The photograph was pinned to the wall at eye level, slightly off-center, because Teresa had put it up at three in the morning after six glasses of wine and her hands hadn't been steady. Her father smiled out from the frame—not the formal, CEO smile he wore for shareholders, but the real one, the one he saved for Sunday mornings when it was just the two of them and the New York Times crossword puzzle and coffee that was always too strong.
That photograph was one year, two months, and seventeen days old. Teresa knew because she'd been counting. She counted everything now. Days since the funeral. Hours since she'd last slept properly. Minutes since she'd eaten something that wasn't coffee or rage disguised as determination.
The hotel room looked like a conspiracy theorist's fever dream. Every available surface covered with papers, photographs, printouts, sticky notes in three different colors representing three different levels of certainty. Red for confirmed. Yellow for probable. Blue for speculation that felt true even if she couldn't prove it yet. The walls were worse—she'd taped everything up in a web of connections that made sense at 2 AM and looked insane in daylight but was the only way she could see the patterns.
Her father's face appeared seventeen times across the walls. Different photographs, different contexts. David Agnes shaking hands with politicians. David Agnes at a ribbon cutting. David Agnes receiving an award for philanthropic work. David Agnes in a hospital in Mumbai, holding a child who'd survived typhoid because the Agnes Group had funded the clinic. Her father had been many things—CEO, philanthropist, workaholic, occasionally terrible at remembering birthdays—but he'd been good. Teresa knew this the way you know the sun rises. Fundamental. Unquestionable.
Good men didn't die in plane crashes unless someone wanted them dead.
She'd known it immediately, that morning in her Manhattan office when her assistant had knocked on the door with a face that meant something had broken. "Ms. Agnes, I'm so sorry. There's been an accident." The words that followed—private jet, mechanical failure, no survivors, recovery efforts ongoing—had been white noise. Teresa had heard died and everything else had disappeared into static.
The official investigation had taken four months. Mechanical failure, they'd concluded. Catastrophic engine malfunction. No evidence of foul play. The FAA report was two hundred pages of technical language that boiled down to: these things happen, tragic but not suspicious, case closed.
Teresa had read that report eleven times. She'd hired three independent aviation experts to review it. All three had agreed with the official conclusion. Mechanical failure. Tragic accident. Move on.
She'd tried. God, she'd tried. Thrown herself into running the Agnes Group, maintaining her father's legacy, proving she could carry the weight he'd left her. The board had been skeptical—twenty-seven was too young, they'd muttered, not enough experience, should bring in outside management. She'd proved them wrong. Six months of eighteen-hour days, decisive action, strategic pivots that her father would have been proud of.
But at night, alone in her apartment with the New York skyline glittering outside windows that cost more per square foot than most people's annual salary, she'd known. The knowing had been a physical sensation, a weight in her chest that made breathing difficult. Something was wrong with the official story. She just couldn't see what yet.
Then she'd found the first email.
Teresa moved to the wall now, touching the printout gently. The email was innocuous if you didn't know what you were looking for—her father confirming a dinner meeting with someone named Edmund Ashford, British royal advisor, discussing "the matter we spoke about previously." Three weeks before the crash.
She'd searched her father's files. Found six more emails. All carefully vague, all referencing "the matter," all with increasing urgency in her father's tone. The last one, sent two days before he died: "Edmund, I cannot in good conscience continue without more information. The implications are too severe. We need to meet. Face to face. No more delays."
Edmund Ashford had not responded to that email.
Edmund Ashford had been in London when her father's plane went down.
Edmund Ashford had sent flowers to the funeral with a note that read: "David was a man of principle. The world is poorer for his loss."
Teresa had spent three months tracking down every connection between her father and Edmund Ashford. Shell companies. Investment funds. Charitable organizations. The connections were there if you knew how to look, buried under layers of legitimate business, but there. And they all led to the same place: something called The Order of Reckoning.
She'd never heard of it. Nobody had. Google turned up nothing. Her father's colleagues knew nothing. Even the private investigators she'd hired—expensive, discreet, supposedly the best—had found nothing concrete. Just whispers. Rumors. A sense that something existed in the shadows but nobody wanted to talk about it.
So Teresa had taught herself to investigate.
It had started with YouTube videos. "How to conduct surveillance." "Basic tradecraft for beginners." "Digital security for journalists." She'd felt ridiculous, sitting in her penthouse apartment watching grainy videos made by ex-intelligence officers and investigative journalists, taking notes like she was back at MIT studying thermodynamics.
But it had worked. Sort of. She'd learned to check for tails. Vary her routes. Use encrypted communication. Recognize surveillance equipment. The basics that any competent operative would probably laugh at but that were better than nothing.
