Emilia couldn't sleep that night and luckily the creak in Carla's apartment had turned out to be nothing, it was just the old radiator settling, which was too late because the paranoia had taken root anyway. Every shadow now moved and every silence screamed so louder in her ears that she knew she would lose her mind anytime soon and the two texts from the unknown number still burned behind her eyelids:
"Tick tock, Emilia.
Your move.
Or should I say... Ethan's?
"Closer than you think."
That morning, she sat at Carla's tiny kitchen table, while the black card Ethan had given her was lying flat between the half-empty mug of coffee and her burner phone. The silver embossed number gleamed under the morning light like a taunt. With no name or logo, just ten digits and the faint scent of expensive leather that still clung to it from when his fingers had brushed hers in the booth.
She'd been staring at it for the past twenty minutes.
"We can't just sit here waiting for Derek to kick the door in. You need to send the rest of the files right now, before those motherfuckers trace that forward you made." Carla said as she paced behind her, her phone in hand, texting Alexa updates in rapid bursts.
"I know," Emilia whispered as her thumb hovered over the encrypted messaging app she'd downloaded last night, the one quietly recommended by Ethan's assistant via a one-line reply to her test message:
"Use Signals. This number only. Delete after sending."
She opened the app and typed the black-card number. She attached the zip file that contained every photo of her bruises, the original shareholder agreement she'd photographed in the study, the forwarded email chain and the audio snippet of Amanda laughing about "peasants" and "stripping shares."
She hesitated on the last attachment which was a single blurry selfie she'd taken in the bathroom mirror two nights ago; her lip was split, jaw purpling, eyes hollow but defiant.
Proof. All of it.
Her finger trembled over Send.
"Em. If you don't hit that button, Derek wins by default. You know that." Carla said as she stopped pacing and leaned in.
Emilia swallowed before closing her eyes and clicked on the button.
The little sending bar crept forward. 10%. 40%. 80%.
Then it froze.
Her stomach dropped as a red exclamation mark appeared.
"Message failed to send. Recipient offline or blocked."
"What the hell?" Carla leaned over her shoulder. "Try again."
Emilia did. But nothing changed, just the same result, she tried refreshing the app, yet nothing.
"He gave me this number three days ago. He said if it's real, we'll talk again. What if he already decided it wasn't worth his time? What if…" her voice trailed off as panic clawed up her throat.
Then her burner buzzed once. It was sharp and had an incoming call from an unknown number.
Emilia's heart slammed into her ribs.
Carla's eyes went wide. "Don't answer. It could be…."
Emilia swiped to accept before Carla could talk herself out of it.
There was silence on the other end of the line for three full seconds.Then his voice came. It was low and clipped like velvet over steel.
"You sent partials. I thought I asked for everything?"
Emilia's breath caught. "I just did but it failed."
"Obviously." Then came a faint rustle, like he was moving through a room. "Your encryption is good, but your timing is shit. They're already inside your friend's network, and they've been rerouting your outbound traffic for the last forty minutes."
Emilia shot open as she scrambled to her feet so fast that the chair scraped back. "What?"
"Carla's Wi-Fi has been compromised and they're watching keystrokes, they probably have been since you arrived last night."
Carla's face was drained of color as she mouthed, "No way!"
"You have exactly six minutes before the trace completes and they get a physical lock on your location, so you better grab what you can but leave the phone and the laptop. There's a black Escalade waiting for you at the service entrance of the building across the street with no license plate and the driver's putting on a gray hoodie. Just get in and he'll take you to a clean location." Ethan continued, calmly as if discussing the weather.
Emilia's mind raced. "Why should I trust you?"
"You shouldn't," he said simply. "But right now I'm the only thing standing between you and a very permanent solution to the Carsons' little problem. You have five minutes, forty seconds."
The line went dead.
Emilia stared at the blank screen.
Meanwhile Carla was already moving, grabbing the go-bag and shoving cash and the printed originals into a nondescript backpack. "Go. Go now. I'll stay back and try to buy time, at least make it look like you're still here."
"No…" Emilia started.
"Yes," Carla snapped, fiercely. "You fight from the outside. I'll fight from here. Alexa's on her way with a burner car. We'll meet up later. Now Move!"
Emilia grabbed the black card, shoving it into her bra like a talisman she bolted for the door, ran down four flights of stairs with her heart in her throat as she burst into the humid alley behind the building.
There it was. Across the narrow street, it sat. A gleaming black Escalade, the driver was already opening the rear door.
She sprinted and she slid inside.
The door slammed shut as the car peeled away before she could even get buckled in.
The driver didn't say a word, rather he handed her a new phone, it was factory-sealed with no SIM yet.
Immediately. it rang, It was Ethan again.
"You made it," he said. "Good."
"Where are we going?" she demanded, her voice shaking.
"Somewhere the Carsons can't reach. At least not yet."
Then came a pause.
"And Emilia?" he said, quieter, almost intimate.
She gripped the phone tighter.
"When you get here… we're going to have a very long conversation about why you didn't tell me they already knew my name." he said as the line clicked off.
Behind them, in the rearview mirror were two black SUVs that had turned onto the street, slowly and deliberately, with headlights off in broad daylight.
They were following.
And closing in fast.