Chapter 12 Talia
TWELVE
Talia
PATTERN RECOGNITION
Jackson’s breathing deepens into the heavy rhythm of true exhaustion. Blood loss and adrenaline crash have finally dragged him under, despite his stubborn refusal to yield.
I watch the rise and fall of his chest, the way his jaw finally unclenches, the hard lines of his face softening in the gloom.
My lips still tingle. A phantom pressure.
The kiss wasn’t the desperate, adrenaline-fueled collision I expected. It was slow. Deliberate. He kissed me as if he were memorizing the data.
You’re fucking fascinating.
Nathan’s voice tries to intrude—you analyze everything instead of feeling it—but Jackson’s words drown him out. The way he looked at me. Like my analytical mind isn’t a bug in the software, but a feature.
I touch my mouth. The scrape of stubble. The heat of his palm cupping my face. How natural it felt to lean into him, to stop thinking and just exist in the sensation.
My thoughts drift to my favorite Jules Verne quote. “Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.”
It’s a reminder that failed hypotheses aren’t failures—they’re data points.
Maybe Nathan was a failed hypothesis. Three years of corrupted data proving that model didn’t work.
But Jackson …
Jackson kissed me like I’m a puzzle he wants to solve. Not too much. Not exhausting.
Fascinating.
The word loops in my head, foreign and wonderful.
I force myself to turn away. To think beyond the ghost of his touch. We are in an abandoned factory. Phoenix is hunting us. Victor is dead. Morrison is dead. The body count is rising, and I am the only one holding the variable that explains why.
If I can solve for X.
My phone is landfill fodder by now. But Jackson’s go-bag sits by the table, a secure laptop among the contents.
I dig through the bag, past the metallic scent of ammunition and the antiseptic smell of medical supplies. There. A heavy, matte-black unit. Military-grade encryption, triple-authentication protocols.
I crack it open. The screen glows blue in the darkness.
It connects via a secure VPN, routing traffic through servers in three countries before granting me access. I navigate to my cloud backup—the ghost drive no one knows about, the repository I’ve been feeding since I walked out of the FBI.
Eighteen months of corporate risk assessments. Hundreds of companies. Thousands of data points. I uploaded Victor’s data to this secure server before the café.
The pattern is there. It has to be. I just need the right filter.
I start with the epicenter: Victor’s death. Meridian Pharmaceuticals.
Then I layer in Morrison’s “suicide.” He was investigating Vanguard Defense Systems.
I add in the three researchers who died in “accidents.”
My fingers fly across the keys. The code reflects in my eyes, a stream of green and white. I don’t just read the data; I feel it. It has a texture, a rhythm.
Meridian Pharmaceuticals.
Vanguard Defense Systems.
Nexus BioTech.
Stratton Financial.
TerraCore Energy.
Five corporations. Different industries. Pharma, Defense, Bio, Finance, Energy. On the surface, they are competitors or unrelated entities.
But the data whispers a different story.
I pull up the ownership structures. Shell companies nested inside shell companies like Russian dolls. I strip them away, layer by layer.
Click.
There. Buried deep in the bedrock of the filings.
Nexus Holdings.
My pulse quickens. The screen blurs as I scroll faster.
I pull up every risk assessment I’ve ever flagged. Every whistleblower case that went dead. Every regulatory investigation that mysteriously evaporated.
The pattern emerges like a photograph developing in a darkroom. Sharp. High-contrast. Undeniable.
Phoenix isn’t a random assassin. It’s a corporate immune system systematically eliminating oversight personnel, whistleblowers, regulators, and anyone who threatens the profit margins of these five companies.
Victor questioned Meridian’s drug trials. Dead.
Morrison investigated Vanguard’s defense contracts. Dead.
The EPA inspector who flagged TerraCore’s violations. “Fatal heart attack” at forty-two.
The SEC analyst who discovered Stratton’s fraud. “Suicide” three weeks ago.
The probability of coincidence is mathematically impossible. Zero.
I dig deeper into Nexus Holdings. Offshore accounts in the Caymans. A corporate structure designed to be a labyrinth.
But labyrinths have architects.
Buried in the footnotes of an SEC filing, I find a name.
Alexander Reed.