The library books had come next. Intelligence memoirs. Case studies of investigations. Books on money laundering, shell companies, international finance. She'd cross-referenced everything with her father's business dealings, looking for patterns. The Agnes Group had investments in sixty-three countries. Her father had been meticulous about documentation. If The Order existed, if it had killed him, there would be a trail.
She'd found one. Eventually. A pattern of investments that didn't quite make sense. Money flowing through legitimate channels to less legitimate destinations. Nothing illegal—her father would never—but questionable. Risky. The kind of investments David Agnes would normally avoid.
Unless he'd been investigating something.
Unless he'd been trying to track money the same way Teresa was doing now.
Unless he'd gotten too close and someone had decided to stop him.
The realization had hit her four months ago, standing in her office at 11 PM, surrounded by the same kind of chaos that now decorated this Singapore hotel room. Her father hadn't just been a target. He'd been an investigator too. He'd been doing exactly what she was doing, following the same trails, asking the same questions.
And it had killed him.
Teresa should have stopped then. Should have walked away, hired more security, let professionals handle it. That's what her head of security had recommended. That's what her board had implied without saying it directly. That's what any rational person would have done.
But Teresa had looked at her father's photograph—the real smile, the Sunday morning smile—and thought about good men dying in plane crashes, and she'd decided that rational could go to hell.
She'd followed the money to Singapore.
The city-state was a nexus, she'd discovered. Shell companies registered here connected to investments in three continents. Shipping manifests that didn't quite match cargo declarations. Financial transactions that were technically legal but morally gray. And underneath it all, whispers of something called The Order.
She'd made contact with Marcus Webb two weeks ago. MI6, Far East desk, supposedly working anti-corruption. He'd reached out through an encrypted channel after she'd made some inquiries that were apparently less subtle than she'd thought. His message had been brief: "I knew your father. We have mutual interests. Meet?"
Teresa had known it was risky. Known she was out of her depth. Known she should bring security, backup, someone who actually knew what they were doing. But she'd also known this was the first real lead she'd had in months, and she was running out of time and patience and the ability to sleep at night without seeing her father's plane exploding in her dreams.
So she'd agreed to meet.
The rain had started an hour ago, turning Singapore's heat into humid oppression that made her blouse stick to her back. Teresa stood in her hotel room, looking at the wall of evidence, and wondered if this was what insanity looked like. A year ago, she'd been a CEO. Competent. Professional. Living a life that made sense. Now she was standing in a foreign country, meeting with intelligence officers, investigating conspiracies that might not exist, because she couldn't accept that sometimes good men just died.
Her phone buzzed. Text from Marcus Webb: "Long Bar, Raffles. 8 PM. Come alone."
Teresa checked her watch. 7:23 PM. Thirty-seven minutes.
She moved through her preparation routine. The one she'd developed over months of teaching herself tradecraft from internet videos. Check exits. Memorize routes. Dress in layers—easier to change appearance if needed. Minimal jewelry. Phone on silent but within reach. Pepper spray in her jacket pocket. Hair tied back—harder to grab.
The list felt both paranoid and insufficient. Like she was playing at being a spy, doing the things she'd seen in movies without understanding why they mattered. But it was better than nothing. Better than walking in blind.
Teresa grabbed her jacket—lightweight, multiple pockets, bought specifically for this trip—and took one last look at the wall. Her father smiled at her from seventeen different angles. She'd promised him, at his funeral, that she'd find out what happened. That she wouldn't let whoever did this get away with it.
She intended to keep that promise even if it killed her.
Which, she was increasingly aware, was a distinct possibility.
The Raffles Hotel at night was a monument to colonial excess, all white columns and tropical gardens and the kind of elegance that made you feel underdressed no matter what you wore. Teresa had chosen the Long Bar deliberately—public, well-lit, full of tourists who wouldn't notice one more business meeting among dozens.
She arrived at 7:47 PM. Thirteen minutes early. Always arrive early, the YouTube videos had said. Scout the location. Identify exits. Watch for anomalies. She ordered something clear with lime—vodka tonic, though she had no intention of drinking more than sips—and positioned herself at a table with good sightlines.
The minutes crawled by. Teresa checked her phone, checked the room, checked her watch. Nervous energy made her leg bounce under the table until she consciously stopped it. Professional. Controlled. She was Teresa Agnes, CEO of a company worth more than some countries' GDP. She could handle a meeting with an intelligence officer.
Except her hands were shaking slightly, and she'd checked her watch three times in two minutes, and she was increasingly aware that she had no idea what she was doing.
8:04 PM. Marcus Webb was late.
8:07 PM. Still no sign.
Teresa took another sip of her drink. Lime, not lemon. Small choice. Meaningless. But choices mattered, didn't they? That's what her father had taught her. Every decision, even small ones, created ripples. You couldn't predict where they'd go, but you could try to aim them in the right direction.
8:09 PM. Movement at the entrance.
