Chapter 30
CRAINE
He watched from two blocks south, parked in the shadow of overgrown weeds, engine off, window cracked.
The van caught the curb and went over with the heavy, structural violence of a vehicle losing its argument with physics. Craine didn't flinch. He watched through a compact monocular and waited.
Two minutes later, Grant Dane climbed out. Bloodied. Upright. Wyatt Dane followed.
Both standing. Which meant the others were not.
The plan had been simple—take the Danes to the facility off Savannah Highway, separate them, apply pressure, provoke something actionable. Something that turned a material witness request into an arrest warrant, and an arrest warrant into a lever long enough to pry open the gates of Dominion Hall.
But the Danes had made the call early. Faster than expected. He'd adjust. He was good at that.
The men in the van weren't FBI. On paper they were—names buried deep on Bureau subcontract rosters, third-party security consultants with clearances and backgrounds that held up exactly as long as nobody important went looking. In reality, they were Victoria's last gift.
Victoria.
She'd told him about her dalliance with Klein. Craine had called it stupid. And Klein was a patsy by Victoria’s own design.
Secretly, he'd wished it had been him—not the sacrifice, the closeness.
She'd been the most brilliant strategist he'd ever known.
He'd settled for the next best thing: her intelligence.
Years of data on criminal operations that had quietly fueled his rise through the Bureau.
Deputy Director by forty-two. A career built on a dead woman's homework.
Now, the crowning jewel was in sight. He'd stood on its grounds. Walked its drive. Felt the gates close behind him.
Dominion Hall.
Craine lowered the monocular. Started the sedan. Merged into traffic heading east, away from the sirens beginning to gather.
The Danes would clean this up. They always did. And every step of that cleanup—the lawyers, the calls, the bodies disappearing into a narrative—would leave exactly the kind of trail a man with a federal badge knew how to follow.
Dead bodies had a way of opening doors that money and lawyers couldn't keep shut.