Chapter 6: Garrett
The name on the drive was Garrett.
Nora sat in her car outside the warehouse and read the first document on her laptop with the drive plugged in.
His full name.
His rank.
Twelve years of payments routed through three shell accounts, each one connected to a transit corridor the Meridian Group controlled.
The amounts were not small.
She read it twice.
Then she sat back and looked through the windshield at the empty street.
She had known, in the way you know things you can't prove, since the afternoon he'd called her into his office and delivered his rehearsed line about Callum resigning for personal reasons.
She had known and she had walked away because she had nothing, and because the people who had nothing and said something out loud had a habit of becoming the next name on a restricted file.
Now she had something.
She pulled out her phone and called a number she had kept but never used.
It rang four times.
"Voss." The voice on the other end was alert despite the hour.
Special Agent Dana Marsh, currently with the financial crimes division of a federal oversight body that operated independently of the department Garrett ran.
Nora had worked one case alongside her eight years ago.
Marsh was precise, careful, and had no patience for people who wasted her time.
"I have a drive," Nora said.
"Eighteen months of documented financial activity connecting a senior department official to an identity trafficking network.
I also have a witness willing to testify and an embedded source who has been feeding intelligence from inside the network for the past year and a half."
Silence for three seconds.
"Where are you?" Marsh said.
"South side.
Carver Street."
"Don't move.
Don't send the drive electronically.
Don't call anyone else." A pause.
"Is the source safe right now?"
"No," Nora said.
"That's the problem."
"How long do we have?"
"Forty-eight hours.
Possibly less."
Another pause.
Longer this time.
"I'm going to make two calls.
Stay where you are."
The line went quiet but didn't drop.
Nora could hear Marsh moving, a door closing, another phone being picked up.
She watched the street.
Nothing moved.
Eight minutes later Marsh came back.
"I have a team I can trust.
We can be at your location in forty minutes.
But Voss — if this drive is what you say it is, the moment we execute on it, Garrett will know.
He has enough reach to make things complicated very fast."
"I know," Nora said.
"Are you ready for that?"
Nora thought about Callum's last message.
The signal that meant compromised.
The forty-eight hours that were already running.
"He's been inside for eighteen months," she said.
"I'm ready."
"Forty minutes," Marsh said.
"Don't move."
Nora set the phone on the passenger seat.
She looked at the drive in her hand.
Small enough to lose in a coat pocket.
Heavy enough to end a career, close a network, and bring a man who had spent twelve years selling people's identities back into the light where he belonged.
Her phone buzzed.
Text message.
Unknown number — the same format as before, scrubbed and clean.
*He knows you have the drive.
He's already moving.*
She looked up.
Headlights at the far end of the street.
A dark sedan, moving slowly.
Not a patrol speed.
May you like
A looking speed.
She started the car.