Strategic Operations Director.
A chill slides down my spine, colder than the factory air.
I’ve heard that name. Recently.
My mind rewinds through the last forty-eight hours. The parking garage. The rooftop. The safe house.
No. Before that. Victor’s evidence drive.
I pull up his files, searching. The cursor blinks, a heartbeat on the screen. There. An email thread Victor copied from Meridian’s internal servers.
Subject: Regulatory Compliance Review
From: Alexander Reed (areed@)
To: Sophia Blackwell (sblackwell@)
The oversight situation has been addressed per our discussion. FDA approval should proceed without further complications.
The time stamp: Two days after the lead FDA reviewer died in a car accident.
“Addressed.” That’s what they call murder. An “oversight situation.”
My hands shake as I screenshot everything. Upload copies to three different secure servers. Send encrypted files to dead-drop email addresses.
Redundancy. If they kill me, the data survives.
I’m building a timeline when a shift in the light catches my attention.
Headlights.
They sweep past the broken windows, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air.
My breath stops.
The lights move slowly. Methodically. Searching.
I kill the laptop screen, plunging us into darkness. I drop to the floor, crawling to the window, keeping below the sill.
A black SUV circles the factory. Same make. Same model as the one that hit Victor. It passes once, twice, then prowls to a stop.
Surveillance. They’re setting up a perimeter.
I crawl back to Jackson. My hand finds his shoulder. He wakes instantly—no grogginess, just an immediate transition from sleep to violence. His weapon rises before his eyes fully open.
“Company,” I whisper. “Black SUV.”
He’s on his feet in seconds, ignoring the injury. He moves to the window, a shadow among shadows. His left arm hangs stiff, but his right hand is rock steady on his weapon.
“How long?”
“Three minutes. Maybe four.”
“Did they see you?”
“No. I killed the screen as soon as I spotted the beam.”
He studies the street, calculating angles of fire. “They’re not moving in. Just watching.”
“Confirming location before calling in reinforcements?”
“Probably.” He turns to me. In the darkness, I catch the flash of approval in his eyes. “Good work. What else did you find?”
“Everything.” The word tastes like iron. “Five corporations, all connected through Nexus Holdings. Phoenix is protecting their operations. Killing anyone who threatens them. I found names, patterns, proof.”
“Breathe.”
I force air into my lungs. Slow the heart rate.
“Show me.”
I wake the laptop, keeping the brightness at a minimum. Jackson leans over my shoulder. His body heat warms my back, a stark contrast to the cold logic on the screen. I’m hyperaware of the careful distance he maintains, protecting me even from his own injury.
“Here.” I pull up the network diagram. “Meridian, Vanguard, Nexus BioTech, Stratton, TerraCore. Different industries, same master. Nexus Holdings.”
“And Phoenix wipes the board for them.”
“Not just investigators. Anyone. FDA reviewers. SEC analysts. Congressional staffers. Whistleblowers.” I point to the timeline. “All ruled accidents, suicides, or natural causes. But statistically? It’s a massacre.”
Jackson’s jaw tightens. “Show me the Nexus structure.”
I navigate to the filings. “Shell companies. But I found the handler. Alexander Reed. Strategic Operations Director.”
“Reed.” Jackson’s voice goes flat. Dangerous. “Fuck.”
“You know him?”
“We have a file on him. Suspected Phoenix liaison, but no proof.” He stares at the email on the screen. “This is proof.”
“There’s more. Reed coordinates directly with corporate leadership. He calls murder ‘addressing an oversight situation.’”
Jackson reads in silence. The muscle in his jaw ticks like a countdown.
“Victor died for this,” I say quietly. “Morrison died for this.”
“And they’ll get justice.” His hand covers mine on the keyboard. Brief pressure. Calloused skin against mine. “But first we need to survive long enough to deliver it.”
“The SUV—”
“Won’t move until they have backup. We’ve got maybe twenty minutes.” He straightens, the soldier taking over. “Can you work mobile?”
“Everything is backed up. Cloud servers. Dead drops.”
“Good.” He starts gathering supplies, favoring his injured arm but moving with brutal efficiency. “Because we’re not staying here.”
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere they won’t expect.” He catches my eye. “Ever been to a corporate headquarters at three in the morning?”
