"The junction loop is fried. We’ve got a tight hundred-second window before the secondary sensors realize they’re looking at a ghost circuit," Sully whispered, his breath pluming in the freezing dark as he shoved the smoking frequency jammer back into his canvas tool bag. "Move. Now."Carlos didn't hesitate. He scrambled over the base of the granite boulder, his boots crunching softly on the crust of old snow before he reached the wrought-iron perimeter fence. Grabbing the cold, spiked bars, he hoisted himself up with a sharp grunt, his muscles screaming against the residual stiffness from the container abuse."Elena, catch your footing on the lower scrollwork. Don't slip," Carlos hissed over his shoulder, looking down as Elena scrambled up behind him with surprising agility, her breath coming in ragged gasps."I’m right behind you, Carlos. Just keep climbing," Elena whispered fiercely, her mittened hands gripping the iron bars like a lifeline.Within seconds, all three of them droppe

"You really thought it would be that easy, didn't you, Carlos?" Vance’s voice was smooth, carrying a chilling, effortless cadence that seemed to fill every inch of the quiet study.Carlos didn't flinch, though his pulse hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. He kept his feet planted firmly on the Persian rug, his hands visible and open at his sides. "I didn't think anything about you would be easy, Vance. But I knew you kept your trash in a basket where you could see it."Vance offered a slow, condescending smile, adjusting the heavy-barreled hunting rifle across his knees without shifting the barrel's dead-center alignment with Carlos's breastbone. "Trash? Is that what you call the architectural blueprints of your own destruction? You amateurs broke into a fortress thinking it was a corner store. Did you really imagine we wouldn't anticipate the rats coming back for the cheese?""We aren't rats, Marcus," Elena snapped from near the doorway, her voice shaking slightly with adr

"Keep talking, Vance," Carlos murmured, his eyes locked onto the dark muzzle of the hunting rifle. Every muscle in his body was coiled like a strained spring, his mind racing through the geometric layout of the room, calculating angles, distances, and the fraction of a second it would take for steel shot to clear the barrel and tear through his chest. "Because every second you waste flapping your gums is another second the federal servers outside this county finish downloading your off-site backups."Marcus Vance's slow, condescending smile didn't fade, but a microscopic twitch near his left eye betrayed the carefully manufactured armor of corporate invulnerability. "Bluffing has always been your primary talent, Carlos. You're a terminal improviser. You think because you cracked a few low-level corporate firewall nodes and skimmed a few offshore liquidity pools that you've dismantled a machine that's been running this region since before your parents learned how to read stock tickers.

"And what does that leave you with, Carlos? A ruined life, a hunted sister, a fractured hand, and a front-row seat to your own execution in a freezing, nameless stretch of dirt that no map in this state even bothers to name?" Vance’s voice was as smooth and unhurried as a corporate quarterly report, completely devoid of heat, which made the cold steel of his intent all the more terrifying.Carlos didn’t let his eyes drift toward the barrel, though every instinct in his nervous system screamed at him to track the trajectory. Instead, he kept his gaze locked on Vance’s pupils, searching for the micro-hesitation that would separate a man executing a calculated order from a man acting on sudden, visceral panic. "It leaves me with a clear conscience, Marcus. Which is more than I can say for the guys whose signatures are currently warming up on federal indictments across three different districts.""Indictments," Vance scoffed softly, his finger resting lightly on the trigger guard. "Paper.

"You lost everything the moment you walked through those front gates," Vance countered, his voice dropping into a register so chillingly calm that it seemed to lower the temperature of the entire room by several degrees. "You brought a knife to an orbital strike, Carlos. And now you expect some sort of cinematic reprieve? A last-second rescue from the skies? Look outside. The only thing falling from the sky right now is snow, and the only thing waiting for you in those woods is hypothermia."Carlos kept his face entirely blank, though his heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. "I didn't come here for a rescue, Marcus. I came for the receipts.""And you found them," Liam interjected from the shadows near the balcony doors, his voice thin, cracked with a exhaustion so profound it sounded like dry paper scraping together. He hadn't moved an inch since stepping out of the dark, his hands still trembling slightly where they hung loose at his sides. "You found every single one