ZARA — SAFEHOUSE, PRE-DAWN.
We moved like people who have learned to pack their panic into pockets. The safehouse smelled of burnt coffee and old paper. The ledger lay open on the table: shell companies, routing numbers, names that felt like knives. The thumb drive stashed in Leo's pocket hummed like a sleeping thing.
Kai was there before dawn, hair still damp from the night, a local grin that never fully let him be taken seriously. He'd pulled favors—manifest forgery, a GPS spoof to misroute CCTV feeds, and a planted buyer profile dressed in a black coat and terrible shoes. Kai's friends owed him. He repaid them with whisky and an island's worth of charm.
"You sure you want me as the buyer?" he asked, voice rough. "I get nervous when I have to look important."
"You being nervous is exactly why you're perfect," I said. He huffed and then kissed my temple like he had the right. The moment landed soft and terrible; for a second I felt every memory of him—first kiss, backyard promises—then I shoved it down. We had a job.
Rina briefed us quietly. "Kent airfield. Buyer arrives 00:30. We plant the decoy crate—you take the manifest. Noor's buyer will be forced to take his hand; we'll have deniable backup watching the run. If the transfer is real, we stop the flight. If it's a decoy, we follow money trails. Keep the ledger visible. Force reaction."
Leo checked and rechecked the tech: signal jammers, a compact thermal, a lens he palmed like a coin. "If they accelerate," he said, "we pivot. Don't go after the plane if the buyer bails to a road transfer. We tail."
Rina's jaw tightened. "Aria will be watching. She always watches. Expect improvisation."
We trained five breaths, then flattened ourselves to the plan: Kai as buyer, Zara as decoy courier, Leo as extraction. It was elegant in the way a knife can be elegant.
<<<<<
LEO — AIRFIELD PERIMETER, NIGHT.
The Kent airfield breathed cold and empty. Hangars like sleeping teeth; wind kicking grit up the runway. The decoy crate sat on a pallet, a bland wooden box with the right kind of official tape. The ledger was underneath, visible when we wanted it to be.
We watched the GPS dots glow on Kai's phone—dot approaching, dot slowing. Noor's man was due. Our planted team snaked under netting and shadow. Rina's team held overwatch two blocks away with deniable assets ready to pounce.
"On my mark," I said into Zara's ear. "Kai walks up, acts nervous, hands over a throwaway drive. Noor's buyer shows greed. We take him."
Her hand found mine. It was small. It felt like gravity. "Then we trace and burn," she whispered.
Kai played his part: awkward steps, a cough, the genuine tremor of someone suddenly very anxious with a heavy wallet. He exchanged the drive with me as if the thing were a secret between childhood friends. Noor's man didn't hesitate; money snaps a person into a quick animal.
Then nothing went right. A flare—unexpected, bright—lit the perimeter. Someone had already triggered a stray light. Then three men in black sprinted down from the hangar roof, and a van peeled out from behind a line of crates.
Aria moved in the middle of it like choreography—controlled, beautiful, terrifying. She wasn't meant to be here. She had been here. My bones went cold.
Gunfire opened; it was quick and efficient. Our overwatch answered; Rina's team moved. The buyer—our planted bait—was shoved to the ground. Noor's buyer? Not the man in the van. Someone else boarded the skiff at the far side. The transfer was already happening. Aria had pulled the timeline forward.
"Noor's buyer moved early," I shouted into the radio. "We've missed the window. He's taking the cargo by road."
Kai scrambled up—he didn't look like a buyer anymore. He looked angry, dangerous. He scrambled after the van. I followed, adrenaline a clean, sharp thing in my throat. Zara stayed, checking the ledger, fingers moving like a medic's. We cut over crates, boots slapping. A cargo loader swung a chain. A hand grazed my shoulder; a bullet went into the crate beside me. I never knew how loud fear could be until the world shrank to sound and the scent of diesel.
The van roared, lights blasting. Noor's courier inside leaned out and threw a satchel into the back. I saw a flash of paper—an air manifest—and then they were gone, swallowed by night and motorway. We couldn't chase everything. The team split: Kai and two men in hot pursuit; Rina's backup backtracked to the hanger to secure manifest copies and interview witnesses; Zara and I chased the only trace left—the buyer's phone ping that led toward a service road.
We cornered a driver in a lay-by. He was sweating like a confessional. He had the manifest. The buyer was a broker who thought himself untouchable. He begged, in three languages, for mercy until my boot pressed into the seat of his fear. He gave us a flight number, a small airfield outside London. He gave us a name: Goliath-11. He begged us to forget he'd ever moved anyone. People like that always thought you were an audience, not the law.
Kai returned late and cursing, shaking. Noor's courier had a sprained ankle. They'd lost the van at a roundabout. "Aria had muscle," he panted. "She moved them like a dance. She's tightening the screws."
We had the manifest fragments and the buyer's route. We hadn't stopped the transfer. We hadn't caught Noor with the drive. But we had data—payment confirmations stamped with shell accounts. The ledger moved us closer. That was the thread.
<<<<<
ARIA — HOTEL ROOM, LONDON EDGE.
She watched them scatter like ants and felt that far-off satisfaction a maestro gets when every instrument plays the note he trained it to play.
"I told you to push it forward," she said into the secure line. "Did you expect them to be on time? They'll always be late. Make the transfer now—no more courtesy."
The voice on the line was the sort that costs men money and souls. Consider it done. Goliath moves tonight. Aria tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled at the sound of their floundering. Noor's men ran; Kai's friends chased ghosts. The ledger moved, but so did the flames. If Leo and Zara wanted a ledger, she would give them one with a live wire. If Rina wanted to burn a mole into daylight, Aria would let her, and then she would strike the match.
She thought of Leo: the way his jaw tightened when failing; the way he kissed the ground between fights like it was an altar. She thought how good he looked making promises he didn't yet keep. She liked breaking men she'd made soft. She liked making them remember.
"Move the plane to the coast," she whispered. "And keep the buyer in the dark. Let them fight the shadows."
<<<<<
ZARA — SAFEHOUSE, WOUNDED BUT BREATHING.
We came home bruised and breathing hard. The ledger felt heavier because it had been chased tonight through blood and smoke. We had names and shell accounts, a partial manifest and a dozen angry men who'd refused to do the right thing.
Rina met us with a look that had both apology and orders. "You did good," she said, plain. "You've got what we need to trace funds. The manifest points to a clearing-house in Cyprus—no direct link, but enough to pull strings."
"Aria got ahead," I said. "She accelerated the transfer." Rage sat in my throat. "She's playing chess with gasoline."
Rina's eyes narrowed. "Then we burn the board differently. The buyer will land at a private strip. We know the tail now. We set a trap and we don't go in blind." She slid coordinates across the table. "Midnight. A week. Goliath-11 will touch down. We have a window."
Leo's hand found mine, old habit, a small unshakable thing. "We fix this," he said. "We trace the money, we trace the plane, we find Viper."
I wanted to say everything—about Kai's laugh and the memory of his first kiss, about how tired I was of the pain that kept trailing me. Instead I let him squeeze my hand and said, "We go together."
He leaned in and kissed the corner of my mouth—quick, almost a joke. It landed like a promise.
We were tired, angry, and still alive. We had proof, jagged and incomplete, and a path to follow. Aria had moved first tonight. That meant she believed we would follow. So we would. We would follow her into the dark, and we would not come out the same.