Chapter 23 Black Archive Heist
BLACK ARCHIVE HEIST
CALLAHAN
Iwoke to the smell of coffee and Dom's weight shifting the mattress.
He was already up, moving through my kitchen in just his boxers, bare-chested and wearing last night's bruises like badges. The manual coffee grinder whirred—he'd been grinding beans because my electric one had died months ago and I kept forgetting to replace it.
“You're awake,” he said without turning around.
“Mmm.” I sat up and catalogued the pleasant aches. A bite mark on my shoulder. Fingerprint bruises on my hips. Scratch marks down my back. “What time is it?”
“Early. Go back to sleep if you want.”
“Can't. You're making noise.” But I didn't want to sleep. I wanted to watch him move through my space like he belonged here, like this wasn't the fifth or sixth time he'd stayed over but the hundredth.
“You weren't complaining about the noise last night.” He poured water into the French press. “In fact, you were rather loud yourself.”
“Was not.”
“Cal. The people three floors up know my name now. Possibly my full legal name and National Insurance number.”
Heat crept up my neck. “Shut up.”
“Make me.” He brought me coffee, black and at a perfect temperature, then sat on the edge of the bed close enough that I could see the hickey I'd left on his collarbone. “Morning breath and all.”
I kissed him anyway, slow and lazy, tasting coffee and sleep and him. His hand cupped the back of my neck, his thumb stroking skin still tender from where he'd held me down last night.
“You're in a good mood,” I observed when we broke apart.
“Slept well. You tire me out.” He stood and stretched, completely unselfconscious. “Hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Good. I'm making eggs.” He headed back to the kitchen. “Also, I'm buying you groceries later because this fridge is a disaster.”
“It's fine.”
“It's three-day-old takeaway, expired milk, and condiments. That's not fine, that's depression.”
“I eat.”
He cracked eggs into the pan one-handed. “You're underweight. I can feel your ribs when I—”
“Don't finish that sentence.”
“When I hold you,” he said innocently. “What did you think I was going to say?”
I threw a pillow at him. He dodged it, grinning.
“Come eat,” he said. “Before it gets cold.”
I got up, pulled on yesterday's shirt, and joined him at my tiny kitchen table that barely fitted two people. He'd made proper eggs, scrambled with cheese and herbs I didn't even know I had, along with toast and fresh coffee in mugs that didn't match because I'd never cared enough to buy a set.
“You're too good at this,” I said.
“At what? Cooking eggs?”
“At being domestic. At making my flat feel less like a crime scene.”
“Your flat's not that bad.” He paused. “Okay, it's pretty bad. But I like it anyway.”
“Why?”
He took a bite of toast. “Because you trust me enough to let me see this version of you. The one that forgets to eat and keeps case files under the bed and owns exactly three plates.”
“Four plates.”
“One's chipped. Doesn't count.”
We ate in comfortable silence. He didn't rush me or fill the quiet with unnecessary conversation, just existed beside me while morning light filtered through the blinds and London woke up outside.
“Thank you,” I said eventually.
“For what?”
“This. Being here. Not making it weird.”
Dom set down his fork and looked at me properly. “Cal. We've been doing this for a while now. It stopped being weird when I came over here and cried all over you.” He grinned. “Point is, this is just us now.”
“Us.” I tested the word. “That's terrifying.”
“Yeah. But you're still here. So am I.” He stood and started clearing the plates. “Now shower. You smell like sex and I need to focus today.”
“You love it.”
“I do. But I also have standards.” He kissed the top of my head as he passed. “Shower. Then we'll figure out the rest.”
I watched him wash dishes in my sink, humming something off-key, and felt the tight knot in my chest ease just slightly.
Adrian sat behind his desk looking tired. Not physically—Adrian never looked physically tired—but there was a weight in his expression that suggested he'd spent the night dealing with problems that didn't have clean solutions.
Noah stood near the window.
“Sit,” Adrian said.
We sat.
“Webb has been handled,” Adrian began without preamble. “He's been secured and escorted somewhere safe, out of Harrow's immediate reach and out of London entirely.”
“Handled how?” Dom asked, his voice careful.
Adrian's expression didn't change. “He's alive. Functional. And sufficiently motivated to provide testimony when the time comes.”
“And the information he gave us?” I asked.
“Being verified and cross-referenced. Dmitri's working through the financial records. Luka's checking street-level connections. Troy's identifying security patterns.” Adrian leaned back. “But before Webb was moved, something interesting happened.”
