3. Sophie
SOPHIE
I've become the kind of person who backs up everything three ways, so tonight I'm doing exactly that.
Two thumb drives, one cloud vault under a name that isn't mine, and a printed master copy I keep in a fireproof document bag under the bed like some conspiracy theorist. It's Tuesday, and I've got the file spread across my kitchen table, the bright lamp on, a mug of tea going cold because I forget to drink anything once I'm inside the numbers.
The Cedar Bend payroll anomaly finally cracked open an hour ago.
I found the mirror account. I know how they move it now, and now I can prove who, it's over.
My lights go dark, not a flicker, not the blackout the whole block gets when the wind comes down off the ridge.
Every bulb in the apartment dies at once, and half a breath later so does the hum of the refrigerator, and the little green clock on the microwave, and the router's blue eye in the corner, total darkness.
My whole body understands it before my brain does, the same knowledge that stops you at the top of a dark staircase.
I reach for my document bag first, evidence before self, and my hand's still under the bed frame when I hear the deadbolt turn, my deadbolt, the one I paid a locksmith to upgrade my second week here, and then two sets of footsteps come in over my threshold with the unhurried confidence of men who checked the floor plan first.
"Kitchen table," one says. Flat. Bored. "Get the drives."
I'm already moving. There's a fire escape off the bedroom window, but the frame's swollen from the damp and it shrieks when I haul it up, and one voice notices.
"She's here. Back bedroom."
I climb out the window with the master copy zipped against my chest and one boot on, drop the last six feet into the alley, and fall on my ankle that never fully forgave me for a trail run last spring.
Pain white-outs my vision, but I run on it anyway.
Behind me a man's head peeks through the window like he does it for a living, no grunt, no fumble, and that detail is what finally scares me all the way through, these aren't burglars startled off a score. These are professionals.
Main Street at eleven p.m. is closed, gold-lit and empty.
The pumpkins are stacked outside the hardware store.
The cider-donut chalkboard's still there, cheerful, obscene.
I cut behind the café where Amelia bought me coffee, through the little service lot, past the dumpsters, and I hear their muffled voices in the distance, it is much worse than shouting, just splitting up, the sound of a plan.
One's on the street, one's pacing me through the alleys, herding, and that's obvious because every fence I hit is on my left, funneling me toward the tree line at the town edge where there are no lights, no witnesses, and no cameras.
I stop funneling, and cut right instead, straight across someone's dark backyard, over a chain-link that splits my palm, into the woods on my own terms. The forest here drops fast toward the creek.
I've hiked this already, I know the route in daylight, all switchbacks and root-steps, but at night it's just black and loud with my own breathing.
I'd still rather gamble on terrain I've walked than on open pavement with two professionals.
The ankle gives out for real at the bottom of the slope, and I go down hard in the leaf litter. The man behind me is close enough now that I hear the specific sound of his footsteps crunching on the leaves.
Headlights swing across the trees, and an SUV comes off the fire road at an angle that shouldn't be possible for something that size, throwing dirt, and the passenger door is already open before it fully stops.
I don't think about who, I wouldn't be able to out-negotiate a gun.
I throw myself at the open door and a hand closes around my forearm, enormous, warm, dry, and hauls me up and in with an ease that would insult me if I had the spare capacity to be insulted.
"Down," Lucian says. "Floor. Now."
The door slams. Something hits the outside of it, but doesn't come through, and I understand from the sound alone that the panel is a great deal thicker than any car door has a right to be. We're moving before I've found my seat.
I come up off the floor swinging words instead of fists. "You. Of course it's you."
"Seatbelt."
"You sent them." My voice is doing something I don't authorize, cracking high. "You found out I was close and you sent men into my home to…"
"If I wanted your file, Ms. Holt, I'd have subpoenaed your firm.
I own better lawyers than that." His eyes stay on the mirrors, both hands loose on the wheel, taking the fire road's blind curves at a speed that pins me to the seat.
"The men in your apartment aren't mine. Put on your belt. This road gets worse."
"I'm supposed to believe…"
"You're not supposed to believe anything.
You're meant to survive the next few minutes.
" He checks the rearview, and his shoulders drop half an inch, and that involuntary tell does more to steady me than anything he's said.
"They pulled your power from the junction box, not the breaker. That's a crew. It's the kind you hire."
I clutch the document bag against my ribs. My palm is bleeding onto the good leather, but I have no care. "How did you know where I was?"
He's quiet a beat too long. "I've been keeping an eye on the town."
"That's not an answer."
The road smooths out. He eases off the throttle, and only then do I shake, one long violent shudder that runs through me and leaves my teeth chattering in a warm car.
He notices, and reaches back one-handed, without looking, and drops a folded wool blanket into my lap like he keeps one there for exactly this.
I don't thank him. I sit there bleeding on a billionaire's upholstery, wrapped in his blanket, hating that some traitor side of me feels safe.
"They took the drives," I say finally. "Both of them. The cloud copy's mirrored somewhere they'll never find, but they've got physical…"
His jaw does something controlled. "What did they not take?"
I glance down at the fireproof bag crushed to my chest, at my own arms locked around years of somebody's carefully hidden sins.
Lucian glances over for the first time since I got in his car. Whatever he reads on my face makes the corner of his mouth move, not quite a smile, more like grim recognition passing between two people who've each just learned the other is more dangerous than advertised.
"Good," he says softly. "Then hold onto it. You're going to need something to bargain with, and you're not going to like where I'm taking you."