ZARA — ROOFTOP ABOVE HANGER B — 00:20 AM.
London at night is a city of polite lights pretending nothing terrible lives underneath. From our rooftop, Hanger B looked small and stupid and exactly like a place you could hide a weapon the size of a problem.
I pulled the black beanie low, jammed my hands into my jacket, and tried to stop my knees from doing that traitor thing they do when I'm about to do something brave. Leo crouched beside me, breathing measured and calm in a way that made me both grateful and furious. Calm made me want to punch him. Gratitude made me want to kiss him. My emotional bandwidth was a mess.
"Two vans," he murmured into his comm. "One drops at 00:30, buyer exits in black coat. We go quiet, in from the south catwalk. Cameras are looped for six minutes thanks to Kai's friend—small miracle."
"Kai's friend?" I snorted. The thought of my ex-boyfriend pulling a favor for us made my stomach flip with nostalgia and irritation. "Do remind me later to bake him a cake."
"He hates cake," Leo said. "He prefers whiskey and regret. Which, honestly, is probably healthier."
We both snuck a smile and then broke it like glass. This is the part where people get shot.
The plan was neat on paper: slip onto the south catwalk, avoid the guard tower's blind spot, cut the crate seal, pull data drives, copy manifest, and extract. "Neat" was a word our line of work rarely earned.
We dropped down, metal cold biting my palms. The catwalk spit us out behind stacks of unlabeled pallets. The hanger doors were one hell of a mouth: wide, empty, with the soft hum of logistics. Leo switched on a small thermal and a faint green grid painted the space—two men pacing near the north door, three crates stacked center, one with a fresh seal.
"Target crate," I whispered.
"On my mark," he replied.
I moved like I'd done it a thousand times—silent steps, soft breath, hunted focus. The seam on the crate was lashed with NATO tape. I pulled the cutters from my belt, thinking of all the times a single snip has felt like defiance. A soft clanking noise behind me made me freeze. A cleaning drone—industrial, cylindrical—rolled between pallets. Someone upgraded security. Good. Or bad. Maybe both.
I slapped the cutters, ripped the straps, and shoved the lid. Inside: a black case and, taped to the inner lid, a ledger. Not yet the drive but an accountant's confession: invoices, codes, a list of shell companies. I slid the ledger out and flicked pages until one header made my vision narrow: AUTHORIZED: RF-312 — an inner tag we'd seen before. A signature line. Timestamp. Internal.
My chest went cold. RF—Rina Frost's handler code. I thought of the pub, her coffee-stiff face, the apology in her eyes. I thought of Noor's tablet. The pieces were tightening like a noose.
"Leo—" I breathed.
He'd already found the case. He thumbed a switch and a tiny light inside revealed a thumb drive. I stowed it in my pocket with trembling fingers.
"Get a shot of the ledger," he whispered. "We need this authenticated. Rina can explain. Or be the explanation."
I snapped pictures, careful and quick. A siren squealed in the distance and scraped the night like a dog in pain.
"Move," Leo said. "We copy and go."
We'd taken maybe forty seconds when a muffled voice barked near the far door. Footsteps. Too close. The cleaning drone rolled back toward us and paused like a bad omen. Someone had reprogrammed the loop times.
"Now we run," I said.
We bolted, shoving the crate lid back into place, and skittered along the catwalk. But the night had teeth. A guard—two actually—rounded the corner. One reached for the radio; the other saw me and his eyes narrowed with the kind of surprise that breeds violence.
I planted my palm against his chest, shoved, and he staggered back. Leo moved on instinct—he hit the man's wrist with the butt of his pistol, the radio flew, and the world dissolved into noise.
Scramble. Fight. The hanger that had been half-sleep roared awake. I ducked a swing, caught a glancing blow to my arm, and let the anger do the rest. When someone lunged, my knee found his thigh and then his jaw. He crumpled like a bad idea.
Leo yelled, "Go!" and we ran for the secondary exit, ledger and drive in tow. A flare of light licked the far door; someone had lit the yard.
Outside, a black van peeled away. Noor's courier was sprinting for it. Noor himself—pushed by panic—stumbled behind and tried to clamber into the back. Two men shoved the crate into the van and slammed the doors.
"Dammit," I cursed. "They're getting out."
Leo didn't argue. He hit the passcode on his comm: "Track—boot—now." We sprinted toward the loading ramp, boots spitting gravel.
A skiff horn sounded far away. I watched the van turn, hit the road, and vanish into the London night. We had the ledger; we had the drive. We didn't have Noor or the full file. It was a start and a burn and not enough.
I felt Leo's hand wrap around my wrist and pull me back into shadow. He didn't say it, but his jaw told me everything: we'd been seen by people we couldn't name. Someone had altered camera loops. Someone had spread a net.
