1
SEAN
The warehouse smells like diesel.
It is 11:02 p.m. on Tuesday in Long Island City. The freight yard off Borden Avenue is empty for half a mile in every direction, which is exactly why Federov picked it.
Twelve men in the room. Six on the cash side. Six on the deal side. Two exits behind me. One ahead.
That is the only reason I am still wearing my own face.
The man across from me is Federov. He runs three of Moretti Global's offshore accounts. Tonight, he thinks he is laundering seven million through a shell company that my partner Doyle spent the better part of a year building.
I have read his file twice.
"You're new," Federov says.
He has not looked at me directly yet. That is not nervousness. That is the process. He is deciding whether I am worth the time it takes to remember.
"Filling in. Yegorov's wife went into labor."
"Yegorov has a wife?"
"News to him, too."
A small dry sound from somewhere behind Federov. One of his guys, half a laugh he does not want to admit to. Federov does not turn. But the temperature of the room moves a quarter inch in my direction.
That is the whole game.
Federov gestures at the briefcase on the table. "Show me."
I open it. The cash is real. NYPD does not half-ass props. He runs three random bills through his counter. Watches the numbers come up clean. Finally looks at my face.
For half a second, I think he has made me.
Then he nods. "Welcome to your new job."
We are closing the deal. I am three sentences from the line that triggers the breach. Eight teams stacked at every exit. Captain Sullivan in the surveillance van two blocks south. A long investigation about to become a longer list of convictions.
Then the freight door rolls back up.
The wrong way.
It is the wrong way because nobody triggered it from the inside, which means it is coming from the outside.
Which means the timing is not ours.
A woman walks in.
I see her before I understand why she should not be here. That is the part I will come back to later. When I am trying to figure out the exact second everything burned down.
Dark hair pulled back. Charcoal suit. No jewelry. No logo. A leather portfolio in her left hand. A phone in her right.
She is surprised by exactly one thing in this warehouse. That thing is me.
Quarter-second flicker. Then gone.
She sees me. I see her. Neither of us shows it.
