My hands were shaking so badly I nearly dropped the pregnancy test onto the bathroom floor, because those two pink lines didn't just mean I was pregnant.

The press conference was already live on Alessandro's phone by the time we reached the car he had waiting outside.

Marcus Hale stood at a podium in a navy suit, silver-haired and composed, the picture of institutional authority.

Behind him, the federal seal.

Beside him, two men I didn't recognize in dark jackets.

"Following an extensive eighteen-month investigation," Hale was saying, "this office has gathered sufficient evidence to bring formal charges against Dominic Vitali, founder and chairman emeritus of the Vitali Group, on multiple counts of financial fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy."

Alessandro sat very still beside me in the back seat.

"He's indicting your father," I said.

"My father is seventy-three years old and had a stroke eight months ago." His voice was even.

"He hasn't been active in the company for two years.

He can barely hold a pen."

"Hale knows that."

"Yes." Alessandro looked at the screen.

"He's chosen the most vulnerable target.

Someone who can't defend himself effectively.

Someone whose name carries enough weight to make the indictment look significant." He paused.

"And while everyone watches my father, Hale controls what happens to the actual evidence."

I thought of Carla.

She should have reached the studio by now.

"We need to get to Carla's location.

If she can open that second encryption layer—"

"Call her," Alessandro said.

I dialed.

It rang four times and went to voicemail.

I tried again.

Same result.

Liam was driving.

He caught my eye in the rearview mirror.

Neither of us said what we were both thinking.

"Address," Alessandro said.

I gave it to him.

He relayed it to the driver.

On the phone screen, Hale was taking questions from reporters.

A woman near the front asked whether the investigation had identified any other individuals connected to the alleged scheme.

"At this time," Hale said smoothly, "we are focused on the primary subject.

However, I want to be clear — anyone who has information relevant to this investigation and chooses to withhold it will face serious legal consequences."

He looked directly into the camera when he said it.

"He knows," I said.

"He suspects," Alessandro said.

"There's a difference.

He doesn't know what you have.

He doesn't know about Carla.

He's trying to make people afraid enough to stay quiet."

"Is it working?"

Alessandro looked at me.

"Not on me."

The studio was on the third floor of a narrow building near Pilsen.

Alessandro's driver stayed with the car.

The three of us took the stairs.

The door to the studio was ajar.

Liam put his arm out in front of me without a word.

He pushed the door open slowly.

The studio was a single room — a bed, a small kitchen, a worktable covered in papers.

A laptop was open on the table, its screen still lit.

Carla's bag was on the floor near the door.

Her coat was on the chair.

Carla was not there.

I crossed to the worktable.

The papers were spread in a way that looked less like work and more like something had been moved through quickly.

The laptop screen showed a file directory, open to a folder labeled *RH — Final Layer.*

RH.

Richard Harmon.

"She got in," I said.

My voice came out strange.

"She cracked the second layer."

"But she's gone," Liam said from behind me.

Alessandro was already on his phone.

"Diana." A pause.

"I need you to run a name — Carla Voss, last known location Pilsen, Chicago.

In the last hour." Another pause, longer.

His expression didn't change, but his hand tightened on the phone.

"How long ago?" He listened.

"Don't move anything.

We're coming to you."

He lowered the phone.

"Agent Reyes has her," he said.

"Carla walked into the FBI field office forty minutes ago.

She brought a copy of the decrypted files on a USB drive."

The air went out of my chest.

"She went on her own," Liam said slowly.

"She said she had a daughter," I said.

I understood it then completely — the one stop she needed to make, the calculation she had already finished before she got out of the car.

She had spent three years being afraid.

She had decided, somewhere between the legal aid clinic and this studio, that she was done.

Alessandro was already moving toward the door.

"Reyes wants us there now.

If Hale finds out Carla has gone to a parallel team before he can suppress it—"

"He'll move fast," I said.

"Yes."

I looked at the open laptop one more time.

The folder labeled with my father's initials.

Three years of his careful, meticulous work, sitting in a directory on a borrowed computer in a stranger's studio.

"He did it," I said quietly.

Not to anyone in particular.

Liam touched my shoulder.

"Come on, Elizabeth."

We were at the door when Alessandro's driver called up from the street.

The black SUV was back.

It was parked directly behind Alessandro's car, engine running, and the driver had not moved.

Alessandro looked at me.

"We go out the back."

"There may not be a back exit."

"Then we make one." He was already on the phone again, and this time his voice had changed — not louder, but harder, the voice of a man who had spent his life making things happen and had just decided to aim that capacity at something that actually mattered.

"Marcus," he said into the phone.