The lobby of Cortez Strategies smelled of lemon polish and panic.
Staff whispered in glass offices; screens streamed headlines about their own boss.
Ava walked through the noise like a storm front, Liam two steps behind.
"Smile," she said without looking at him. "Fear draws eyes."
Her assistant tried to block her. "Ms. Cortez, the board asked you to"
"Cancel the board."
She rode the elevator to the twenty-ninth floor. Every mirror inside showed a composed woman in a dark suit, but her pulse was a drum. Liam's reflection behind her was all coiled muscle and distrust.
When the doors opened, the corridor was empty except for one man waiting by the conference room: Evan Pryce, head of data security, and her oldest mistake.
"Ava," he said, pretending warmth. "You shouldn't be here."
"I could say the same to the man whose servers leaked my life."
Evan's smile barely held. "You think I sold you out?"
"I think you made it possible."
Liam stepped between them. "Save the small talk. We want access logs."
Evan's eyes slid to him, assessing. "You brought muscle."
"Brains too," Liam said. "You'd be surprised."
They pushed into the conference room. Glass walls, wide view of Verrin's skyline, storm clouds still heavy in the distance. On the table lay a laptop and a half-burned USB stick.
Evan gestured. "The system was breached at 2:14 a.m. I was already home."
"Too clean," Ava said. "You wiped the traces."
"I protected the firm."
"By betraying it?"
He leaned forward. "By betraying you. There's a difference."
The sentence hit like a slap. Liam's hand flexed. "He just confessed."
Evan shrugged. "Don't twist words. You got sloppy, Ava. I cleaned up before the board found out."
"By leaking the tape?"
"I leaked a clip. Enough to feed the wolves. Keeps them from digging deeper."
She stared. "And what happens when they finish the appetizer?"
His eyes flicked away. "They'll find someone else to eat."
Liam's patience snapped. He slammed the laptop lid shut. "Who paid you?"
Evan laughed softly. "You think it's about money? It's survival. You two started something that scared the wrong people."
Before Ava could press, her phone vibrated. Unknown number again: WITNESS FOUND. DOCK 14.
She showed Liam. He nodded once. Evan frowned. "What is that?"
"Your chance to prove you're still useful," she said, already moving.
The docks smelled of diesel and old salt. Police tape fluttered like tired flags.
Kai Benton stood near the edge, coat collar high against the wind.
"I was told you'd show up," he said. "I didn't say it was an invitation."
"Information doesn't wait for invitations," Ava replied.
The witness sat in the back of an ambulance, a hotel busboy, eyes wide, shaking.
Liam crouched beside him. "You saw the senator's room?"
The man nodded. "He met someone before he died. A woman."
Ava's stomach tightened. "Describe her."
"Dark hair. Red dress. Security badge."
Ava's heart tripped; she knew that badge. Her firm's night-shift liaison, Clara Vance, has been missing since the explosion.
"Where is she now?" Liam asked.
The witness opened his mouth to answer, but the shot came first.
A single crack across the water. He fell forward into Liam's arms.
Kai dove for cover, shouting orders. Sirens erupted again.
Liam scanned the rooftops. "Sniper's gone."
Ava knelt beside the body. Blood was spreading across the ambulance step. "He barely said her name."
Kai pulled her up. "You two just turned my case into a war zone."
"You think we wanted this?" she snapped.
"I think wherever you go, people die."
Liam stepped between them. "Detective, we didn't shoot him."
Kai's jaw clenched. "Tell that to the camera feeds I just lost. Someone wiped them mid-attack."
Another clue vanished with the smoke.
Ava looked at the lifeless witness, then at the dark river swallowing the bullet casing. "They're covering their tracks faster than we can chase them."
Liam's voice was low. "Then we stop reacting and start hunting."
Kai gave him a look somewhere between warning and respect. "If you find who did this, call me before you kill them."
"No promises," Liam said.
Back in the car, silence sat between them.
Ava stared out the window, reflections of sirens sliding over her face.
Liam drove with one hand, the other resting near hers on the seat, not quite touching.
"This doesn't end tonight," she said.
"It started long before tonight."
"Clara Vance," she whispered. "Find her and we find everything."
"Then we find her," he said.
Their eyes met in the mirror.
The city ahead flickered like a fuse waiting to blow.
The storm had followed them to the safe house on the edge of Verrin.
It was an old warehouse turned loft, all metal and warmth from a single lamp.
Rain hammered the roof like a heartbeat they couldn't ignore.
Ava paced the room while Liam checked the perimeter again, the cut on his shoulder reopening in small, angry lines.
"You'll tear it worse," she said.
He shrugged. "Pain tells me I'm still here."
"You could try breathing instead."
"Show me how."
The line shouldn't have been a challenge, but it was. She crossed to him, pressed her palm against his chest. The steady rhythm under her hand did more than she wanted to admit.
"Slow," she said. "In. Out."
He caught her wrist, eyes holding hers. "Like this?"
The air between them thickened. For the first time all night, neither moved away.
When he kissed her, it wasn't gentle. It was the kind of kiss that happened when both people had spent too long pretending they weren't already there.
Her breath hitched, her fingers curled in his shirt. His good arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her closer.
The edge of the table met the back of her thighs. She didn't stop him; she wanted to feel something that wasn't fear.
He lifted her onto the table, mouth still on hers, the kiss deepening until her pulse outpaced the rain. Every brush of his lips felt like he was learning her by memory, jaw, throat, the place just below her ear that made her sigh.
She pulled his shirt free, skin against skin, heat meeting heat.
The sound she made when his hand slid up her spine was half moan, half disbelief.
"Tell me to stop," he murmured.
She didn't.
The world narrowed to the press of bodies, the taste of rain on his skin, the low sound in his throat that she felt more than heard.
When the last piece of space disappeared between them, everything went silent except their breathing, slow, uneven, then one.
The lamp flickered; shadows danced on the wall.
Outside, thunder rolled again, as if the city knew what they'd just begun.
They stayed wrapped in that silence afterward, her head on his chest, his hand tracing circles on her arm.
For a moment, there were no lies, no files, no dead senators, only the raw truth of two people who had run out of ways to stay apart.
Then the phone on the table buzzed once.
Unknown number: I warned you to stop digging.
Liam looked at the screen, jaw tightening. "They know where we are."
Ava pushed herself up, the softness gone, replaced by fire. "Then we make them wish they didn't."