Ghost called back in three hours and forty-one minutes.
I was back at the warehouse.
Sitting on the floor against the metal table with my jacket off and Richard's ring turning slowly on my finger. I hadn't moved in two hours. Just sat there running every angle through my head like a machine that couldn't shut off.
Seventy-two hours.
Now sixty-eight.
Phone rang once before I picked it up.
"Talk."
"Okay so." Ghost's voice was young. Early twenties maybe. Always sounded like he was slightly out of breath, like his brain moved faster than his mouth and his mouth was always trying to catch up. "The wallet. I found the network signature. Took three trace layers to get through the encryption but it's there."
"Location?"
"That's the part you're not going to like."
"Ghost."
"The kill switch isn't on a device." Keyboard sounds. "It's biometric. Tied to a pulse monitor. Subcutaneous. Meaning it's under someone's skin, Sam. Implanted. The wallet stays locked as long as that pulse keeps transmitting. Signal drops" He paused. "Broadcast goes out to every federal watchlist you don't want to be on. Simultaneously. No delay."
I stared at the wall.
"Whose pulse."
"Alexei Volkov."
There it was.
I pressed two fingers into the brand on my shoulder until the pain sharpened everything back into focus.
"Can you kill the signal without killing the source?"
More keyboard sounds. Longer this time.
"Maybe. The transmitter has to be within forty feet of the wallet for the pairing to work. That's the range limit on the hardware. So if you move the wallet far enough away from Alexei, the pairing breaks and the switch triggers automatically." He paused. "But if I can get into the firmware of the transmitter itself"
"Can you."
"I need the serial number of the wallet. It's engraved on the back, eight digits."
I was already walking to the safe.
Spun the combination. Opened it. Pulled out the wallet. Turned it over.
Read him the number.
More typing.
"Okay. Okay yeah I'm in the firmware database. I can write a patch. A loop that keeps sending the alive signal even if the source goes dark." He stopped typing. "Sam."
"Yeah."
"You're asking me to help you kill someone."
"I'm asking you to write a patch."
Silence.
"How much?" he asked.
"Five million."
Keyboard sounds immediately.
"Give me twelve hours."
"You have eight."
He hung up.
I put the wallet back in the safe.
Locked it.
Stood there with my hand on the cold metal door thinking about a man walking around somewhere in this city with a transmitter sewn under his skin like he was untouchable.
Smart.
Alexei was smart.
Viktor had been loud and brutal and that's why he was gone. Alexei was quiet. Methodical. The kind of man who plans three steps ahead and then plans what happens if all three steps fail.
But smart men have one weakness.
They fall in love with their own cleverness.
They build these perfect systems and they get comfortable inside them. They stop thinking about the person on the other side who has nothing to lose and fourteen years of training and a dead father to answer for.
I picked up a burner phone.
Different one. Clean.
Dialed a number I pulled from Ghost's trace file.
It rang four times.
"Da." Male voice. Older. Careful.
Petrov.
"This is Invincible," I said.
Long silence.
When he spoke again his voice had changed. Still careful. But something underneath it now. Something that wasn't quite fear but was fear's next door neighbor.
"I wondered when you would call."
"I want a meeting."
"That's not"
"Not a negotiation. Not a threat. A conversation. One hour. You pick the place. Somewhere public if it makes you feel better." I kept my voice flat. "I have information that changes the terms of everything Alexei thinks he controls. You want to hear it before he does. Trust me on that."
Another silence.
"The diner on Atlantic Avenue," he said. "Halftime. One hour."
"I'll be there in forty-five."
Petrov was already in a booth when I walked in.
Sixties. Grey at the temples. Thick through the shoulders in a way that said he used to be dangerous and still remembered how. Dark coat. Hands around a coffee mug. Eyes that went to the door the second I pushed through it and didn't leave me until I sat down across from him.
I didn't take my jacket off.
Waitress came.
I ordered coffee I wasn't going to drink.
She left.
Petrov looked at me the way men look at things they're trying to decide whether to be afraid of.
"You're younger than I expected," he said.
"You're older than you should be," I said. "Given what you've been involved in."
His jaw tightened slightly.
"You said you had information."
"I do." I wrapped both hands around the coffee mug. Looked at him steady. "But first I want to ask you something. How long have you been handling transfers for the Volkov family?"
