Chapter 7: What Elena Knew
Julian stared at the photograph for a long time.
Mara watched him stare at it.
"She's had this for over a year," she said.
"Yes."
"And she hasn't given it to Vasquez."
"Apparently not."
"Why?"
He set the phone down.
He stood up and walked to the window and stood with his back to her, which was the first time all night he had put his back to anything.
"Julian."
"I'm thinking."
"Think out loud."
He turned around.
"Elena came to me three years ago.
Before the four years — she was referred by someone I trusted.
She was vetted.
She passed everything." He came back to the table but didn't sit.
"Eight months ago there was an incident.
A meeting location was compromised.
We investigated.
The conclusion was that it was a security failure on the venue's end, not ours."
"But you suspected her."
"I noted the possibility.
Reyes investigated.
The timeline didn't support it."
"Or the timeline was managed to not support it."
He looked at her.
"If she's smart enough to activate a burner phone twelve minutes before making a reservation," Mara said, "she's smart enough to manage a timeline."
Julian sat down.
"She has a photograph of me outside a federal building taken fourteen months ago," he said.
"If she'd given that to Vasquez fourteen months ago, I would be de@d.
If she'd given it to him eight months ago, I would be de@d.
She's had it for over a year and she's still holding it." He looked at the phone.
"That is not the behavior of someone working for Vasquez."
"Then who is she working for?"
Silence.
Mara said: "Could she be working for the investigators?
Independently of you?
A second source inside your circle that Cho didn't tell you about?"
Julian's jaw tightened.
The second involuntary thing she'd seen from him tonight.
"Cho," he said.
He picked up the phone and called.
It rang twice.
"The photograph," he said, when Cho picked up.
"Elena sent it to me.
You want to explain what that means."
A pause on the line.
"It means she's been more proactive than we anticipated," Cho said.
"Is she yours?"
Another pause.
Longer.
"She came to us," Cho said.
"Eleven months ago.
She had already been collecting.
We assessed her material, verified her access, and brought her in as a secondary source.
You were not informed because the protocol for overlapping sources —"
"She's been inside my operation for four years," Julian said.
"You've known for eleven months that she was feeding you information and you didn't tell me."
"The information she provided was used to corroborate your own reporting.
It didn't expose you.
It protected the case."
"It exposed me to Vasquez."
"No.
She has been extremely careful about what she passes to Vasquez and what she passes to us.
She's been running a controlled feed in both directions."
"Tonight she passed him the reservation."
"Tonight was not authorized," Cho said.
Her voice was different now.
Tighter.
"Elena acted outside her protocol.
We are trying to understand why."
Julian looked at Mara across the table.
"I want her in a room," he said.
"Tonight.
Not tomorrow.
Tonight."
"Julian —"
"She is either yours and she went rogue, or she is his and she played you.
Either way, I want to look at her face when she explains it." He paused.
"You owe me that."
A long silence.
"Two hours," Cho said.
"I'll have her brought in."
He ended the call.
The room was quiet.
Mara said: "She's been running both of you."
"Apparently."
"And tonight she stepped outside the lines."
"Yes."
"Why tonight specifically?
What was different about tonight?"
Julian looked at the photograph on his phone again.
The federal building.
His own figure, small and distant, caught without knowing it.
"The case is close," he said.
"Cho said weeks, not months.
If Elena knows that — and if she's been inside the investigation as a secondary source, she knows — then something changed.
Something that made her decide tonight was the night to accelerate things."
"She wanted Vasquez to send someone to the restaurant."
"She wanted something to happen at that dinner that would force the timeline."
"Force it how?"
"If Vasquez's man had succeeded tonight —" He stopped.
"Then you'd be de@d and the case would collapse," Mara said.
"Or."
She thought about it.
"Or the attempt itself — a documented, witnessed attempt on a federal cooperator in a public place — would be enough to move the case forward without you.
Enough to make arrests without waiting for the full picture."
Julian said nothing.
"She wasn't trying to get you kjlled," Mara said slowly.
"She was trying to get Vasquez's man caught in the act.
In a restaurant full of witnesses.
On a night when she knew exactly where you'd be sitting and who would be there." She looked at him.
"She miscalculated.
She didn't account for the man at Table Nine being good enough to almost succeed."
"Or she accounted for it and decided the risk was acceptable."
"Is that better or worse?"
"I don't know yet," he said.
A knock at the door.
Reyes leaned in.
"Elena Voss is in the building," he said.
"Cho's people brought her in.
She came voluntarily." He paused.
"She asked specifically if Mara Solano was here."
The name in Reyes's mouth landed wrong.
Mara went still.
"She knows my name," she said.
"Yes," Reyes said.
"How long has she known my name?"
Reyes looked at Julian.
May you like
Julian looked at Mara.
"That," Julian said quietly, "is what we're about to find out."
