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"You're asking me to trust you when you broke into my home to kill me."
Sienna's standing three feet away, arms crossed, that same ice-queen face she wore when I tackled her out of the sniper line ten minutes ago. The burn scar on her left collarbone catches the dim emergency light. She's not bleeding anymore, but her sleeve's torn where the bullet grazed her.
I can't hear her footsteps. Can't hear the rain hammering the windows or the fire alarm that's probably still screaming two floors down. Loop four took my hearing. I'm reading her lips and watching her hands.
"I didn't come here to kill you," I say. My own voice sounds like it's coming through water. "I came here because you're going to die today. Your countdown—"
"My what?"
I stop. She doesn't know. Of course she doesn't know. Nobody knows except me and the timers I've been seeing since I was nineteen.
"Never mind," I say. "The guy in the vent. Marcus. He's your business partner, right?"
Her mouth tightens. That's a yes.
"He just tried to put a bullet in your spine," I say. "You want to stand here and call me the threat, or you want to figure out why he wants you dead?"
Sienna doesn't move. Her fingers drum once against her forearm, then stop. She's thinking. Good. I need her thinking, not panicking, because Marcus is still in this building and the countdown over her head says she's got nine hours left.
"Why do you care?" she asks.
Here we go.
"Six years ago, my sister Mia disappeared," I say. "Last trail goes to you. I don't care about your art deals or whatever blood money you're brokering. I just want to know where she is."
Sienna's face doesn't change, but something flickers behind her eyes. Recognition. She knows the name.
"I don't know a Mia," she says.
"Liar."
I take a step forward. She doesn't back up. There's a knife block on the counter between us. Her gaze flicks to it, then back to me.
"You knew her," I say. "You did a deal with her, or she saw something she shouldn't have, or maybe you just sold her to someone who needed a loose end tied. I don't care which. I want a location."
"And if I don't have one?"
"Then you die tonight," I say, "and I wake up twelve hours earlier and do this whole thing again. Except next loop I lose another sense. Maybe my sight. Maybe my sense of balance. Eventually I won't be able to save you at all."
Sienna's eyes narrow. She's trying to figure out if I'm insane or telling the truth. Fair. I sound insane.
"You're saying you've done this before," she says slowly.
"Four times. You died in the study the first time. Poison dart, hidden in the air vent. Second time Marcus shot you in the kitchen. Third time the penthouse caught fire and you suffocated before I could get you out. Fourth time—" I stop. She doesn't need to know I held her while she bled out, her timer hitting zero in my arms. "Fourth time didn't work either."
Sienna watches me for a long moment. Then she walks past me to the kitchen island, pulls open a drawer, and takes out a small black tablet. She taps the screen twice, then sets it down facing me.
It's security footage. Four camera angles, all timestamped tonight. The first one shows me climbing in through the balcony door at 6:47 PM. The second shows me dragging Sienna behind the couch when the vent cover falls. The third shows Marcus dropping into the hallway, gun drawn.
The fourth one makes my stomach drop.
It's from a camera I didn't know existed, mounted in the corner of the study. The angle catches the wall safe, half-open. And standing in front of it, pulling out a slim red folder, is Mia.
She's older. Her hair's longer. But it's her.
The timestamp says the footage is from six years ago. May fourteenth. The night she vanished.
"That's the last time I saw her," Sienna says quietly. She's standing right next to me now. I didn't hear her move. "She came here to steal something. I caught her. We made a deal."
"What kind of deal?"
"The kind that keeps both of us alive," Sienna says. "She took the file. I didn't report it. She promised she'd disappear and never surface again."
"What was in the file?"
Sienna's jaw tightens. "Proof that Marcus and I killed someone."
The room goes very still.
"It was self-defense," Sienna says. Her voice is flat, no excuse in it, just fact. "A client got violent. Marcus panicked and shot him. We buried the body and faked the paperwork. Your sister found the original contracts. She said if anything happened to her, the file would go public. So I let her walk."
"And Marcus wants you dead because—"
"Because I'm the only other person who knows," Sienna finishes. "If I'm gone, he's got no loose ends. He can take over the network, rebrand, and pretend I was the liability all along."
I stare at the screen. Mia's face is turned slightly away from the camera, but in the last frame she glances up. Her lips move.
I can't hear it. But I know what she's saying.
Val.
My name.
"Where is she now?" I ask.
Sienna shakes her head. "I don't know. That was the deal. She disappears, I don't look."
"Bullshit. You brokered underground deals for six years and you never tried to track her down? Never checked if the file was still out there?"
Sienna's hand moves fast. She grabs the knife from the block and holds it out to me, handle first.
"Take it," she says.
I don't move.
"You want proof I'm not lying?" Sienna says. Her voice is low, steady. "Take the knife. I'll turn around. If I'm setting you up, you'll know in the next ten seconds. If I'm telling the truth, then we both need to get out of this building before Marcus comes back."
I look at the knife. Then at her face. The countdown over her head ticks down: eight hours, fifty-three minutes.
"Why would you do that?" I ask.
"Because you're the only person in this room who's seen me die four times and still came back," Sienna says. "And because I want to live."
She's still holding the knife out.
I take it.
Sienna turns her back to me. Her shoulders are tight, but she doesn't flinch. I can see the pulse in her neck, fast but controlled. She's scared. But she's not running.
I lower the knife.
"Marcus has another safe," Sienna says over her shoulder. "In his office downtown. If your sister left any trail, it's there. But we need to move now, before he figures out I'm still alive."
I'm about to answer when the tablet screen flickers. A new notification pops up. Security breach. Basement level.
Sienna spins around. Her face goes white.
"He's cutting the power," she says.
The lights go out.
I can't hear the building's emergency generator kicking in. Can't hear Sienna's breathing. I reach for her in the dark and catch her wrist. Her skin's cold.
Then the tablet screen lights up again. New footage. Live feed.
It's the basement. Marcus is standing in front of the electrical panel, prying open the cover. But he's not alone.
There's someone standing behind him.
A woman. Long hair. Slim red folder tucked under one arm.
The camera angle shifts. She turns toward the lens.
It's Mia.
She looks directly into the camera. Her lips move.
Val.