Page 38 of Make Them Pay

The financial system is compromised. The inside asset is confirmed. Render is coming.

I have contingency plans. I always have contingency plans. But the plans were built for a version of this situation where I had time, where the exposure was partial, where the evidence could be managed and the narrative controlled.

This exposure isn't partial. It's total. Whoever mapped my finances didn't leave gaps. They went through everything, including Margaux's account, including the connections I hid behind my daughter's life because I believed no one would look there.

I was wrong. And being wrong isn’t something I've built contingency plans for because being wrong isn't something I've had much practice with.

I open the laptop one more time. Begin moving what can be moved. Closing what can be closed. Destroying the digital trails that can still be destroyed before the evidence package, wherever it is, lands on the desk of someone with a badge and a subpoena.

I’m not fucking ready for this.

16

Render

Just a few hours until the breach. Sawyer comes in from the dark.

I almost shoot him. He slips through the fence gap without warning. No message on the hidden channel. No signal. Just a shape in the industrial dark that resolves into a man I haven’t seen in weeks. Sawyer is Dean Maddox’s right hand for the BRAVO team, it’s also his cousin. Former Navy EOD tech. The kind of operator who can disappear into a city for a month and come back with a complete picture of whatever he was sent to study. Dean trusts him with everything, including the locations of every safehouse we have.

“Easy,” Sawyer says when he sees my weapon up. His hands are open and visible. The posture of a man who knows he just walked into a room full of people with every reason to be jumpy. “Dean sent me.”

“Dean’s been quiet for a week.”

“Dean’s been moving. Not quiet. Moving. There’s a difference.” He steps into the light and I see the details: a fresh bruise under his left eye, a jacket that’s been worn too many days in a row, and the deep fatigue of a man who’s been running operations without real sleep. “He’s been pulling the ALPHA and BRAVO squads back together. The ones that scattered when the crew went down. It took time. These are professionals. They don’t answer a recall order just because someone whistled. They need proof the order is real and not a trap.”

“And?”

“He’s got a full BRAVO squad ready. Six operators. Armed and equipped for a facility assault.”

I let that settle. Six trained operators. Armed. Equipped. Added to our three-person team, the math changes from impossible to something we can actually work with.

Knight’s already on his feet. He assessed Sawyer in the first second, recognized him in the second, and put his weapon away in the third. Now he’s listening with the focused attention of a man whose entire plan just received a major upgrade.

Enley’s at the table, laptop open, watching the exchange with the look she gets when she’s taking in new information and already calculating how it changes everything.

“Where?” I ask Sawyer.

“Dean’s staging them at a warehouse south of the industrial corridor. Twenty minutes from the target. They can be in position inside the six-minute window if we time the approach right.”

“Who’s leading the squad?”

“Rae Diaz. She’s smart. This will be the first time she’s in charge.”

I nod. “Yeah, Rae… we know her.”

I look at Knight. His expression hasn’t changed, but I can read the shift in his posture. Relief is too strong a word for what Knight shows. It’s more like a load being redistributed across a frame that was carrying too much weight on too few points.

“The plan changes,” Knight says.

“The plan gets better,” I answer.

We spend the next four hours rebuilding the operation from the ground up. The three-person assault becomes a nine-person coordinated breach. Roles shift. BRAVO takes the perimeter and the above-ground buildings, which frees Knight to move inside with me. Enley stays at the mobile position, running the tech side for a much larger operation than the one she originally planned for.

Sawyer sits at the table with us and adds what Dean’s learned. Things we couldn’t have known from maps and intercepted messages alone.

“Serafina’s organization is fracturing,” Sawyer says. “The financial hit landed harder than you realize. The legitimate side of Goldenbell started showing stress within hours. Board members making calls. Lawyers asking questions. The clean face of the operation is cracking because the money behind it’s suddenly visible to people who were never supposed to see it.”

“The evidence package hasn’t been delivered yet,” Enley says. “I set it to go out at the same time as the breach.”