"Clare thought she had hired a fake boyfriend for one night—until a mysterious photograph revealed Vincent knew something about her missing brother. "

Clare’s heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird.

She backed away from the sink, staring at the brass key.

He’s been here, she realized, her throat drying out instantly. Daniel was inside this safehouse.

She looked back at the closed bathroom door. She could hear the faint, steady clicking of Vincent’s keyboard from the main room. He was completely absorbed in analyzing the digital metadata of the photograph.

She picked up the brass key, slipped it into her pocket, and silently turned the door handle.

The hallway was pitch-black, save for the blue spill of light from the main server room at the end of the corridor. To her left was a narrow utility closet filled with spare air filters, cleaning solvents, and electrical junction boxes.

Clare slipped into the closet, pulling the door shut until only a hairline gap remained.

She dropped to her knees on the cold concrete floor, her hands sweeping across the baseboard until her fingers caught on a loose seam in the plywood flooring. She pulled the board up with a soft CREAK.

Beneath the floorboard lay a shallow, moisture-sealed steel box.

She brought the brass key out of her pocket, inserted it into the keyhole, and turned it.

The lock popped open with a quiet click.

Inside lay three items:

A thick, leather-bound journal filled with dense, handwritten notes.

A black USB drive marked with a strip of yellow tape.

A small silver locket containing a photograph of Clare and Daniel when they were children, sitting on the hood of their father's old station wagon.

Tears welled in Clare's eyes as she touched the silver locket. She picked up the journal and opened it to the last entry, dated three days ago.

To whoever finds this first—hopefully Clare.

If you are reading this, Vincent has brought you to the Port Townsend grid. That means Vance is closing in, and Vincent still believes I betrayed him.

I didn't take the twenty-four million, Clare. I never had the bonds. The courier run at Blaine was a trap engineered by Vincent's handler—a man named Marcus Vance, Nikolai's brother.

Vincent doesn't know the truth. He thinks he was an innocent extraction security guard. He doesn't know that his father was the founder of the Syndicate, or that his sister wasn't killed by Vance—she was extracted and put into witness protection under a false identity.

Vincent is the real target. The twenty-four million dollars isn't in a bank. It's stored inside the encrypted neural drive implanted near his collarbone during his chest surgery three years ago.

They didn't save his life that night, Clare. They turned him into a walking vault.

If Vincent decrypts that photograph tonight, it will trigger an automated GPS ping directly to Nikolai Vance's strike team. He thinks he's hunting me. In reality, he's broadcasting his exact location to the men who want to cut his heart out.

Get him out of the house. Now.