"That's not relevant"
"Eleven years," I said. "I know. Ghost pulled your full file. Eleven years of moving money for people who would erase you the second you became inconvenient." I tilted my head. "How's that working out."
He said nothing.
"The Lisbon job," I said. "You brokered it. You found me, you set the terms, you arranged the contract. You also arranged for everyone else who knew about it to be dead by the next morning." I paused. "Except me. Which was either a mistake or a test."
"Business," he said. Flat.
"Right." I nodded slowly. "Business. That's what I want to talk about." I leaned forward slightly. "Tell me something, Petrov. Under commercial law, real law, not mob handshake law, what happens to a contract when the contracting party dies?"
He blinked.
"What?"
"Simple question. You're a man who moves money for a living. You understand contracts. What happens to a business claim when the claimant is dead?"
He stared at me.
"It dies with them," I said. "That's not opinion. That's law. Every jurisdiction on earth. A claim requires a living legal entity to hold it. No entity, no claim." I sat back. "Richard Moretti is dead. Has been dead since December 14, 2009. The original transaction — the one the Volkovs are claiming gave them ownership rights over that crypto — was made by a dead man. Through dead accounts. Under a dead organization."
Petrov's eyes were very still now.
"There is no living legal party with a legitimate claim to that wallet," I said. "Not in any court. Not on any continent. Alexei can scream ownership until his throat bleeds. It means nothing. The wallet passed through a dead man's hands into mine. In the absence of a legal claimant it belongs to whoever holds it."
I let that sit for a second.
"That's me," I said.
"Alexei will not see it that way."
"I know. Alexei doesn't care about law. He cares about power." I nodded. "But you're not Alexei. You're a businessman. And you're smart enough to understand that you are currently sitting in the middle of something that only ends one way for everyone involved." I looked at him. "Except the person who steps out of the middle."
Petrov looked at his coffee.
Long silence.
The diner moved around us. Plates. Conversation. A TV above the counter showing weather.
Normal world.
So close.
"What do you want from me?" he said quietly.
"The transmitter specs. The exact model, the surgical details, who implanted it and where." I kept my voice low and even. "And whatever direct communication channel you use with Alexei. All of it."
"And if I give you that."
"You walk out of this booth. You take your family — yes I know about the daughter in Boston and the wife in Bensonhurst — you take them somewhere warm and far away. You don't move the accounts. You don't contact Alexei. You don't exist for six months." I held his gaze. "After that, whatever's left standing is not your problem."
He looked at me for a long time.
I let him look.
"You're eight years old in that fire," he said quietly.
My blood went cold.
"I was there," he said. "Not inside. But I drove one of the cars." He looked at his hands. "I was twenty-six. New to the organization. They didn't tell me what the job was until we were already there." He paused. "I heard you crying in the van. The whole drive."
The diner noise felt very far away suddenly.
I didn't move.
Didn't speak.
Because if I opened my mouth right now something would come out that would end this conversation in a way I couldn't take back.
"I thought about that night for a long time," he said.
"Don't." My voice came out quieter than I meant it to. "Don't tell me you felt bad. Don't tell me you lost sleep. I don't want it."
He closed his mouth.
Good.
"The specs," I said. "The channel. Now."
He reached into his coat.
Pulled out a phone.
Slid it across the table.
"Everything's on there," he said. "The surgeon who did the implant is a man named Dravic. Works out of a clinic in Greenpoint. Private. Off books." He paused. "The transmitter has a manual override port. Dravic kept it in case Alexei ever needed it removed. Size of a pen cap. Magnetic."
I picked up the phone.
"The communication channel?"
"Encrypted app. Third icon from the left. Password is Volkov1989." He almost smiled. Not warm. Just tired. "He's not as smart about passwords as he is about everything else."
I stood up.
Looked down at him.
"Warm," I said. "And far."
He nodded once.
I left the coffee untouched and walked out.
I sat in the car for a while.
Hands on the wheel.
Not driving.
Just sitting.
*I heard you crying in the van. The whole drive.*
I pressed my forehead against the steering wheel and breathed.
In.
Out.
In.
I was not eight years old.
I was not in a van.
I was twenty-two years old with 2.7 billion dollars and a gun at my waist and a hacker building me a backdoor into a dead man's switch and I was going to end this.
I lifted my head.
Rolled my shoulders.
Put the car in drive.
I drove to Greenpoint at midnight.
