Chapter 8: The Clock

"Who else knows?" she asked.

"About Holloway?"

"About any of it. About me. About what I've found or what I'm about to find."

Mateo didn't answer immediately. He took a step closer. She didn't move, though something in her body wanted to. The line between captive and captor had gotten so thin she couldn't see it anymore. Maybe they'd never been on different sides. Maybe she'd been this close to him the entire time.

"No one in the agency," he said finally. "No one in the cartel anymore—my father's dead, Valentina. The old structure is gone. Everyone who knew I was buying out Holloway's cooperation is either dead or in a federal prison."

"And me?"

"That's what we're figuring out."

He reached past her, his arm brushing her shoulder, and took the glass back from her hands. His skin was warm. He smelled like expensive cologne and the leather of his jacket, and somewhere underneath it all, like smoke. Like something that was always burning and never quite consumed.

When he'd taken a sip from the same spot her mouth had just left, he met her eyes. "What are you going to do?"

The question hung between them. Valentina could see every exit from this room—old habit, always knowing the way out. She could alert her backup. She could call for extraction. She could disappear and spend the rest of her life running.

She could also stay.

"I'm going to decide what I believe," she said quietly. "And I'm not going to let you be the one making that decision for me anymore."

She reached for the glass, took it from him again, drank. It was a small rebellion. It was everything.

Then she set the glass down on his desk. Turned. Walked to the door.

Behind her, she heard the small sound of him breathing out—not quite a laugh, not quite relief. When she looked back, he was still standing by the window, waiting. Just waiting.

For whatever she did next.

---

The safe house in Polanco had three exits. She'd counted them twice.

Valentina stood at the kitchen counter, watched Mateo's man—Soto, the one who never smiled—arrange fresh fruit on a white plate like he was setting a trap. Seventy-two hours. Three days of being cordial to men whose hands shook slightly when she entered rooms, which meant they knew what she was, just not which side she was on.

The landline had rung that morning. She'd been in the garden. Through the window, she'd heard Mateo's voice from his office, low and even, speaking Spanish too fast for the hired help to follow. When he hung up, he'd come to find her kneeling in the dirt, inspecting a jasmine plant.

"Your handler's looking for you," he'd said.

She didn't look up. "How did you know?"

"I know everyone. That's the job."

Three minutes later, she'd known: CDMX station chief, burned asset list, her name circled. The timing was wrong. She wasn't supposed to be exposed for another week—not until after she'd copied the ledgers, not until the evidence was somewhere secure. The abort signal hadn't come. That meant either her handler had panicked, or this was deliberate.

Mateo had left that afternoon. Business in Miami. He'd left her the code to the door, the run of the house, complete trust or complete indifference—she still couldn't decide which. Soto watched her constantly, but that wasn't her concern.

Her concern was the clock.