Noah stepped forward. “Webb tried to slip something out. I caught it.”
He placed a folded piece of paper on Adrian's desk and opened it carefully. Showed us a series of numbers and letters, what looked like coordinates or access codes.
“What is this?” Dom asked.
“An archive reference,” I said immediately, my memory pulling at the pattern. “Old system. Pre-digital.”
“Correct.” Noah's expression was grim. “Webb wrote this while we were processing him for transport and tried to hide it in his shoe. When I confronted him, he said it was insurance, proof that he'd tried to help, that he wasn't completely complicit.”
“What does it reference?” Dom was already leaning forward, already seeing the possibility.
“The Black Archive.” Adrian's voice was quiet. “An off-book evidence facility. If Lily's original evidence exists anywhere, it's there.”
My pulse kicked up. “That's suicide. The Black Archive is locked down, protected by security we can't breach without triggering every alarm in London.”
“Normally, yes.” Adrian pulled up something on his tablet and showed us blueprints, floor plans, and security protocols.
“But Dmitri's been working through the data from Eden. One of the phones we acquired belonged to the security coordinator for several Crown facilities, including the Black Archive.”
“You're saying we have access?” Dom's voice was carefully controlled.
“I'm saying we have a window. A small one.
Twelve hours. The security coordinator is being replaced tomorrow, and new protocols go into effect at that point, but tonight, for exactly twelve hours, there's a transition period where the old codes still work and the new surveillance hasn't been installed.” Adrian looked between us. “It's the only chance you'll get.”
“What's the catch?” I asked, because there was always a catch.
“The catch is that if you're caught, Ravenswood can't protect you. This operation is off-book, unsanctioned. If it goes wrong, you're on your own.”
“And if it goes right?” Dom asked.
“Then you get the proof you need to destroy Harrow, to expose the entire network, to get justice for your sister and Cal's partner.” Adrian's gaze sharpened.
“But understand: once you have that proof, you can't sit on it.
You can't wait for perfect timing. You burn it all down immediately, or Harrow will find ways to neutralise it.”
“Agreed,” I said.
Dom nodded. “When do we move?”
“Tonight.” Adrian gestured to Noah. “Your team is Dmitri on tech support, Troy for muscle, Dom as controlled force, and Cal as navigation and strategy. Four people, no more. Any larger and you trigger attention.”
“What about backup?” Dom asked.
“You are the backup. If this fails, we lose our best shot at Harrow and potentially expose Ravenswood's involvement in everything you've been doing.” Adrian stood. “So don't fail.”
We spent the afternoon preparing.
Dmitri walked me through the security systems, showed me the patrol patterns, the timing windows, the twelve-second delay between camera sweeps that would be our entry point.
“The Archive is old,” Dmitri said. “Built in the seventies when physical security meant locks and guards. They've updated some things—digital access, motion sensors—but the core infrastructure is analogue. That's your advantage.”
“And disadvantage,” I added. “Analogue systems don't leave digital trails to hack. They require physical presence.”
“Correct. Which is why you need Troy.” Dmitri pulled up another screen. “Cameras here, here, and here. Guards stationed at these positions. Your window is narrow—ninety seconds from entry to reaching the archive floor. After that, the patrols change and your route gets compromised.”
Troy arrived with the equipment. “Non-lethal where possible,” he said, laying out gear on the table. “Lethal when necessary.”
Tasers, flash grenades, lockpicks, cutting tools, handguns, knives. Everything we'd need for a breach that could go surgical or messy depending on what we walked into.
Dom checked the weapons with methodical care. “Rules of engagement?”
“We don't start shooting,” I said. “But if they give us no choice, we finish it.”
“Works for me.” Dom loaded a magazine and chambered a round. “Preference is a clean exit, but if it's them or us, it's them.”
Troy grinned. “Finally. I was worried you'd gone soft.”
“Never that soft.” I picked up a handgun and checked the weight of it. “We're not going in looking for a fight. But we're not running from one either.”
“Good.” Troy pocketed a knife. “Because Harrow's people won't hesitate. Neither should we.”
Dom met my eyes. “You good with this?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Yeah.” No hesitation, no moral hand-wringing—just a professional acknowledgement that violence might be necessary. “Let's get this done.”
The Black Archive was housed in a building that looked like every other bureaucratic structure in London. Grey. Utilitarian. Designed to be forgotten. Perfect cover for storing the secrets nobody wanted remembered.
Troy disabled the perimeter alarm with tools that looked simple but required expert timing. Twelve seconds. He did it in ten.