ledger and light

chapter ten

The desk was still warm.

Claire sat in the chair Tessa had vacated ten minutes ago, staring at the empty space where her oldest friend usually kept three monitors, a half-empty energy drink, and a tangle of cables that only made sense to her. The room smelled faintly of coffee gone cold and the ozone tang of overworked hardware.

Adrian was outside, keeping watch. He didn’t ask questions. He knew better.

“Don’t follow me if anything happens,” Tessa had said. Her voice had been steady, but her hands weren’t. She’d been twisting the edge of her sleeve like she did when she was twelve and about to lie to her mom about a broken window.

Claire hadn’t followed. Not yet.

On the main screen, the partial ledger Tessa had pulled still glowed. Cebu Shell Corp. Transfer: $47,000. Timestamp: 03:14. No sender listed. Just a string of letters that meant nothing to Claire but probably meant everything to Tessa.

Claire opened the file again. The metadata was scrubbed. Tessa hadn’t gotten the full ledger. She’d gotten a fragment, and she’d gone after the source alone.

Stupid. Brave. Typical Tessa.

Claire pulled up the comms log. Last ping from Tessa’s phone was 22 minutes ago, moving west on Rizal Ave. Then nothing. The GPS had been manually disabled.

She should call Adrian. She should tell him Tessa was off-grid and likely walking into Dela Cruz’s hands.

She didn’t.

Because if Tessa was right, and this lead was hot enough to get them killed, then bringing Adrian meant bringing Dela Cruz’s attention straight to them. Adrian was a ghost in Dela Cruz’s system, but ghosts left footprints. Tessa was the only one who could move through the cracks without tripping the alarms.

Claire hated that it made sense.

She hated more that Tessa had decided for her.

The door opened behind her. Adrian didn’t bother knocking anymore.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Her phone’s dead,” Claire said. “Or she killed it.”

“Which one feels worse?”

“Both.”

Adrian came around the desk and looked at the screen. He didn’t touch anything. He’d learned that lesson after the first time he’d accidentally closed three hours of Tessa’s work.

“Cebu Shell Corp,” he said. “I’ve heard the name. They’re a front. Import-export on paper, but the port authority can’t find a single container with their name on it in two years.”

“So it’s money laundering.”

“It’s money laundering with teeth,” Adrian said. “Dela Cruz doesn’t use fronts for small change. If Tessa’s chasing this, she’s chasing the source of the shipments.”

“And if she gets caught?”

“Then Dela Cruz knows we have part of the ledger. And he knows where to look for the rest.”

Claire stood up. Her legs felt stiff, like she’d been sitting too long and her body was reminding her she was human.

“I’m going after her.”

Adrian didn’t argue. That was new. Two days ago he would have.

“I’ll take the car,” he said. “You keep the comms open in case she pings again. If Dela Cruz is moving, we need to know before he gets to her.”

“Why aren’t you stopping me?”

“Because I tried stopping people like Tessa once,” Adrian said. “It never works. And because if you don’t go, you’ll spend the next week hating me for it.”

He was right.

Claire grabbed her jacket and the burner phone. Before she left, she looked back at Tessa’s desk. The post-it note stuck to the edge of the monitor was still there. It read: _Check the timestamps. They’re lying to you._

Timestamps.

Claire stopped. She pulled the ledger fragment back up and filtered for time entries. The Cebu transfer was at 03:14. The shipment from Pier 12 had vanished at 02:00.

Two hours unaccounted for.

If Dela Cruz was moving money through Cebu Shell Corp, he needed time to move the product somewhere else first. Somewhere off the books. Somewhere no one would think to look.

Claire pulled up the port map. There was only one place with a gap in coverage between 02:00 and 03:00.

The old storage yard on the east side. Decommissioned in 2019. No cameras. No guards.

And exactly 12 minutes by car from Pier 12.

“Tessa’s not chasing the money,” Claire said quietly.

Adrian looked up from the keys.

“She’s chasing the product.”

He didn’t ask how she knew. He just tossed her the keys.

“Then we’re late.”

Outside, the city was quiet in that way it got before something broke. Claire slid into the passenger seat, her eyes on the screen one last time.

Tessa’s post-it stared back at her.

_Check the timestamps. They’re lying to you._

If Tessa was right, then the next hour would decide whether they took Dela Cruz down, or whether Dela Cruz erased them first.

Claire put the phone on silent.

“Drive.”