MAFIA BOSS WALKED INTO HIS PRIVATE LOUNGE AND FOUND A 23-YEAR-OLD MAID BLEEDING ON THE FLOOR WHILE HIS MEN LAUGHED—BUT HIS NEXT QUESTION MADE EVERY GANGSTER GO SILENT!

Jonah hated the safe apartment before he saw it.

"This is kidnapping with nicer seats," he muttered from the back of Nora Vale's car as they crossed the river toward a quiet neighborhood of brownstones and corner grocery stores. "Do I get a vote?"

"Yes," Emily said. "You can vote for a place that isn't our apartment."

"That isn't how voting works."

"It's how older-sister voting works."

He folded his arms. Emily could tell that beneath his irritation he was frightened. He had watched the gray sedan photograph them outside his school, and now his phone was off at Nora's request. He'd been raised in a home where keeping your phone charged was a matter of survival, because unanswered calls from the hospital had once meant their mother was dying and no one had known where to find Emily.

The apartment Nora chose belonged to a former federal investigator named Tomas Reed. He had retired, his wife had moved south for her knees, and the two-bedroom flat remained furnished for visiting relatives. There were ordinary pictures on the walls: a wedding, a dog, grandchildren beside a fishing boat. Emily appreciated that. It was difficult to be brave in rooms designed to look bulletproof.

Nora walked them through two exits, a fire alarm, and the location of the first-aid kit. Then she handed Emily an envelope containing prepaid groceries and a written phone number.

"I didn't ask for money," Emily said.

"You shouldn't have to. Your employer put you in danger."

"You keep saying employer like Alexander doesn't own the whole thing."

"He does. That's why he's responsible."

Jonah looked from one woman to the other. "Are we allowed to ask how many guys he punched last night?"

"No," Emily and Nora said together.

He almost smiled.

Nora left a detective's contact information beside the apartment key. She explained that Victor's convoy had not been attacked, as Alexander first feared. The transfer had been canceled by an administrative order that appeared to come from the district attorney's office. The order was fraudulent. Victor was still in secure custody, but someone powerful enough to manipulate the transfer had bought him several hours of confusion.

"They wanted us looking the wrong way," Emily said.

"Probably."

"While somebody went after Jonah."

Nora neither confirmed nor denied it. Her silence was answer enough.

After Jonah settled with a borrowed game console, Emily went into the little kitchen and called Rita Salcedo. Rita was a night cleaner who carried hard candies for nervous employees and whose daughter had just learned to read. Emily had texted her twice after the shooting without getting an answer.

This time the call connected. Emily heard breathing, then a door shutting.

"Rita?"

"Don't say my name," a woman whispered.

Emily gripped the counter. "Are you hurt?"

"They're telling people I quit. I didn't quit. Victor's people came to the laundry room yesterday and asked what I'd seen. I didn't tell them. I was afraid of losing my job."

"Where are you?"

"A room a friend found. I don't know how long I can stay." Rita's breath shook. "The men who run the ninth floor keep a second set of personnel files. People whose pay goes somewhere else. People who stopped coming to work."

"What do you mean stopped coming?"

"Their names are still on the schedule." A car horn sounded on Rita's end. "Emily, don't give anyone this number. Not even the nice woman with the braids. Somebody inside King's security is helping them."

The call ended.

Emily stood in the kitchen while a kettle clicked uselessly on the stove. Rita had never once spoken carelessly about the building. If she was warning Emily not to trust Nora, she had either learned something terrifying or someone had convinced her that everybody was an enemy.

Jonah entered carrying a bag of pretzels. "You look like you swallowed a staple."

"That's an interesting medical assessment."

"I learned it from you." He leaned against the counter. "You think King sent that guy?"

"No," Emily said after a pause. "I think somebody wants me to believe he did."

"You don't know that."

"No. I don't."

Jonah nodded, satisfied by the honest answer. He was better at accepting uncertainty than adults often gave him credit for.

That evening Alexander called. Emily let the phone ring twice, then answered with Nora's number written in front of her.

"Your brother is safe?" he asked.

"For now. Why does someone think the first account is yours?"

There was a pause. "We found a transfer account tied to the missing payroll. Its authorization record carries my digital signature."

"Did you sign it?"

"I don't remember authorizing it."

"That's not what I asked."

"I know," Alexander said. "I signed thousands of things through a delegated system. It's possible I approved a document without understanding what it financed."

