I spent most of the night sitting in the war room with Stephen. The air was thin from the cooling fans of the server racks. We had the windows dimmed to black, so the only thing I could see was the reflection of the data scrolling across the glass. Stephen was hunched over a tablet, his glasses sliding down his nose. He looked like he had aged five years in the last five hours."I found the digital trail for Sasha’s brother," Stephen said. He tapped a key, and a thick P*F document appeared on the main screen. "James Vance. He’s been in that Pennsylvania facility for three years. The sentencing was fast. Too fast. It was a closed-door hearing, which usually means someone with a lot of weight wanted it kept quiet."I stood up and walked closer to the screen. "Show me the mugshot from the arrest."Stephen swiped his hand across the glass. A high-resolution photo of a man snapped into focus. My heart didn't just skip a beat; it felt like it stopped entirely. I stared at the man’s eyes. The

The air inside the ventilation shaft was cold and smelled like dusty metal. I was on my stomach, crawling through a space so narrow that my shoulders brushed against the screws in the siding every time I moved. Behind me, I could hear Miller’s heavy breathing. He wasn't as lean as I was, and the tight space was clearly getting to him."How much further?" I whispered. My voice was barely a breath, but in the silence of the ducts, it sounded like a shout."Twenty feet," Miller wheezed. I could hear the click of his tablet as he checked the building’s blueprints. "The next grate should put us right above the maintenance closet for the evidence wing. Just wait for my signal. I’m still looping the hallway feed."I stopped and rested my forehead against the cold metal. My heart was thumping against my ribs. I thought back to the nights in Iron-Gate, staring at the ceiling of my cell. Back then, I was trapped. Now, I was breaking into a different kind of cage."Cameras are looped," Miller wh

I sat in the back of the SUV, the glow of my tablet reflecting off the window. Stephen was sitting next to me, his phone pressed to his ear. He had been on the line for three hours, talking to every legal contact he had in the city. Every time he hung up, he looked more frustrated than before."Nothing," Stephen said, dropping his phone into his lap. "I sent the third retainer offer. Five million dollars just to sit down for a meeting. His clerk didn't even send a rejection. He just deleted the email.""The clerk deleted a five-million-dollar offer?" I asked. I leaned back against the leather seat. "Who is this guy?""His name is Silas 'Testy' Thorne," Stephen explained. "He got the nickname because he’s impossible to work with. He treats judges like children and his clients like suspects. He retired after he dismantled the District Attorney’s office in the mid-nineties. Since then, he’s lived like a hermit.""Everyone has a price, Stephen. We just haven't found his currency yet.""It

The air in the federal prison felt like it was made of lead. It was thick, hot, and smelled of industrial bleach and old sweat. Testy walked beside me, his boots clicking rhythmically against the concrete floor. He didn’t seem bothered by the heavy iron gates or the way the guards watched us with cold, bored eyes. He looked like he was walking into a grocery store."Keep your mouth shut unless I look at you," Testy said. His voice was low. "And don't let him see you sweat. James is the kind of man who smells fear before he hears it.""I've been in places worse than this, Silas," I reminded him."Maybe. But you weren't visiting a man like this one," he replied.We stopped at a heavy steel door in the high-security wing. A guard turned a key, and the lock disengaged with a loud, echoing thud. We stepped into a small, windowless room. There was a bolted-down table and two chairs. On the other side of a thick plexiglass barrier sat James Vance.He didn't look like the other inmates I had

The conference room was littered with paper. Empty coffee cups sat in rings of their own stains on the glass table. It was three in the morning, and the city outside the floor-to-ceiling windows was a deep, ink-black. Stephen was rubbing his eyes behind his glasses, his laptop fan whirring like a small engine. Across from him, Testy was leaning back in his chair, his feet up on the table, flipping through a folder like he was reading the morning comics."The chain of custody is weak," Testy said, tossing a document onto the pile. "The way this evidence was logged in the federal vault is a joke. I’m going to make the lead detective look like a high school dropout.""The detective isn't the problem, Silas," Stephen said, his voice raspy from hours of talking. "It’s the judge. Judge Miller is known for his ties to the old guard. He’s not going to like seeing a closed case ripped open by a private legal team.""He doesn't have to like it," Testy snapped. "He just has to fear the headline.