Chapter 5: The Name on the Badge
Adrian didn't raise his voice.
He didn't move quickly.
He walked to the desk, picked up his phone, and called a number that wasn't Luca's.
"This is Vale.
I need a full access audit on every Vale Group security credential issued in the last eighteen months.
Cross-reference against lobby exit footage from the Meridian Hotel between ten and midnight tonight." A pause.
"I don't care what time it is.
Do it now."
He ended the call.
Luca was already at the secondary monitor in the corner of the room, pulling up footage.
Bianca stood and moved closer.
The hotel lobby camera showed a timestamp of 11:47 p.m.
Three men walking toward the exit.
The one in the middle was older — gray-haired, slightly stooped, moving with the careful deliberateness of someone who had rehearsed the route.
Garrett Soll.
The two men flanking him were younger.
Both wore dark jackets.
The one on the left kept his face angled away from the camera with the practiced ease of someone who knew exactly where the lens was pointed.
The one on the right didn't bother.
Luca froze the frame and zoomed.
The security badge was clipped to the right side of his jacket.
Vale Group logo.
Blue lanyard.
"Run it," Adrian said.
Luca typed.
The system matched the badge number against the employee database in eleven seconds.
The name that came up was: DANIEL REISS.
Senior Security Analyst.
Hired twenty-two months ago.
Adrian looked at the hire date.
"Pull his references."
Luca opened the file.
Three references.
Two were former employers — a private security firm in Frankfurt, a logistics company in Amsterdam.
The third was a personal reference.
The name on the personal reference was Richard Vale.
The room went still.
Bianca read it twice.
"Your father gave him a reference," she said.
"My father d\*ed nineteen months ago." Adrian's voice was flat.
"This reference is dated twenty-two months ago.
One month before Reiss was hired." He looked at Luca.
"Which means someone submitted it after he was already gone."
"Or before he d\*ed," Luca said carefully, "someone prepared it in advance."
"For a man who wasn't supposed to be hired for another month." Adrian stepped back from the screen.
"Reiss was placed.
Someone with access to my father's documents, my father's signature, and enough knowledge of our hiring process to time it correctly."
"Soll," Bianca said.
"Soll handled my father's estate." Adrian nodded once.
"He would have had everything."
Luca leaned back in his chair.
"So Soll plants Reiss inside the company before he retires to Portugal.
Reiss sits quiet for nearly two years.
Then Bianca comes back, Soll flies in, and Reiss activates."
"That's what it looks like," Adrian said.
"What were they waiting for?" Bianca asked.
Adrian was quiet for a moment.
"Me," he said.
"They were waiting to see if I'd remember." He looked at her.
"Your mother kept you hidden for fourteen years and nothing happened.
The moment you used the Vale name in a public place — the moment there was any chance I might recognize you — Soll moved."
Bianca thought about the man in her apartment.
The calm voice.
*We already have someone inside his organization.*
He hadn't been threatening her with a future possibility.
He'd been telling her it was already done.
"Where is Reiss now?" she asked.
Luca checked.
"His key card last pinged at the Vale Group parking structure at 11:52 p.m.
He hasn't badged out."
Adrian straightened.
"He's still in the building."
"Or he left through an exit without a reader," Luca said.
"There are two."
"Which ones?"
"Loading dock.
And the east stairwell to the street."
Adrian looked at the frozen frame on the monitor.
Soll walking out of a hotel with his planted man.
Calm.
Unhurried.
The walk of someone who believed they were several moves ahead.
"They think we're still reacting," Adrian said.
"They don't know we have the photograph.
They don't know we've connected Reiss to my father's estate."
"How long before they figure out we do?" Bianca asked.
"When Reiss doesn't check in." Luca glanced at the clock.
"Depending on their schedule, that could be an hour.
Could be less."
Adrian made a decision.
"I want Reiss found before he leaves that building.
Quietly.
No confrontation — I want him watched, not approached." He looked at Luca.
"And I want Soll's location.
Hotels, private rentals, anyone in this city connected to my father's old network.
Someone is putting him up."
"On it."
"One more thing." Adrian picked up the folded photograph from the desk.
"I want this scanned and authenticated.
I want a forensic timestamp on the original print and I want the envelope in the image traced if possible.
Paper stock, printing method, anything."
Luca took the photograph carefully.
"Adrian." Bianca's voice was quiet.
He looked at her.
"If Reiss is still in the building and he finds out you're looking for him tonight—"
"He'll run."
"Or he'll do something worse."
Adrian held her gaze.
"That's why we're not giving him time to think." He picked up his jacket.
"Come with me."
"Where?"
"There's someone in this building who has known me for twenty years and has never once asked me a question he didn't already know the answer to." He moved toward the door.
"I want to ask him one tonight."
Bianca followed.
In the elevator, she said, "Who is it?"
"My head of internal security." Adrian watched the floor numbers descend.
"A man named Warren Chu.
He hired Reiss."
The elevator stopped.
The doors opened onto a floor Bianca hadn't seen yet — older, quieter, the kind of space that had been there before the renovation.
A man was already standing in the hallway.
He was in his sixties, silver-haired, with the kind of face that gave nothing away.
He was wearing a suit at one in the morning as though that were completely normal.
He looked at Adrian.
Then at Bianca.
And for just a fraction of a second — so brief that Bianca almost missed it — something crossed his face.
May you like
Not surprise.
Recognition.
