THE LAST CON

CHAPTER TWO-Smoke and Mirrors

Evelyn's POV

By the time the police sealed off the café, I was already three districts away.

Rain blurred the city into ribbons of silver, washing over crowded pavements and turning every passing headlight into a smear of light.

Somewhere behind me, sirens wailed through the night.

They were chasing Evelyn Sloane, but the woman they were looking for no longer existed.

Daniel Sloane used to say there were only two ways to disappear: the first relied on speed, while the second relied on certainty.

People looked for what they expected to find.

So I made sure they never knew what they were looking for.

I stepped off the subway just before the doors closed again and melted into the evening crowd.

Umbrellas bumped together.

Strangers brushed my shoulder. Nobody looked twice.

Ordinary had always been my best disguise.

The tailor's shop waited exactly where I'd left it, wedged between a florist and a pawn shop that had been abandoned for years.

Dust veiled the display window.

The faded CLOSED sign still hung crooked, exactly as I had hoped.

I unlocked the back door.

Before stepping inside, I checked the strip of transparent tape stretched across the frame. It was still unbroken.

The coin balanced on the windowsill hadn't moved.

The dust lay exactly as I'd left it.

There was no unfamiliar perfume, no lingering cigarette smoke, and no footprints.

Only then did I lock the door behind me.

My backpack landed on the workbench with a dull thud.

The blueprint for Project Lazarus slid halfway out.

I stared at it for a long moment before switching on the old television in the corner.

Every channel carried the same headline.

MINISTER ASSASSINATED

NATIONWIDE MANHUNT FOR EVELYN SLOANE

I muted the volume.

Then I watched the footage once, then twice, and finally a third time.

The woman entered the ministry.

She smiled at the guard.

Accepted her visitor's pass.

Adjusted the cuff of her sleeve before stepping into the elevator.

I froze.

Without thinking, I adjusted my own sleeve.

The exact same way.

I replayed the footage.

Again.

The tilt of her head.

The way she paused before answering a question.

Even the rhythm of her walk.

My stomach tightened.

Someone hadn't copied my face.

They'd copied me.

Every habit I'd never realized I had.

Every unconscious movement.

Someone had been watching me for months, perhaps even longer.

I paused the screen, My gaze shifted between the three names Project Lazarus, Adrian Wolfe, and the anonymous client.

I grabbed a marker and wrote the three names across the whiteboard hanging above the workbench.

Then I drew a line between them.

The murder happened before the heist.

The realization settled like ice beneath my ribs.

Someone wanted the police hunting me before I ever stepped inside Blackwood Technologies.

Project Lazarus wasn't the prize.

It was the bait.

I opened the steel cabinet hidden behind a row of fabric rolls.

Inside were passports, driver's licences, birth certificates, and the remains of twenty different lives.

One after another, I fed them into the metal drum. The flames climbed higher as names disappeared into ash, cities vanished, and entire histories dissolved into smoke.

When the fire died, only one passport remained.

Evelyn Sloane.

I slipped it into my backpack.

Whoever was wearing my face, I would find her.

Blackwood Technologies dominated the skyline with its towering glass, steel, and unmistakable power.

Buildings like this weren't built to keep thieves out.

They were built to convince everyone else they didn't belong.

I parked three blocks away and continued on foot.

The rain had eased to a drizzle, which worked in my favour.

Most guards hated bad weather.

The maintenance entrance matched the blueprint perfectly.

I connected the decoder.

Twenty-one seconds later, the decoder clicked, and the maintenance door unlocked.

I didn't smile.

Security systems this expensive weren't supposed to surrender that easily.

The corridor beyond stood empty.

There were no alarms, no voices, only the low hum of fluorescent lights.

My instincts stirred.

Silence was rarely a good sign.

I reached the archive without incident.

Everything felt too clean and far too easy.

The final lock released with a soft hiss.

Inside, compact shelves stretched beneath cool white lights.

At the centre of the room rested a single black case beneath reinforced glass.

A silver plaque read:

PROJECT LAZARUS

I lifted the lid.

No alarm sounded, no lockdown was triggered, and nothing happened.

Inside lay a single file.

The file was heavier than it looked.

I opened it.

The first page held one sentence.

If you're reading this... you're right on time.

Every muscle in my body went still.

A voice drifted through the archive.

"You took eleven minutes."

I turned.

A man sat in a leather chair tucked into the corner of the room, a cup of black coffee resting beside him.

He wasn't hiding. He was waiting for me.

He rose with effortless calm and brushed an invisible crease from the sleeve of his tailored suit.

His eyes settled on mine, steady and patient, as though this meeting had been scheduled long before tonight.

He glanced at his watch.

"Eleven minutes."

His gaze returned to me.

"Retirement has slowed you down."

I tightened my grip on the file.

"Who are you?"

He smiled, though there was nothing warm about it.

Like someone confirming the final piece of a puzzle.

"Damien Blackwood."

The name landed harder than I expected. Damien Blackwood was the billionaire CEO and the very man I had been hired to steal from.

He looked at the file in my hands before meeting my eyes again.

"Open the second page."

I didn't move.

"I don't take orders."

"I wasn't giving one."

Silence stretched between us.

His expression never changed.

Mine didn't either.

Finally, he said quietly,

"If you leave now..."

"...you'll spend the rest of your life running from a lie."

My fingers tightened around the file.

For the first time that night, I wasn't sure whether I'd broken into a vault or walked into a trap.