Emily sat down slowly. An easy answer would have been that his signature was forged. Instead he had admitted something more complicated, and she wasn't sure whether she respected him for it or feared what it meant.

"How much?"

"Two million, four hundred thousand over eighteen months."

She closed her eyes. Rita had once cried in the stairwell because an overtime adjustment of eighty-three dollars had been denied. Two million dollars had moved invisibly while a woman worried about eighty-three.

"If your signature was on it," Emily said, "then your apology isn't going to fix this."

"I agree."

"You keep agreeing with me."

"Would you prefer that I lie?"

She exhaled. "No. I want you to find the people who are missing from those schedules."

"I'm trying."

"Try with people who know the floors. The cleaners. The kitchen staff. They'll tell you things the boardroom never hears."

"Will you help us speak with them?"

Emily glanced toward Jonah, who was pretending not to listen from the hallway. She had spent twenty-four hours trying to keep one person alive. Now Alexander wanted her back inside a system where employees could disappear from ordinary schedules and remain on fraudulent ones.

"Only if they can refuse," she said. "Only if the interviews happen off your property. And only with someone independent taking notes."

"Those are reasonable conditions."

"One more thing. I am not your employee anymore until I decide otherwise. Pay me the wages you owe. Don't buy my silence by calling it a promotion."

The silence that followed was long enough for Emily to wonder if she'd gone too far.

"Understood," Alexander said. "Nora will arrange the wages without a waiver."

Emily hung up and stared at the phone. Jonah returned to the kitchen.

"You told the scariest guy in town that he owes you money?"

"I told my boss he owes me wages."

"Still pretty cool."

For the first time since the shooting, she laughed. It startled them both.

An hour later a grocery delivery arrived. Emily inspected each bag before letting the driver leave. Apples, milk, eggs, pasta, bread, and Jonah's favorite cinnamon cookies. She called Nora to ask whether King had ordered it. Nora said she'd arranged it herself and had kept the receipt.

"I appreciate it," Emily said. "I also need to tell you something. Rita called me."

Nora's voice sharpened. "Where is she?"

"She wouldn't say. She mentioned personnel files on the ninth floor."

"We're checking them."

"She also told me somebody in your security department works for Victor."

Nora was silent. "That may be true. Don't say anything else about your conversation over this line."

"Can I trust you?"

"I can't prove it with words," Nora answered. "Watch what I do next."

Twenty minutes later, there was a knock at the apartment door. Three slow knocks, a pause, then two. The signal Nora had given them. Emily checked the peephole and saw Tomas Reed, the apartment owner, holding a plastic toolbox. He introduced himself through the closed door and said Nora had asked him to replace a faulty lock.

Emily called Nora before opening it. Nora said she hadn't sent anyone.

Emily's hand went cold around the phone. Through the peephole, Tomas slowly lowered the toolbox and looked directly at the door's lens. He knew he had been recognized.

"Emily," Nora said sharply, "get Jonah away from the door. Use the rear exit. Now."

But when Emily turned, Jonah was staring at the apartment's second doorway.

A narrow strip of light shone beneath it.

Someone had already opened the service entrance from the other side.

Emily grabbed Jonah's sleeve, dragged him into the bathroom, and locked the door. The apartment's old windows opened onto a shallow fire escape. From her bag she took the metal nail file she'd carried since high school and pried up the stiff latch until the window moved. Below them was an alley dotted with trash bins.

"Don't look down," she told Jonah.

"That's the first thing people do when you tell them that."

She helped him onto the landing and followed, heart hammering. Behind them, the bathroom lock rattled. Emily guided Jonah down the steps, her bruised arm burning each time she gripped the rail.

At street level, they ran toward the corner bodega, where the owner let them shelter behind the register while they called the police. Nora arrived six minutes later with two uniformed officers, not King's private guards. The apartment was empty by the time police searched it. Tomas Reed's photograph, the one on the mantel, was gone.

"That wasn't Tomas," Nora said, studying the security recording from the building next door. "The real Tomas is in Florida. Someone used his name."

Emily felt Jonah trembling beside her. She put an arm around him, still struggling to steady her own breath.

Then one of the officers emerged carrying a thin envelope found under the apartment door. On it was Emily's name, written in the same black ink as Jonah's receipt.

Inside lay a photocopy of an old employee attendance sheet. At the top was a familiar company seal. Below it were seventeen names, each marked ACTIVE.

Six were crossed out in red.