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The school pin sat cold in Charlotte's palm. She'd been staring at it for two hours now, parked three blocks from Ivy's den, and she still couldn't make the edges fit. Lisa wore a uniform once. That much she remembered. Navy blazer. White collar. The rest was static.
She tried to picture the drop-off line. Tried to hear her kid's voice saying the school name. Nothing came.
Charlotte shoved the pin into her jacket pocket and checked the Glock's magazine. Fifteen rounds. She'd burned through two loops testing routes into Ivy's building. First time she'd gone through the garage—got clipped by Ivy's backup before she made it past the stairwell. Second time she'd tried the service entrance and walked into a motion sensor that lit her up like Christmas. This was loop sixty-eight. She was done being polite.
She crossed the street at 4:47 a.m. No pedestrians. No cabs. The city was still sleeping off Monday, and that gave her maybe ninety seconds before Ivy's perimeter guy radioed in. She pulled her hood up and kept her head down. The front door to the building was older than most of the tenants—heavy wood, brass handle worn smooth by a hundred years of hands. She tested it. Locked.
Charlotte pulled a bump key from her pocket and worked the pins. Three seconds. The lock turned, and she slipped inside.
The lobby smelled like old carpet and boiler steam. She bypassed the elevator and took the stairs two at a time. Ivy's office sat on the fourth floor, tucked behind a bookkeeping firm that existed only on paper. Charlotte had done her homework. Ivy ran her bets and her bribes out of that room, and if anyone had a line on Marcus's crew, it was her.
She reached the fourth-floor landing and paused. Voices drifted through the hallway—low, clipped, the kind of conversation people had when they didn't want to be overheard. Charlotte pressed herself against the wall and edged closer.
"—don't care what Wade promised you. I'm not holding contraband for a ghost."
That was Ivy. Sharp, impatient, the kind of voice that didn't waste time on pleasantries.
"Then don't hold it." The second voice was male, younger, and scared. "Just let me grab the file and go. I'll be out in five minutes."
"You think I'm stupid? The second you walk out that door, Wade's cleanup crew rolls in and torches this whole block. I've seen how he operates."
Charlotte's pulse kicked up. Wade's cleanup crew. That meant Marcus had more players in the field than she'd counted. She crept forward until she could see through the half-open door.
Ivy stood behind her desk, arms crossed, her black hair pulled into a tight bun. She wore a tailored blazer and an expression that could cut glass. Across from her, a skinny kid in a courier jacket shifted his weight from foot to foot. His hands were empty, but the bulge under his jacket said he was carrying.
The kid glanced at the desk. "The file's right there. Just let me—"
"Touch it and you're dead."
Charlotte stepped into the doorway. "She's not kidding."
Both of them froze. The kid's hand shot toward his jacket, but Charlotte already had the Glock leveled at his chest. "Don't."
Ivy's eyes narrowed. "Charlotte Grey. I should've known."
"Yeah, you should've." Charlotte kept the gun on the kid but shifted her stance so she could cover both of them. "Tell your errand boy to sit down and keep his hands where I can see them."
Ivy's mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. "He's not mine."
"Then he's Wade's."
The kid swallowed hard. "I'm just here to pick up the file. That's all. I don't want trouble."
"Too bad." Charlotte jerked the gun toward the chair in the corner. "Sit."
He sat.
Charlotte moved deeper into the room, keeping her back to the wall. The file Ivy mentioned sat in the center of the desk—a standard manila folder, maybe thirty pages thick. It looked harmless. It wasn't.
"What's in it?" Charlotte asked.
Ivy leaned back against the desk, her arms still crossed. "You tell me. You're the one who kicked down my door."
"I didn't kick anything. I used a bump key."
"Semantics."
Charlotte took another step forward. "Wade sent this kid to collect. That means whatever's in that file is worth killing for. So I'll ask again: what's in it?"
Ivy's gaze flicked to the kid, then back to Charlotte. "Insurance. Wade promised me a clean exit if I held onto it. Turns out his version of clean involves a body bag."
"Smart woman."
"I have my moments."
The kid shifted in his chair. "Look, I don't know what's in the file, okay? Wade just said to pick it up and bring it back. That's all."
Charlotte didn't lower the gun. "How much is he paying you?"
"Five grand."
"And you believed him?"
The kid's face went pale. He didn't answer.
Charlotte turned her attention back to Ivy. "Open it."
Ivy didn't move. "Why would I do that?"
"Because in about three minutes, Wade's crew is going to realize their delivery boy isn't coming back. When that happens, they're going to send someone bigger. Someone who doesn't knock."
Ivy's jaw tightened. "And you think you can stop them?"
"I think you want to live through the night. So open the file."
For a long moment, Ivy just stared at her. Then she reached for the folder.
The explosion came from the hallway.
Charlotte hit the floor as the door blew inward, chunks of wood and drywall raining down like shrapnel. Her ears rang. Smoke filled the room, thick and acrid, and she couldn't see more than two feet in front of her. She heard boots. Heavy. Multiple pairs.
"Get the file!" someone shouted.
Charlotte rolled behind the desk and came up firing. The first guy went down before he cleared the doorway. The second one got smart and ducked back into the hall. She counted three more shadows moving through the smoke.
Ivy was on the floor, blood streaming from a cut above her eyebrow. The kid was gone—either dead or smart enough to run. Charlotte grabbed the file off the desk and shoved it inside her jacket.
"Can you move?" she asked Ivy.
Ivy nodded, her face pale.
"Then move."
They crawled toward the back exit, staying low as bullets chewed through the walls above them. Charlotte returned fire twice more, just enough to keep the shooters honest. Her magazine was down to six rounds. Not enough.
They made it to the back stairwell. Charlotte kicked the door open and pulled Ivy through. The stairs were narrow, barely wide enough for one person, and they spiraled down into darkness. Charlotte went first, the Glock raised, her breathing shallow.
Behind them, boots hammered against the floor.
"They're coming," Ivy gasped.
"I know."
They hit the ground floor and burst into an alley that smelled like garbage and rain. Charlotte scanned left, then right. No shooters. Not yet.
"This way," she said.
They ran.
Two blocks later, Charlotte shoved Ivy into a recessed doorway and checked their six. No pursuit. Either Wade's crew lost them in the smoke, or they were regrouping. Either way, they had maybe five minutes.
Ivy leaned against the wall, her breathing ragged. "You just made me a target."
"You were already a target."
"Not like this."
Charlotte pulled the file from her jacket and flipped it open. The first page was a personnel roster—names, dates, photos. She recognized half of them. Mercs she'd worked with. Operators Wade had burned. The second page was a ledger. Payments. Offshore accounts. Enough evidence to bury Wade's entire operation.
But it was the third page that made her stop breathing.
A photo. Black and white. Grainy, like it had been pulled from surveillance footage. A little girl in a school uniform, standing beside a man in a dark coat.
The girl was nine years old. Navy blazer. White collar.
Lisa.
The man beside her was Marcus Wade.
Charlotte's hands shook. She stared at the photo, her mind racing, trying to pull the pieces together. Lisa. Marcus. The school pin. It all connected, but she couldn't see how.
Ivy wiped blood from her face and glanced at the file. "What is it?"
Charlotte didn't answer. She couldn't.
Because the date stamped in the corner of the photo was two days before Lisa disappeared.