My pulse jumps. “That’s insane.”
“That’s why it’ll work.” He tosses me a tactical vest. “If Phoenix is protecting these corporations, then the corporations have to know about Phoenix. Which means they have evidence.”
“You want to break into Meridian?”
“I want to break into Nexus Holdings.” His smile is sharp, a baring of teeth. “According to your research, they have a downtown office. Small, discreet. Perfect target.”
“Security will be—”
“Minimal. It’s a shell company. They won’t expect a direct assault on their front door.”
He’s right. The probability of Phoenix anticipating an attack on the head of the snake is low. They’re focused on the tail.
“We’ll need access codes. Biometric data. Floor plans.”
“Can you get them?”
I pull up the building’s property records, cross-referencing with city permits. I hack into the building management system. It’s laughable. A firewall made of tissue paper.
“Give me five minutes.”
“You’ve got three.”
My fingers blur. I’m in their system within ninety seconds, downloading everything—access logs, camera positions, maintenance schedules.
“Got it.” I turn off the laptop. “Forty-seventh floor. Nexus Holdings occupies the entire level. Biometric scanners at the elevator. Secondary access through the service stairs requires both keycard and PIN.”
“Can you bypass the biometrics?”
“Not remotely. But—” I pull up a fresh file. “According to the access logs, Sophia Blackwell entered at 11:47 PM tonight.”
“Late for a business meeting.”
“Or early for destroying evidence.” I check the time stamp. “She hasn’t left. Still in the building.”
Jackson studies the data. “Perfect.”
“Perfect? She’s probably a Phoenix operative.”
“She’s definitely a Phoenix operative.” He loads his weapon, the slide racking with a metallic snap. “But she’s also our ticket inside. And if she’s still there at 3 AM, she’s panicking. Panicked people make mistakes.”
“So we what? Ask nicely for her biometrics?”
“Something like that.” He hands me a smaller weapon—a Glock 19. “Ever fire one of these?”
“FBI training.”
“Good. Don’t aim at anything you’re not willing to kill.”
The weight settles in my palm. Cold steel. Heavy with responsibility. I check the magazine, chamber a round, and engage the safety. Muscle memory from Quantico floods back, overriding the tremors.
Jackson watches with approval. “You’re full of surprises.”
“I contain multitudes.”
“We need to move.” Jackson heads for the door, then pauses. Turns back. “Talia.”
“Yeah?”
“What you found—that pattern analysis—that’s brilliant work. You gave us the first real lead on who’s holding the leash.”
The compliment lands in the center of my chest.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. We still have to steal it.” He checks the street through a crack in the boarded-up window. “The SUV is still out there. We go out the back, circle wide, grab the car I stashed three blocks south.”
“You stashed a car?”
“Always have a backup exit.” He eases the door open. “Stay close. Stay quiet. If shooting starts, you run. Don’t stop. Don’t look back.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Talia—”
“No.” The word comes out hard. Absolute. “Victor’s dead because I couldn’t protect him. Morrison’s dead because I gave him evidence. I’m not running while you bleed for me.”
“This isn’t negotiable.”
“Neither is this.” I step closer, close enough to see the fatigue warring with the adrenaline in his eyes. “You said I’m fascinating. That my mind is a weapon. So stop treating me like a liability and start treating me like a partner.”
We stare at each other. The air is charged with more than attraction now. Challenge. Respect. The shift of tectonic plates.
“Partners make tactical decisions together,” he says finally.
“Then let’s decide together. What’s our best play?”
A slow smile spreads across his face. Dangerous.
“Our best play is breaking into Nexus Holdings, getting past their security, confronting whoever’s destroying evidence, and stealing proof that connects them to Phoenix.” He pauses. “Without getting killed.”
“Acceptable.” I holster the weapon. “Let’s go.”
We slip into the Chicago night, two ghosts hunting monsters that hide in boardrooms and balance sheets.
Behind us, the SUV’s headlights sweep through the darkness, watching an empty cage.
Ahead, Nexus Holdings rises against the skyline, forty-seven floors of glass and steel and secrets.
Jackson’s hand finds mine in the darkness. Brief pressure.
Trust.
We run.