“It’s a problem.”
She pushed a folded packet at me. Waterproof paper, sealed edges, no label.
“That’s the problem.”
Reyes moved in and covered the lane between containers. Cole circled wider, weapon drawn low. I ripped the packet open just enough to see classified routing numbers, transfer authorizations, black budget signatures, burial-on-paper orders. My name. Mason’s. Reyes. Cole. Briggs. Nora. All on separate pages. Some marked deceased. Some marked inactive. Some marked reassigned to projects that never officially existed.
There it was.
Not a file. A ledger.
A record of people the system had hidden, moved, and erased when convenient.
Nora watched my face. “They don’t want me,” she said. “They want that back.”
A pickup engine roared somewhere beyond the warehouse wall.
Reyes didn’t turn around. “Contact. South side.”
Cole’s voice came sharp through my earpiece. “Two vehicles. Maybe three operators in the first truck. More behind.”
Nora grabbed my sleeve with surprising strength. “Listen to me. If they get me alone, I disappear again. If they get the packet, all six ghosts stay buried.”
“All six?” I asked.
She looked at me for half a second too long.
“There were never only six.”
That landed and stayed there.
Not because I didn’t understand the words. Because I understood them too well.
Footsteps hit the concrete outside. Heavy, controlled, not rushing. Men who expected to be obeyed. Reyes lifted two fingers, then flattened his palm: hold.
A voice called from beyond the truck row.
“Ms. Vale. This doesn’t need to become ugly.”
Nora gave a dry laugh that turned into a cough. “That one lies for a living. No matter what face he’s wearing.”
The man stepped into view a second later.
Image
No uniform. Navy peacoat. Clean haircut. Mid-forties. The kind of government face you’d forget while he was still talking. He put both hands where we could see them, then smiled at me like we were meeting at a fundraiser instead of a live extraction zone.
“Chief Walker,” he said. “You shouldn’t be involved in this.”
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