Chapter 14 #2
Gabe turns to face me fully, reading my expression. I look back at the building. At the clean lines and expensive facade and utter emptiness behind it.
“Switzerland wasn’t a destination. It’s a wash cycle.”
“Then we follow the water,” Gabe says quietly.
I can only nod. Giving up isn’t an option. Somewhere in this city, there’s another layer. Another shell. And inside it—I have to believe—Lina.
The third address is an NGO with actual infrastructure—offices, staff, a public mission statement about refugee protection. If Lina passed through their system, someone here saw her. Spoke to her. Maybe even helped move her to the next layer. It’s our best lead, and possibly our last one today.
By midday, the cold has worked its way through my gloves and into my fingers, but I welcome the sting. It keeps me sharp and keeps the anger contained.
The NGO’s Geneva office sits near the river, housed in a building that looks deliberately unremarkable—frosted glass, neutral signage, the kind of place designed to blend into the city’s administrative ecosystem. Legitimate, respectable, and unassailable. I pause at the entrance.
“You good?” Gabe asks, as calm and steady as ever.
I nod. “They won’t tell me anything officially. But there’s a possibility someone might tell me something unofficially. But I need to go in alone, okay?”
“How long do I give you before I come in?”
“Twenty minutes. Unless I text.”
He doesn’t argue. This part is mine—witness advocacy, institutional pressure points, the careful dance of official versus personal inquiry.
Gabriel understands my reasoning. It’s easier to get someone to talk when deniability is easily achieved.
One person’s word against another, that’s easy.
Two versus one, and it’s more questionable—the sense of security isn’t the same.
Inside, the air smells like coffee that’s been sitting too long on a warmer. A woman behind the reception desk looks up as I approach, an easy, unguarded smile already in place.
“I’m here regarding a witness transfer,” I say, handing over my card. Not my DOJ credentials—those are no longer active—but the personal card I’ve always kept for international coordination. “Lina Morozova.”
“Oh, sure—let me just check who handles that file.” Nothing in her expression shifts.
No recognition, no wariness. She picks up the phone, cheerful, uninvolved, exactly the way someone behaves when they believe they work for an organization with nothing to hide.
“Hi, sorry to bother you—there’s someone here asking about a Morozova placement? ”
She pauses. Then her smile falters, just slightly, like she’s picked up on something in the response she doesn’t fully understand.
“Sure. I’ll ask her to wait.” She hangs up. “Someone will be right out.”
The someone who emerges a moment later is not cheerful.
Mid-forties, gray suit, a face arranged into professional blankness. He doesn’t introduce himself. “You’re inquiring about a closed placement.”
“I worked this case,” I say, keeping my tone collegial. “Until it was reassigned.”
“Then you understand it’s no longer your file.” His tone is flat—rehearsed, almost. Nothing like the woman at the desk. “All inquiries go through Swiss counsel or the originating authority.”
The originating authority closed the case.
This is a dead end.
I nod, thank him, and turn to go—then stop, pivoting just enough to lower my voice.
“She testified,” I say quietly. “She cooperated fully. If something happened to her—”
His stoic expression doesn’t change. He simply waits for me to leave.
But near the mail cubbies to the side of the lobby, a young man sorting envelopes has gone very still.
Early twenties, ID badge clipped to his belt.
He’d been chatting with the receptionist when I walked in—the kind of easy, low-stakes office friendliness that means he’s probably here often, probably trusted, probably not important enough to be briefed on anything.
Our eyes meet for a fraction of a second.
Then he looks away.
That’s the tell.
I let the man in the suit walk off toward wherever he came from, and I linger near the cubbies, close enough that the young man can hear me without needing to look up.
“She was transferred again,” he says, voice low, words spilling out like he doesn’t have it in him to contain them. “For her own safety. It was expedited. That’s what the communication said.”
Expedited means urgent. Means threat.
“When?” I keep my voice gentle. Don’t spook him now.
“Shortly after arrival. Within forty-eight hours.”
“Where?”
He shakes his head, already retreating. “I don’t have access to destination data. Only movement confirmation.”
“Excuse me.” The receptionist’s voice, no longer cheerful, cuts across the lobby. She’s crossed half the distance between her desk and us before I register she’s moving, her expression tightening into something that now resembles caution. “Elias, don’t you have deliveries to finish?”
He disappears through a side door without meeting my eyes again.
I leave without another word.
Outside, the cold hits hard and sharp. The temps are dropping and the wind has picked up.
Gabe straightens when he sees my face.
“She was here,” I say. “And then she was moved again for her safety.”
“Alive?” he asks.
“At the time.”
“For her own safety,” he repeats, tone flat with skepticism.
“According to someone who shouldn’t have spoken at all.”
His jaw flexes. “Expedited transfer within two days would likely be driven by threat assessment. Either someone found her, or they anticipated someone would.”
I hadn’t thought of it that way, but he’s right. “They won’t say where. No paper trail. No access. Just confirmation she didn’t stay.”
Gabe pulls out his phone, already typing. “Threat-based witness relocation follows patterns. Limited destinations. High-security facilities or deep cover placements. I’ll run it past the team, see if any networks picked up movement in that window.”