16. Valentina #2
Calder looks at me. “You know him?”
“Rivas? Yes.”
“No. This company.”
He points to the top contract. The logo belongs to a technology services subsidiary. The corporate name beneath it is more familiar than I want it to be.
The corporate name catches me before the smaller print does. I take the page and read the services listed beneath the logo.
Surveillance integration. Biometric verification Identity continuity services.
The parent company belongs to one of the most prominent technology CEOs in the country, the man Joaquín once intended me to marry.
I keep his identity to myself while we are still extracting.
Explanation can wait until the coerced workers are moving toward safety and smoke is no longer filling the building around us.
Calder notices the pause anyway. “What?”
“Later.”
“Fine.”
I turn the contract over. A property schedule lists a Miami address tied to the same service network. Another file references a private estate event code that resembles the one used six years ago outside Las Vegas.
I read the old estate code twice before setting the page flat. “The masquerade was not isolated.”
Max loses what remains of his humor. “We knew the network was bigger.”
“Not this connected.”
Rivas laughs. Moreno steps toward him.
I stop Moreno with one hand against his chest. “He wants you angry.”
“I am angry.”
“Be useful instead.”
He looks down at my hand, then back at Rivas. “Who ordered the purge?”
Rivas’s smile fades when Calder asks who issued the purge. He finally looks past us toward the rival vehicles outside.
Calder says, “We can leave you for the rival faction arriving outside, or you can give us the name that keeps you worth transporting.”
Rivas’s attention snaps toward the loading bays. Engines approach from more than one direction. He knows the sound.
“North route coordinator,” he says, then gives an alias I recognize. “Order came through him.”
“Direct from whom?” Calder asks.
“I do not know.”
I believe that part. Compartmentalization is the reason the system survives men like Joaquín dying.
Max asks, “Miami property. Active?”
“Not mine.”
“Who controls it?”
“I do not know.”
Moreno asks, “How many vehicles incoming?”
Rivas listens. “At least four.”
“Friends?”
“No.”
Rivas’s ignorance is enough to end the questioning before the rival vehicles reach the gate.
We cannot transport him and the workers safely in the stolen van while preserving the evidence, so Calder photographs him, takes his phone, and binds him where the rival faction will find him before the fire does.
I leave him breathing even though every instinct in me wants a cleaner ending, then turn toward the workers because their extraction is already late.
We take the three workers, the two document boxes, and what notebooks Max can carry without reopening his wound.
The first rival vehicle appears beyond the gate as we reach the loading bay.
Our stolen van is exposed. A black armored Coyote transport pulls in from the west instead.
The side door opens before I can make sense of the arriving engine, and two men wearing Miami Coyotes cuts wave us in while another covers the gate.
Calder says, “Coyote backup. I called from the marina.”
“You called them?”
“Yes.”
“You did not mention that.”
“You did not ask.”
I would argue if bullets were not starting to hit the outer wall. The rescued workers climb in first. Max follows, swearing when his side catches the door frame. Moreno enters after him and reaches back toward me without grabbing.
Calder points toward the second vehicle parked beyond the loading yard. “Open-road option is there. Keys in it. You can take it and leave now.”
I stare at him. The armored transport has better protection. It also has steel doors, narrow windows, and a shape my body understands before my mind does. Six years of vehicles with locks I did not control live in that shape. The open-road car is twenty yards away.
Eli is inside the armored vehicle, pale and shaking. One of the adult workers is bleeding from a cut at his temple. The document boxes sit on the floor between them.
If I take the open car, I can be gone before the rival faction closes the road.
If I take the armored vehicle, the evidence and workers get another trained gun inside.
I climb into the transport between Max and Moreno.
The door closes. My entire body reacts. I reach for the latch before I can stop myself.
Calder climbs into the front seat and turns around immediately. “Interior release. Red handle beside your left knee.”
The red handle sits exactly beside my left knee. I touch it once. “Destination?”
“Nevada, Coyote safehouse outside Las Vegas. Fifty-seven minutes if the west road stays open.”
“Stops?”
“Only if you call one or we are forced off route.”
I put my hand on the red release once, then let go. The vehicle moves.
The steel doors still trigger every vehicle memory in which somebody else controlled direction. I keep one hand near the red release through the first turn, aware that surviving traps beside these men has not created trust overnight.
“I picked this vehicle,” I say. “Captivity wasn’t part of the deal.”
Max is pale, bleeding, and careful to keep his hands to himself. “Then hold us to what you actually agreed to.”
The warehouse disappears behind us while rival vehicles flood the road. I stay inside the armored transport because I decided to.