He was building a case.”

Mara’s throat tightened.

“What was the payment?”

“I don’t know.

That is why the bracelet matters.

Maybe he hid the answer before he died.”

The elevator shuddered and continued down.

Mara studied Dominic’s face in the dim reflection.

“And the voice on the phone?”

“Someone who wants the ledger before I give it to prosecutors.”

“Were you going to?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

He hesitated too long.

Mara smiled without warmth.

“After you controlled the damage.”

“After I knew which innocent people would burn with the guilty.”

“You mean which guilty people you still care about.”

Dominic accepted that like a deserved blow.

The doors opened to the parking level.

Soren waited by a black sedan under a low concrete ceiling.

The air smelled of oil and rainwater.

He looked past Dominic once, toward the ramp.

“Two cars at the east gate,” he said.

“Not ours.”

Dominic handed him the document case.

“Keep this on you.”

Mara noticed the exchange.

“The ledger is leaving with him?”

“It is safer if no one knows which of us has it.”

Soren’s gaze moved to her.

“Miss Ellison, stay low in the back seat.”

They drove out under the west ramp into a hard gray rain.

The city blurred around them, all glass and brake lights.

Mara sat in the back beside Dominic, the bracelet cold in her fist.

Soren drove without speaking.

No one followed for the first ten blocks.

Then a white van appeared behind them.

Dominic saw it at the same moment Soren did.

“Do not speed,” Dominic said.

“I know,” Soren replied.

The van stayed two cars back through three turns.

Mara forced herself not to look over her shoulder.

Panic would not help.

She watched Dominic instead.

He had one hand near his jacket, the other resting on the seat between them, palm down.

His face was composed, but there was a fine tension at the corner of his mouth.

“You are angry at me,” he said quietly.

Mara almost laughed.

“This seems like a strange time to check.”

“If something happens before I can say it, I need you to know anger is not all you are entitled to.”

Her chest tightened despite herself.

Soren turned sharply into an underground service lane behind a row of warehouses.

The van did not follow.

Either they had lost it or whoever drove it no longer needed to be close.

Pier 6 looked smaller than Mara remembered and larger than her grief.

The old customs storage facility crouched beneath the main deck, a concrete level with rusted doors, security cameras, and the wet metallic smell of the river.

Eight years ago, she had stood behind police tape above this place and watched smoke climb into the morning.

Now she walked beside the man whose family might have lit the match.

The storage corridor in the video was real.

Fluorescent lights flickered overhead.

Rows of lockers lined the walls, their paint chipped, their numbers stenciled in black.

B-12.

B-13.

B-14.

Mara’s breath shortened.

B-17 sat near the end, half-hidden behind a rolling cart.

No one waited beside it.

That felt worse.

Soren handed Dominic the document case and checked the corridor behind them.

“We have five minutes before anyone notices the camera loop.”

Dominic looked at Mara.

“The