She saw the g*n beneath a stranger's table and quietly warned his target, but seconds later, the mysterious man standing beside her made her realize he had been watching her all along.

His full name was Remy Voss, and by the time Mara learned it, he already knew hers.

Reeves explained it in the back office of a building three blocks from Carver's — a plain room with a table, four chairs, and a whiteboard covered in names connected by lines she wasn't meant to read.

Julian was already there when they arrived.

He was standing at the window with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up, and he turned when she walked in and looked at her the way he had looked at her at the bar — like he was reassessing something he thought he'd already assessed.

"You picked up the photograph," he said.

"It was on the floor."

"I know.

I'm not criticizing." He pulled out a chair.

"Sit down."

She sat.

Reeves sat across from her.

Julian remained standing.

"Remy Voss runs a financial network that has been moving money for three separate crjminal organizations across six states for nine years," Julian said.

"He is careful, he is patient, and he has never once appeared in the same room as anything that could connect him directly to the work.

Every person between him and the money is expendable.

Every person between him and the violence is deniable." He paused.

"His sister was the one exception.

Petra was the only person he trusted completely.

She was also the only person who could have told Farrell about last night's dinner, because she was the only person outside this room who knew I would be at Carver's."

"How did she know?" Mara said.

Julian was quiet for a moment.

"Because I told her."

Mara looked at him.

"She wasn't always working for him," Julian said.

"Eight months ago, she came to us.

She said she wanted out.

She said she had information about Remy's network that could close the case." He moved away from the window.

"We protected her.

We built a cover for her at the restaurant.

We gave her a way to feed us information without exposure." He stopped at the end of the table.

"Three weeks ago, something changed.

We don't know what.

She stopped giving us useful information and started giving us information that was slightly wrong — not obviously wrong, wrong in ways that would only matter later."

"She flipped back," Mara said.

"We think Remy found out she'd been talking to us.

We think he gave her a choice." Julian's jaw tightened.

"The photograph in her locker was the choice she made."

Mara thought about Petra at the host stand.

Four years of one-sided smiles.

Four years of standing just outside the camera range.

A woman who had been carrying something heavy for a very long time.

"Where is she now?" Mara said.

"We don't know," Reeves said.

"She had a forty-minute head start."

"She'll go to Remy," Mara said.

"Yes."

"Which means Remy now knows everything that Petra knows.

Including that you have Hale." She looked at Julian.

"He'll move.

Whatever he was planning to do next, he'll accelerate it."

Julian looked at her for a moment.

Then he looked at Reeves.

Reeves said: "She's right."

"I know she's right." Julian pulled out the chair at the head of the table and sat down.

For the first time since she'd met him, he looked like a man who was tired — not physically, but in the way of someone who had been holding something up for a long time and had just felt it shift.

"Hale isn't talking.

His lawyer arrived forty minutes ago and he's been silent since.

Without Hale's testimony, the financial records we have are strong but not enough.

Remy has three accountants and two attorneys whose entire job is to create distance between him and those records."

"What do you need?" Mara said.

"We need Petra," Julian said.

"We need her to finish what she started eight months ago.

We need her testimony."

"She just tried to have you kjlled."

"I know."

"And you still want her testimony."

"I want to close this case," Julian said.

"And I want Remy Voss to face a courtroom.

Those two things require Petra." He looked at Mara directly.

"She trusted you.

Four years at the same restaurant — she never flagged you as a risk, never moved against you, even after last night.

That means something."

"It means she was professional," Mara said.

"It means," Julian said, "that you might be the only person she'll open a door for."

The whiteboard names and lines blurred slightly at the edges of her vision.

"You're asking me to find her," Mara said.

"I'm asking if you're willing to try."

She thought about her apartment with the good deadbolt.

Her sister with the stable job.

The deliberately unremarkable life she had spent a decade constructing.

She thought about a woman standing at a host stand for four years, carrying a photograph she never explained, making a choice she would have to live with.

"I know where she goes when she needs to think," Mara said.

Julian went very still.

"There's a park on the east side of Millhaven Bridge," Mara said.

"She mentioned it once, two years ago.

She said it was the only place in the city that felt quiet." She paused.

"She said her brother used to take her there when they were children."