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An office.

A desk with a tablet and two chairs fill most of the room.

A quick sweep reveals a locked filing drawer in the desk and office supplies. No physical records. No unsecured data. Even the tablet requires biometric access.

I don’t touch it.

Ghost’s ledger flashes through my mind, but he keeps it behind the bar. This group is too careful to leave sensitive information lying around.

Which means whatever I’m looking for isn’t going to be this easy.

I step back into the corridor and keep moving, mapping as I go. The camera in the corner above the far junction is well-placed. Not hidden, but unobtrusive enough for most people to miss it.

I adjust my angle as I pass.

I find signs of criminal activity in a clean up room filled with chemicals and decontaminants, and weapons, but not on the scale needed to move against us.

So either this isn’t their primary base, which everything I’ve seen says it is, or they’re not our enemy.

That answer brings with it a sense of relief, but also…

It complicates things.

Because my family won’t accept my report based on a gut instinct, and how do I prove their innocence with an absence of proof?

Footsteps echo at the far end of the hall.

I turn and stride for the side exit I spotted earlier. Orien told me to go home, and I intend to follow his order.

After that, I need to figure out what my next step is.

I can’t stand back and let my family destroy the Blue Note, and I’m no longer sure what that means for me.

Lee Esposito is a lie.

But Levon Vartanian has stopped being the whole truth.

9

The side exit puts me out in a small parking lot in the alley, and I tug down the hem of my fitted sweater to hide the evidence of what just happened as I head toward the street.

I wrap my arms around myself against the cold, my steps slowing when I spot the dark sedan idling at the curb. After the intimate moment with Orien, the sight of the car sends an unwelcome jolt of reality through my system.

The driver’s window drops two inches to show a driver I recognize from the compound.

My jaw tightens as irritation spikes through me. How dare Uncle Mikhail send one of his security team to the Blue Note to pick me up. What if someone spots me climbing into the car and reports it back to Orien?

I change the angle of my steps to pass the car on the way to the bus stop. “Not here.”

“You’re expected at home,” comes the reply before the window rolls back up.

This summons only intensifies my irritation. The Vartanian compound is thirty minutes from Ashford Heights in good traffic, and my scheduled check-in is still days away. I’ve been passing my notes almost every other day.

What could be so urgent as to risk my mission to summon me now?

The car pulls past me and takes a left at the light while I wait at the crosswalk.

By the time I reach the next street, I’m shivering from the cold but sizzling with anger. I can’t even go home to change into clean clothes.