Page 29 of You, Only You

I thought about my violated apartment. About the message they'd sent. About Subject 7 and Subject 12 and all the other numbers that were people.

"Good," I said. "Let him know."

Will smiled then, not the almost-smile, not the ghost of amusement, but a real, dangerous smile that transformed his face into something sharp and intent. I felt it in my chest like a match striking. Filed it under "problems to address later," where it joined a growing collection.

"Ten days," he said. "And then we take him apart."

The words settled into me like a promise. Ten days to prepare. Ten days to question whether I'd made the right choice. Ten days of living in Will Steele's penthouse, eating his omelets, arguing about restaurant hygiene ratings, watching him roll up his sleeves and pretend I didn't notice.

Ten days before everything changed.

I was going to need a lot of coffee. And possibly a therapist. And definitely a better strategy for maintaining professional detachment than the one I currently had, which was no strategy at all.

But first:Eric Mendez.

The rest could wait. Probably.

8.Will

Here's what I knew about Lindsey Ashford after five days of cohabitation: she hummed off-key when she was close to cracking a pattern. She tucked her hair behind her ear exactly three times before admitting she was stuck. She drank coffee like it was a competitive sport, four cups before noon, each one stronger than the last, and she kept a running tally of my eyebrow movements because she claimed they "communicated more than my actual words," which was ridiculous and also probably true.

Here's what I refused to think about: the way her eyes lit up when the numbers finally told their story. The sound of her laughing at something on her phone in the guest room at night, muffled through the wall. The fact that I'd started brewing the second pot of coffee before she asked for it, because I'd memorized her timing.

Situational awareness. That's all it was. I tracked patterns. It was what I did.

The storage unit had become our operating base: cramped, fluorescent-lit, smelling of old paper and stale coffee. We'd made significant progress in those five days. Three additional shell companies traced. Two more properties identified astransit points. A timeline showing the trafficking operation had been running for at least four years, longer than anyone had suspected.

Five more days until the surveillance window at Reeves's residence. Five days to gather enough evidence to bring down not just him, but everyone who protected him.

"The Delaware subsidiary," Lindsey said on day three, not looking up from her screen. "It's not just a pass-through. They're actually filing quarterly reports."

"Legitimate cover."

"Obsessively legitimate." She pulled up another document. "Someone's been very careful to make this look like a real business. Payroll taxes, workers' comp filings, even charitable donations."

"Follow the donations."

"Already am." Her fingers flew across the keyboard. "Three nonprofits, all with the same registered agent in Nevada. Want to guess what that agent's other clients include?"

"Meridian Holdings."

"And two of the transit properties we identified yesterday." She finally looked up, and there it was. That expression. The one she got when the numbers aligned, when the pattern clicked, when the spreadsheet told her a secret. Her whole face changed. The careful composure cracked open and something fierce came through, something bright and sharp and completely unguarded.

I looked at my own screen. Looked back at hers. Both screens had data on them. Hers was the one I needed to see. Operationally.

"They're using charity as a laundry system. Donate dirty money, get clean tax receipts, fund the operation through grant disbursements."

"That's sophisticated."

"That's my father's playbook, actually." She said it the way she always said things about her father: matter-of-fact on the surface, with something underneath that cost her. "He used a similar structure for the pension fund. Charitable foundations make excellent shields because nobody wants to audit a nonprofit that feeds orphans."

I moved closer to look at her screen. This was necessary. The font was small. The data was complex. There was no other reason I was standing close enough to count the freckles on her left ear, which she had three of, and which I hadn't been counting.

"Can you trace the grant disbursements to specific payments?"

"Give me a few hours." She tilted her head, studying the data. "Maybe less. The pattern's emerging."

She tucked her hair behind her ear. Once. Twice. And I found myself waiting for the third time with the kind of focus I usually reserved for hostile witnesses, which was a problem I was choosing not to address.