chest, hitting the same point over and over. He didn’t see me, she breathed. “You need to move,” Reva said in her ear. “Security rotation in 4 minutes. I need his fingerprint on that door.” There has to be another. There isn’t.

You said biometric. He’s one of three people. Ashford is 15 ft from him, and the head of security is at the front door. She pressed her back against the corridor wall. I need 45 seconds with Damian alone. I can get it. Aurora, if he recognizes the setup, he will recognize the setup. She closed her eyes briefly, opened them, and he’ll help me anyway because there’s one thing he still wants, and it’s the only card I have left to play.

She didn’t give Reva time to argue. She stepped into the archway. Damen saw her in 3 seconds. His face went through the same rapid sequence she’d cataloged in the coffee shop. alarm calculation management, but faster this time, compressed by a context that didn’t allow for coffee shop pacing. He crossed the room. She retreated into the anti-chamber.

He followed, which was what she needed, and when he came around the corner, his face had settled into a cold fury that was more honest than anything she’d seen from him in 2 years. “What are you doing here?” he said. Not a question. I need the server room, she said. Flat, no performance. The fury sharpened.

You need to leave right now. You have no idea. I know about the transfer records, she said. I know about the Ashford network. I know about the moneyaundering and the contract on Elena Voss and your name and every layer of it. She watched the blood drain from his face and kept going.

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