They came claiming procedure—a soft, polite voice over the intercom that sounded like authority and smelled faintly of compromise.
“Agent Reyes?” the voice asked. “This is the District Attorney’s office. We require access to the files in protective custody. There’s an urgent subpoena.”
Reyes’ posture didn’t change. She had the bored, terrible grace of a woman who’d learned to treat official-sounding voices as hypotheses, not facts. She pressed the button and, calm and public, said, “Bring it to the lobby. We’ll escort it inside.”
It was an invite for a trap. We’d rehearsed for this. The predators had money, but we had hard law and patience and, right now, a federal team who could move quicker than Julian’s private men when they didn’t have the luxury of buying judges.
The man who arriv
