PART 2
The car waiting at the curb was not an Uber.
It was a black town car with tinted windows, silent as a shadow, its headlights cutting through the rain. My driver, June, stepped out with an umbrella and opened the back door.
Noah climbed in first. I followed, sliding onto the leather seat and closing the door on the glowing nightmare of Blackwell House.
June looked at me in the rearview mirror. “Home, Ms. Whitaker?”
I had not heard my maiden name spoken aloud in years.
It sounded like a door unlocking.
“Home,” I said.
As the car rolled down the long private driveway, Noah pulled a small tablet from inside his coat. Anyone else would have seen a child’s game screen. I saw encrypted maps, corporate ownership trees, offshore routing diagrams, and twenty-seven active surveillance feeds Noah had built from public data, court records, regulatory filings, and one very expensive subscription to a financial intelligence service.
No hacking. Not yet.
