Page 32 of Make Them Pay

The first piece is sound. The low hum of the fluorescent lights. The soft pulse of the uplink. A steady clicking of keys that I recognize right away as Enley’s. Her rhythm is a little faster than mine, with small pauses where I usually keep going.

The second piece is heat. Not the sharp heat of hard work, but the heavy, draining heat of a body that’s been fighting something for hours and has almost nothing left. My shirt’s damp. The cot feels like it’s been holding my fever and giving it back to me.

The third piece is time. I’ve got no idea how long I was out. The storage unit has no windows. The lights never change. It could’ve been two hours or twelve.

I open my eyes. The light above me is too bright and I have to squint. “What time is it?” My voice sounds rough, like I swallowed gravel.

“Nine at night.” Enley’s voice comes from the table. Steady and calm. “You’ve been out about ten hours.”

Ten hours. The breach is only twenty-nine hours away. I try to sit up and the room tilts hard. I grip the edge of the cot until the spinning slows.

“Don’t stand yet,” she says. “Drink this first.”

A water bottle appears in my hand. I don’t remember her crossing the room, but she’s kneeling beside the cot now, watching me with a mix of concern and something heavier. Like she’s carrying news she needs to share and it shows in the set of her jaw.

I drink. The cool water tastes better than anything I can remember. I finish the bottle and she hands me another.

“The fever broke about two hours ago,” she says. “It peaked mid-afternoon and started dropping after that. The medicine helped. So did the fluids I kept giving you.”

“You were giving me water while I was out?”

“Every hour. Water with the electrolyte packets from the medical kit. You swallowed them without really waking.” She pauses. “I also cleaned and rebandaged the cut on your shin from the river. It was infected. I drained it and put the antibiotic ointment on it.”

Wow. I don’t really know what to say except, “Thank you.”.

“Don’t thank me yet.”

The guarded look in her eyes deepens. She stands, goes back to the table, and turns the laptop so I can see the screen from the cot.

“I finished the Goldenbell work,” she says. “The full money map is done. Every account. Every connection. The last part is ready to go the moment we give the signal during the rescue.”

She finished everything. I left her with a lot still unfinished and she completed it while I was unconscious.

“Will you show me?” I ask.

She walks me through it carefully. The money trails leading out of the Channel Islands trust. The accounts in other countries. The way everything connects. The work is clean and thorough. No gaps. No loose ends. Exactly what we need to take Serafina down for good.

Then she shows me the section about Margaux Delacroix.

She tells it straight. No excuses. Serafina had been moving money through her daughter’s college fund. Small amounts that added up. Those funds led to a hidden account in Luxembourg and then straight into Serafina’s personal fortune. To finish the map, Enley had to go through a nineteen-year-old girl’s private records.

I listen without interrupting. She doesn’t rush. She doesn’t soften it. She just lays out the facts the same way she always does.

When she finishes, the storage unit is quiet except for the generator and the soft night sounds of metal settling.

“You went through the daughter’s account,” I say.

“Yes.”

“A civilian. Nineteen. No part in any of this.”

“No part. But her account was the only way into that last piece of the network. Without it, the evidence would have a hole big enough to weaken everything.”

“And with it?”

“With it, the case is complete. Every dollar tracked. Every connection clear. Enough for federal prosecutors to freeze everything and go after Serafina personally.”

I sit with that. The fever has left my thinking a little soft around the edges, but the center is clear. There’s no perfect answer here. Only the less wrong one.