They met in a hotel lobby. Serena's choice neutral ground, she'd said in a follow-up message, as though the concept of neutral ground between them was something that still existed.She arrived four minutes late. Calculate late the kind designed to establish, very gently, that your time was worth arriving to. Daren had been there twenty minutes. He'd used them to identify all three exits, to situate himself where the ambient noise of the lobby provided natural coverage for a conversation, and to confirm that the recording function on his phone was active.Serena looked, he thought, almost entirely herself. The charcoal clothes. The precision. The face arranged into something warm but controlled. She sat across from him with the ease of someone who has rehearsed this but is good enough that the rehearsal doesn't show."You look different," she said."You look exactly the same," he replied.Something moved briefly across her expression. Then she recovered."I think we should talk about th

Serena's statement to the inquiry ran to forty-one pages.She had spent fourteen hours with a lawyer and a notary, going through every document, every communication, every meeting she could reconstruct from memory and her own archive. She was thorough in the way people are thorough when they have decided that the best protection is the most complete truth or as close to the complete truth as serves the version of themselves they need to defend.She acknowledged that she had been aware of inconsistencies in the structural report before filing the insurance claim. She acknowledged that Marco Vance had advised her, through an intermediary, on the framing of her initial statement to investigators. She acknowledged that Callum Rae had contacted her through Victor Stahl's introduction while the inquiry was ongoing, and that conversations had taken place regarding the Q3 infrastructure contract tenders.She did not acknowledge that she had made those choices with a clear view of what they wou

Meridian Structural Consulting's first contract was a review of six public pedestrian bridges across the city's eastern district.The work took eleven weeks. The report identified four critical deficiencies in three of the bridge's deficiencies that, according to Daren's assessment, had existed in two of the structures for a minimum of six years. The reports that had signed off on those structures bore the names of contractors whose principals had retired into comfortable obscurity and who did not, when contacted by the municipal authority, appear to recall the specific inspections in question.The bridges were repaired.Nobody died on them.This was not, Daren understood, a triumph. It was the baseline. It was what the work was supposed to do, and the fact that it was doing so felt significant was itself a measure of how far the standard had slipped.But it was a foundation. And he was a man who understood foundations. He heard about Serena's departure from the city through the chann

The silence that followed lasted exactly four seconds. Daren counted.In those four seconds, Elara Song crossed the office, took the filing from his hands, read the footnote, and said nothing. She moved to her computer. She typed a query into the case management system. She read the result. She closed the window. She turned to face him."There are five people with access to this room after hours," she said. "Myself, my assistant Priya, the authority's deputy director, the IT systems manager, and the overnight security supervisor.""Who knows the specifics of the case? The real specifics, not the public record?""Myself. Priya has partial knowledge she processes my correspondence. Deputy Director Welles knows the broad strokes, not the source details." She paused. "The IT manager has system access, not case access. He can see file metadata. Not content.""What does the IT manager's file metadata access look like at eleven forty-seven on a weeknight?"Elara was still. Daren watched her

He forwarded the photograph to Elara at two fifty-one a.m. with a single line: Someone is watching your building. Don't go in until we talk.She called back in four minutes. Four minutes, which meant she'd been sitting at her kitchen table already, probably with coffee, because that was how she operated when she was working through something she didn't want to get wrong."Who sent this?" she asked."Unknown number. Burner.""The timestamp.""Yes. Eleven o'clock last night. While we were both on our phones." He was standing in his kitchen. The city outside was quiet in the particular way it got between three and four a.m. … not silence, but a reduction of frequency, a settling. "They were watching us both. They know we talked.""Then they know about Nadia.""Possibly. Or they're covering their bases." He set his phone on the counter. "Elara. The federal contact. Did you reach them?""At midnight. We spoke for forty minutes." A pause. "They want to meet. In person. Tomorrow.""Can they