Nathaniel didn't speak in the elevator.
Victoria stood beside him, watching the floor numbers descend. Forty-seven. Forty-six. Forty-five. The metal box carried them down in silence, each floor marker a small death of possibility. She kept her hands in her pockets, fingers wrapped around the edge of the envelope he'd given her—the fake confession.
The elevator stopped at the basement parking garage.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"Somewhere Richard thought no one would find."
He walked toward a black sedan parked in a reserved spot. She followed. The garage was cold and smelled of exhaust and damp concrete. Their footsteps echoed off the walls.
Nathaniel unlocked the car. Victoria got in the passenger side without waiting for him to open the door. She wasn't that kind of woman.
He started the engine but didn't pull out immediately. His hands rested on the steering wheel, knuckles white.
"If you're having second thoughts," he said, "get out now."
"I don't have second thoughts."
"You should. Once we do this, there's no going back. The people behind Project Chimera don't leave loose ends. Richard was a loose end. I'm a loose end. And now you're one too."
Victoria looked at his profile. In the dim light of the garage, he looked older. The lines around his eyes were deeper. His jaw was set in a way that suggested he was clenching his teeth.
"You could have walked away," she said. "Any time in the last three years. You didn't."
"I couldn't."
"Couldn't or wouldn't?"
He turned to look at her. His eyes were dark, unreadable. "Couldn't. Because every time I tried to walk away, I thought about you."
The words hung in the air between them.
"Don't," she said.
"Don't what?"
"Don't pretend this is about me. You didn't sign that liquidation report because of me. You signed it because the math worked. You've been telling yourself that for ten years. Don't stop now."
Nathaniel's jaw tightened. He looked away, put the car in reverse, and pulled out of the parking space.
They drove in silence.
---
The address Nathaniel entered into the GPS was in Long Island City, a warehouse district across the East River. The streets were wide and poorly lit, lined with buildings that had once housed factories and now held art studios, storage units, and the occasional startup.
Nathaniel parked in front of a gray concrete building with no signage. A single security camera pointed at the entrance, its red light blinking.
"Richard rented a storage unit here six months before he died," Nathaniel said. "He paid in cash. Used a fake name. Never told anyone."
"How did you find out?"
"He left a key in his desk drawer. Taped to the bottom. I found it a year after he died, when I was cleaning out his office myself. I didn't trust anyone else to do it."
He got out of the car. Victoria followed.
The building's entrance was a heavy steel door with a keypad. Nathaniel punched in a code—Richard's birthday, Victoria guessed—and the door clicked open.
Inside, the air was cold and stale. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead, casting everything in a sickly yellow glow. The hallway stretched ahead of them, lined with numbered doors.
"Unit 217," Nathaniel said. "Third floor."
They took the elevator. It groaned and shuddered but delivered them to the third floor. Nathaniel led her down a narrow corridor, past doors with rusted padlocks, until he stopped in front of one that looked no different from the others.
He pulled a key from his pocket—small, brass, old—and inserted it into the lock. The lock turned with a reluctant click.
He pushed the door open.
The unit was small, maybe ten feet by ten feet. Inside, there was a metal desk, a filing cabinet, and a single wooden chair. Dust covered everything. The air smelled like paper and decay.
But on the desk, in the center, sat a laptop.
Nathaniel walked toward it. Victoria followed, her heart pounding.
"Don't touch it yet," she said.
"I wasn't going to."
She pulled a pair of latex gloves from her pocket—she'd started carrying them after the hotel room—and put them on. Then she examined the laptop. It was old, a model from five years ago. The power cord was attached to an outlet in the wall.
She pressed the power button. The screen flickered to life.
No password prompt. Richard had left it open.
The desktop was sparse. Three folders. One labeled "Project Chimera." One labeled "Personal." One labeled "In Case of Death."
Victoria opened the third folder.
Inside were a dozen documents. Bank statements. Encrypted emails. A list of names—the same twelve names she'd seen on Richard's home computer, but with more detail. Phone numbers. Addresses. Account numbers.
And at the bottom, a video file. Date stamp: two days before Richard died.
Victoria clicked play.
The video was dark, shot on a cheap webcam. Richard Chan sat in a chair that looked exactly like the one behind her. His face was pale, his eyes bloodshot. He looked like a man who hadn't slept in days.
"If you're watching this," he said, his voice hoarse, "I'm probably dead. Don't let it be for nothing."
He paused, rubbed his face with his hands.
"Project Chimera isn't a company. It's a network. Twelve people. Powerful people. They control everything—judges, senators, media. And they've been using Meridian Group to launder money for years. Nathaniel didn't know. I made sure he didn't know. I was the gatekeeper."
He swallowed hard.
"But then they asked me to do something I couldn't do. Something that would have hurt innocent people. So I said no. And now they're coming for me. I've hidden everything here. The evidence. The names. The transactions. Take it to the FBI. Take it to the press. I don't care. Just make sure they don't get away with it."
The video ended.
Victoria looked at Nathaniel. His face was white.
"He knew he was going to die," Nathaniel said. "And he didn't tell me."
"He was protecting you."
"By lying to me?"
"By keeping you clean. If you'd known, you would have been complicit. Now you're just a victim."
Nathaniel turned away from the screen. He walked to the wall and put his hand against it, his head bowed.
"I trusted him," he said quietly. "For twelve years. He was my partner. My friend."
"Friends don't let friends go to prison."
"He should have told me."
"Maybe. But he's dead now. And we have the evidence." Victoria looked at the laptop. "We need to copy everything. Then we need to decide who to give it to."
"Not the FBI."
"Why not?"
"Because the list includes someone in the FBI. I don't know who. But Richard wouldn't have hidden this if he thought the authorities were clean."
Victoria thought about the list. Twelve names. She'd seen only the first few before the laptop died in Richard's home office. Now she had the full picture.
"We need to go through every file," she said. "Every name. Every transaction. And we need to do it somewhere safe."
"My apartment."
"Too obvious. They'll be watching."
"Then where?"
Victoria thought for a moment. She had a contact—Fiona, the private investigator. But Fiona was a resource, not a safe house.
"I know a place," she said. "But you're not going to like it."
"Try me."
"My father's house. In Ohio. No one's been there in years. No one knows it exists anymore."
Nathaniel stared at her. "You want to take the evidence to the place where your family's company died?"
"I want to take it to the one place no one would ever think to look." She closed the laptop and unplugged it. "We leave tonight."