The clinic was above a dry cleaner on a quiet street. No sign outside. Just a buzzer with no name on it and a camera above the door angled to catch your face before you got close enough to ring.
I came from the roof instead.
Access through the building next door. Fire escape. Roof crossing. Skylights on the clinic roof, one of them old enough that the latch didn't catch properly.
I was inside in under two minutes.
Dravic was asleep on a cot in the back room.
Clinic was his whole life apparently. Lived where he worked. Sad in a way I didn't have time to think about.
I turned a light on.
He woke up swinging.
Old instinct. Former military maybe. But former is the word that matters. I caught his wrist, turned it, put him back down on the cot without breaking anything.
He looked up at me breathing hard.
Sixty something. Thin. Glasses on the nightstand. Eyes that adjusted fast to the situation. Smart man. Knew immediately that swinging again would be the wrong choice.
"Petrov sent you?" he guessed.
"Petrov's retired," I said. "I need the override tool for the Volkov implant."
He looked at me for a long second.
"That device is the only thing keeping a very dangerous man from"
"I know what it's doing," I said. "I need the override. Magnetic port, pen cap size. Ghost tells me it disables the transmission signal on the implant without triggering the broadcast. That right?"
Dravic blinked at the mention of Ghost.
Decided not to ask.
"Yes," he said carefully. "It creates a thirty second window. Signal reads as alive to the wallet pairing. Thirty seconds, then the implant resets and resumes normal transmission."
"Thirty seconds."
"That's the window I built in. Safety measure in case of accidental signal loss during removal."
Thirty seconds was enough.
More than enough.
"Where is it."
He got up slowly. Went to a locked cabinet on the wall. Opened it with a key from around his neck. Reached in.
Brought out something that looked exactly like a pen cap. Matte black. Small magnet on one end.
He held it out.
I took it.
"You're going to kill him," Dravic said.
"That's not your business."
"He's my patient."
I looked at him.
"He's the man who ordered the murder of my father when I was eight years old," I said. "He's the man who has been running a criminal organization that has killed God knows how many people. He's the man who sent a photograph of a girl I care about to tell me she's next." I closed my hand around the override tool. "He stopped being just your patient a long time ago."
Dravic said nothing.
I walked to the door.
"Warm," I said. "And far. You too."
I was back at the warehouse by 2 AM.
Ghost called at 2:17.
"Patch is done," he said. "Firmware loop is live. Whenever you use that override tool it buys you thirty seconds like the doc said. After that my patch kicks in and keeps the signal running indefinitely. Wallet stays locked. No broadcast." He paused. "You're clear."
"Good work."
"Sam." He hesitated. "Be careful."
Coming from a man I'd never met in person who I knew only as a voice and a username, it landed strangely.
"Always," I said.
I hung up.
Sat in the quiet warehouse.
Opened Alexei's communication app on Petrov's phone.
Looked at the chat history.
Alexei had sent one message three hours ago.
*Clock is running, little prince. Tick tock.*
I smiled.
Typed back slowly.
*Clocks only work if someone winds them. Dead men don't wind clocks. Dead men don't hold contracts. Dead men don't make claims.*
*Come out from behind your wall, Alexei.*
*Let's finish what your family started.*
I put the phone down.
Picked up Richard's ring.
Held it in my palm.
Fourteen years of promises.
Sixty-one hours left on their clock.
Didn't matter.
I wasn't running on their clock anymore.
Send me a location, I thought. Come out and play.
My phone buzzed.
Not Alexei's channel.
My real phone.
*Katie 🍑: can't sleep. you okay out there?*
I looked at the message for a long time.
Then at the ring in my hand.
Then at the override tool on the table next to three loaded guns and a dead man's phone.
I typed back.
*Sam: Still standing. Go to sleep, Katie.*
*Katie 🍑: only if you promise you're coming back.*
The warehouse was cold and quiet and smelled like gun oil and river water and fourteen years of unfinished business.
*Sam: I promise.*
I meant it more than I'd meant anything in a long time.
I put Richard's ring back on my finger.
Leaned back.
Closed my eyes.
Sixty-one hours.
Alexei was going to come out from behind his wall.
Because men like him can't resist when you poke the thing they're most proud of.
Their power.
Their system.
Their perfect untouchable design.
I'd just told him his design was broken.
He'd come.
And when he did, thirty seconds was all I needed.