Chapter 10 The Leak
Zara
THREE DAYS BEFORE the board meeting, everything went wrong. Zara was in the Tribeca loft, finalizing the technical brief, when her
phone rang. An unknown number. She answered.
“Ms. Al-Rashid.” The voice was male, clipped, professional. “My
name is Daniel Cross. I’m with the FBI’s Cyber Division. We need to talk.”
“About what?”
“About the evidence you’ve been gathering against Blackwood
Systems. Specifically, the Meridian files.”
Zara’s blood went cold. “How do you know about that?”
“Because we’ve been investigating the same conspiracy for three years. And because someone inside Blackwood Systems has been feeding us information.”
“Who?”
“We can’t discuss that over the phone. We need to meet.” “I’m not meeting anyone from the FBI without a lawyer present.”
“That’s your right. But I should tell you—Marcus Webb knows you’re in New York. He knows about the loft. And he’s made calls to people who can make your life very difficult very quickly.”
The line was quiet except for the sound of breathing.
“Where?” Zara said.
“Federal Plaza. Tomorrow, 10 AM. Come alone.”
“I’ll bring Damien Blackwood.”
“That’s… inadvisable. Blackwood is under investigation too.”
“He’s the one who initiated this. He’s been trying to expose Marcus for fifteen years.”
Another pause. “Fine. Bring him. But nobody else.”
The line went dead.
Zara stared at her phone. Then she called Damien.
“We have a problem.”
They spent the rest of the day analyzing the call. Zara ran tracebacks on the phone number. It resolved to an FBI field office in lower Manhattan. The agent’s name checked out—Daniel Cross, Senior Special Agent, Cyber Division.
“It could be legitimate,” Zara said. “Or it could be Marcus using an FBI contact to lure us into a trap.”
“Or it could be a real agent who doesn’t know he’s being used by Marcus.”
“Either way, we go.”
“Both of us.”
“Both of us.”
They went to Federal Plaza the next morning. The FBI building was
a fortress of concrete and glass, all sharp angles and no warmth. Zara had been inside federal buildings before—usually as a consultant, sometimes as a witness. She’d never been inside as a target.
Agent Cross met them in a conference room on the fourteenth floor. He was tall, thin, with the kind of face that gave nothing away. His handshake was brief and professional.
“Mr. Blackwood. Ms. Al-Rashid. Thank you for coming.” “You said Marcus knows we’re in New York,” Damien said. No
preamble.
“He does. He’s been monitoring your movements since Singapore.
He has private security—not the company’s, his own—and they’ve been tracking both of you.”
“How do you know this?” Zara asked.
“Because we’ve been watching Marcus Webb for three years. He’s been selling classified surveillance technology to foreign governments through a network of shell companies. The same network your mother documented.”
“You knew about my mother?”
“We know about Nadia Al-Rashid. We know she was murdered. We know Marcus was responsible. What we don’t have is evidence that would hold up in court.”
He looked at Zara. “Until you found the Guardian files.” “You know about those too.”
“We know someone extracted encrypted files from a backup server in Berlin and export logs from Singapore. We know those files contain evidence of crimes that could put Marcus Webb away for life.”
He leaned forward. “What we need is for you to hand them over.” The room went very quiet.
“Why should we trust you?” Zara asked.
“Because I can show you the sealed investigation file. Because I can
introduce you to the prosecutor who’s been building a case. And because, frankly, you don’t have many other options. Marcus knows you’re here. His people are watching you. If you try to go to the press or the SEC on your own, he’ll intercept the information and bury it.”
“And if we hand it over to you?”
“We take the case to a grand jury. We get indictments. We arrest Marcus and his network. We protect you both under witness security if needed.”
“We don’t need witness security,” Damien said.
“You might. Marcus is more dangerous than you think. He’s not just stealing technology—he’s embedded in intelligence networks. He has resources that most criminal organizations would envy.”
Zara looked at Damien. His face was hard, controlled. She could see the calculations happening behind his eyes.
“We need to verify your investigation,” Zara said. “Show us the sealed file. Introduce us to the prosecutor. And we need a guarantee that the evidence will be used to prosecute Marcus, not to bury it.”
“That’s reasonable.”
“And one more thing.” Zara met his eyes. “If at any point I sense that this is a setup, I have the evidence backed up in three locations that nobody knows about except me. If something happens to me, it all goes public automatically.”
Cross studied her. “Smart.”
“My mother taught me.”
They spent four hours at Federal Plaza. Cross showed them the investigation file.
It was extensive—three years of surveillance, financial analysis, and intelligence gathering.
The prosecutor, a woman named Rachel Torres, joined them by video call.
She was direct, competent, and clearly angry about what Marcus had done.
By the time they left, Zara had a plan. A real plan. Not a desperate rush to expose the truth, but a coordinated prosecution that would put Marcus behind bars and protect Blackwood Systems from the fallout.
But as they walked out of the FBI building into the bright afternoon, Zara felt something she hadn’t felt before.
Doubt.
“What if they’re wrong?” she said.
“About what?”
“About Marcus. What if he’s not the only one? What if the network
is bigger than we think?”
Damien stopped walking. “What are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting that we check the evidence one more time. Before we hand it over. Because once it’s in the FBI’s hands, we lose control of it.”
“You don’t trust Cross?” “I don’t trust anyone who contacts me out of the blue and asks for my evidence. That’s Investigation 101.”
Damien nodded slowly. “So we verify. Again. One more time.” “One more time.”
They walked down the steps of Federal Plaza, past the stone lions, past the tourists, past the ordinary people going about their ordinary lives.
Behind them, in a window on the fourteenth floor, someone watched them leave.
Zara felt it—a prickling at the back of her neck, the particular awareness of being observed that had kept her alive in more countries than she could count.
She didn’t look back.