Page 88 of You Can Run

The process took twelve seconds. The red-bordered window disappeared. The status indicators on the main screen didn't change. Everything still showed green, everything still appeared normal, but the button that would have erased it all was now connected to nothing.

For a moment, she just let herself breathe. Then she looked at the main floor feed.

Dante was still in the booth with Borya. Good. But something had changed—the composition of the image was different. There was a third figure being brought to the table by one of Borya's men, a woman in a denim jacket, and Sofia's hands went still on the keyboard because she knew who it was before the camera angle resolved the face.

Jessica Meeks.

Sofia stared at the screen. She watched Borya's man guide Jessica to the booth, watched Borya's posture shift from the controlled tension of an interrogation to something more expansive, more settled, and she understood immediately what had happened. The girl had come on her own. No one had brought her. No one had told her about the plan, or the killswitch, or the FBI team sitting in a van four blocks away. She'd come because Dante was inside, and that was enough.

Sofia had not accounted for this.

She looked at the timestamp in the corner of the feed. She'd been in the security room for fourteen minutes. The alerts were disabled, the locks were open, the kill switch was dead. The only thing left was the signal—one call to Cole's number, one ring, and the basement would be flooded with federal agents and everything Borya had built would end.

She could make the call now. The operation was ready. The evidence was preserved. Every objective she'd spent four years working toward was one phone call away.

But Jessica was at the table. And if the FBI came through the basement and then through the front while Jessica was sitting three feet from Borya Sokolov, the first thing Borya would do – before the agents reached him, before anyone could intervene—was use whatever leverage was closest to him as a shield or a statement.

Jessica was the closest thing to him. Jessica was leverage.

Sofia had spent four years learning how Borya thought. She knew what he'd do with a gun and a witness in arm's reach when he realized the building was falling. He wouldn't run. He wouldn't negotiate. He'd make a point. Because Borya Sokolov's final act would not be surrender; it would be demonstration. A lesson for anyone watching about what happened when you tried to take something from him.

She needed Jessica away from that table before she made the call.

She looked at the screen. She looked at the phone in her hand. She looked at the twelve seconds of work on the terminal that had taken four years to reach.

Then she put the phone down and pulled up the building's intercom system.

She had one move left, and it wasn't the one she'd planned.

They brought Jessica to the booth like she was a coat check item, Borya's man gripping her elbow, steering her through the crowd, depositing her at the edge of the table with a small push that made her stumble half a step before she caught herself.

Jessica straightened. She looked at Borya first, then at Dante.

“Sit down,” Borya said to her. His tone was polite. Almost warm.

She didn't sit. She stood at the edge of the booth, her hands at her sides, her jaw tight. Dante could see the tension running through her body like a current.

“Sit down, Jessica,” Borya said again, and this time the warmth was gone.

She sat.

Dante felt her knee press against his beneath the table—not affection, communication.I'm here. I'm scared. Don't do anything stupid.

He pressed back.I know. I won't. Not yet.

“You came a long way,” Borya said to her. “Philadelphia is not close to where you've been.” He tilted his head slightly. “You walked into my building on your own, with—what? A plan? A weapon?”

His eyes moved to the security man who'd brought her. A small nod.

The man stepped forward. “Arms out,” he said.

Jessica didn't move for a second. Then she raised her arms slowly, and the man patted her down with the efficient, impersonal hands of someone who'd done it a thousand times,shoulders, sides, waist, hips. His hand stopped at the left pocket of the denim jacket. He reached in and pulled out the Ruger.

The sound it made when he set it on the table in front of Borya was very small and very final.

Borya looked at the gun. He picked it up, turned it once in his thick fingers, then set it back down.

“One gun,” he said. “That was your plan?”