I tasted adrenaline and fear and something else—a heat like a promise. I rounded on him. "Thoughts?"
He gave me that infuriating half-smile. "We bring this to Rina. Then we plan the strike. We make Noor regret his life choices."
"Or Aria makes us regret ours," I said.
He looked at me like he loved the edge of me. "Then we make her regret hiring actors."
We wrapped up, swallowed the city cold, and headed for the van. The ledger burned in my bag like proof and poison.
<<<<<
ARIA — ACROSS THE THAMES — A MOMENT.
She liked the curve of the city at night—a perfect set for a story about sins. She watched the van like a woman watching a lover walk away. The flare on the pier had been her flourish; the altered loop, her business card. Noor had been a pawn who thought himself a king. He'd fled like boys always do when the queen enters.
She flicked her cigarette and called it in. "They found a ledger. They took something," she told the voice at the other end—something she'd learned to call, because some men listen better if you use the right name.
"Accelerate," the voice said—soft, teeth covered in silk. "If they have proof, cut the coast. Move the transfer forward three days."
Aria smiled. "Very well. Let the inferno begin."
She dropped the phone into her pocket like it had been a live animal. She'd toyed with them long enough to enjoy the squeal. Now it was time to watch what they burned.
<<<<<
LEO — BACK IN THE VAN — 01:10 AM.
We ripped across town with the ledger between us like contraband truth. Rina had asked us to meet in a safehouse down by the dockyards—off-grid, paper-strewn, the kind of place that smells like second chances and old lies.
Rina was there. She looked smaller in the safehouse light—like the agency had chewed her up and spat her into someone pragmatic. Her eyes flicked to the ledger right away and then to the drive.
"You found something," she said.
I didn't bother with niceties. I set the drive on the table and pushed the pictures forward. "We got the ledger. It bears your handler code."
She flinched. "RF-312?"
"Yes," I said. "Timestamped. Internal auth."
For a second her face went carbon hard. Then she lifted and let a breath out like she'd been holding it. "It was supposed to be a clean bait. It was supposed to show the buyers. Someone misused the internal tag to make the transfer look sanctioned."
"Someone on our side helped them," Zara said. There was no question in her voice. She'd been furious and brave and worse, right. "Who?"
Rina's fingers trembled over a mug of coffee. "Either an insider with access or credentials forged to look like ours. Both are horrible."
"Rina," I said flat, "we were nearly killed tonight. Noor's van almost made it. Who else has access to those tags?"
She closed her eyes and said, quietly, "There are—three—levels of authorization. One is the handler code. One is a regional ops token. The last is executive override. All three can plant internal tags. If someone had both the handler code and an override or had the power to spoof it, they could hide behind HQ."
I let that sit. My stomach did that slow-turning thing. "So it's either very good forgery or someone high up."
"Or both." She put her hands flat on the ledger like she was trying to flatten the world into something readable. "I don't yet know who. I'm chasing logs. I'm begging favors. But if Viper has found a way into our systems—if he has inside men—then we need to move faster than we thought."
Zara slammed a palm on the table—a small, human shock. "Then we find Noor's buyer," she said. "Follow the money, find the buyer, then the shell, then Viper."
"The buyer is moving the transfer earlier," Rina said. "Aria forced Noor's hand. Move up by three days. They'll push it from Heathrow to an airfield in Kent. We have coordinates. You'll need support."
We looked at each other. The irony was sharp. The agency that should protect us looked like a club with a hole in the roof.
Leo put his hand on my knee and squeezed. A small, ridiculous human thing to steady a world. "We've got this," he said. "We're stubborn, and we get louder when cornered."
Rina snorted, brief and dark. "You always did make too much noise."
"I prefer music to silence," Zara shot back.
Rina's eyes were wet for a split second. "Then let's make music—loud enough to wake the dead."
<<<<<
ZARA — OUTSIDE THE SAFEHOUSE — 02:20 AM.
We left the folding table of truth behind and walked into a night that felt colder and closer to the way a tiger breathes. The ledger in my bag sang like a guilty thing. The drive sat heavy in my pocket like a promise.
Leo's hand found mine as we crossed the street. "We'll intercept," he said. "We'll get the buyer, we'll trace the shell, and then we'll find Viper."
"Sounds like a plan," I said. "Sounds like madness."
He smiled that crooked grin and I felt the old terrible wash of something like love. "Madness is underrated."
We were tired and furious and alive. The ledger didn't solve everything; it only showed the next step. Aria would move faster. Viper would close ranks. The agency was a hollow tree with beetles chewing inside.
But we had one thing: proof, dirt, a path. We had each other and the dangerous kind of faith that comes when you've already danced with death. We walked away from the safehouse into a city that thought its secrets were safe. They were not.