Marcus Webb looked exactly like his profile photograph—late forties, British, the kind of bland professional competence that let you disappear into any crowd. He moved through the bar with purpose but not urgency, scanning the room in a way that was probably second nature but looked practiced to Teresa's untrained eye.
He sat across from her without preamble. "Miss Agnes."
"Mr. Webb."
"You're early. Good habit." He didn't offer a handshake. Professional distance. Or maybe he just didn't shake hands. Teresa had no idea what the protocol was for meetings with intelligence officers.
"You said you knew my father," she said, because small talk felt impossible and time felt short.
Webb's expression softened marginally. "I did. Briefly. We were both investigating some of the same... irregularities. Financial channels that didn't quite add up."
"The Order of Reckoning."
He went very still. "You know that name."
"I found it in my father's files. Encrypted documents. He was tracking something he called 'OR.' I assumed it meant The Order."
Webb's fingers drummed on the table. Nervous gesture. Or maybe calculating. Teresa couldn't tell. She'd spent a year learning tradecraft from videos, but reading people was harder. People lied with their bodies in ways that were subtle, complex, trained.
"Your father was a good man," Webb said finally. "He was also getting too close to something very dangerous."
"You think The Order killed him."
"I think your father's plane crash was suspiciously well-timed."
Teresa's chest tightened. Validation, finally, from someone who wasn't paid by her or obligated to believe her. Someone who knew things, who had access to information she couldn't get.
"Tell me about them," she said. "The Order. What are they? What do they want?"
Webb glanced around the bar. Checking for surveillance, probably. Or escape routes. "Not here. Not all of it. But I can give you this."
He slid something across the table. Flash drive. Small, black, innocuous. Teresa's hand moved toward it before he'd finished talking. Eager. She knew she looked eager. Couldn't help it.
"What's on it?"
"Financial records. Connections between shell companies. Names you should know. Places you should avoid." He paused. "And proof that The Order has been operating for two hundred years. Systematically. Targeting specific families."
"Which families?"
Webb's expression was grave. "The Windsor family, primarily. British royalty. But also their associates. Their allies. Anyone who gets too close to certain... historical truths."
Teresa processed this. British royalty. Two hundred years. Her father had been investigating financial irregularities, not royal conspiracies. How did they connect?
"My father wasn't connected to British royalty," she said.
"No. But he was tracking their money. And he found something they didn't want found." Webb stood, checking his watch. "I need to go. You should too. Leave Singapore. Tonight if possible. They know you're here."
"Who knows?"
"The Order." He said it like it was obvious. Like she should have known. "They've been tracking you since you arrived. Probably before. You're not as subtle as you think you are."
Teresa's stomach dropped. She'd been careful. Varied her routes. Checked for tails. Done everything the videos had taught her. But she was an amateur playing at investigation, and apparently amateurs got caught.
"If they're tracking me, why haven't they—"
"Because they're deciding whether you're a threat or just a grieving daughter playing detective." Webb's tone was blunt. Clinical. "My advice? Leave. Disappear. Forget about The Order and your father's death and everything you think you've learned. Go back to New York and run your company and live your life."
"And if I don't?"
He looked at her with something that might have been pity. "Then you'll end up like your father. And I'll be attending another funeral."
He left without another word. No handshake. No goodbye. Just gone, disappearing into the hotel's elegant crowd like he'd never been there at all.
Teresa sat alone with her vodka tonic and a flash drive that apparently contained proof of a two-hundred-year-old conspiracy. The rain outside had intensified, turning the windows into rivers of distorted light. Appropriate, somehow. Everything about the past year felt distorted, like she was looking at the world through water and nothing quite made sense anymore.
She should leave. Webb was right. Go back to New York. Hire better security. Let professionals handle this. She had a company to run. Employees depending on her. A life that made sense before she'd decided good men didn't die in plane crashes unless someone killed them.
But she looked at the flash drive, and she thought about her father's smile—the real one, the Sunday morning one—and she knew she wasn't leaving.
She'd promised.
Teresa paid her bill and stood. The bar was full but not crowded, tourists and business travelers mixing in the way they did in international hotels. Anonymous. Safe. Public.
She checked her phone. Checked the room. Checked her watch—force of habit now, the nervous gesture she couldn't quite break. Then she walked out into Singapore's humid night, jacket pulled tight against rain that was probably warm but felt cold, flash drive burning a hole in her pocket like evidence of crimes she was only beginning to understand.
The street outside Raffles was busy—taxis, pedestrians, street vendors selling everything from souvenirs to satay. Teresa joined the flow of people, heading vaguely north toward her hotel. She'd take a taxi. Maybe walk part of the way. Never the same route twice. That was the rule.
Except she'd broken rules all night. Met with an intelligence officer. Accepted classified information. Stayed in Singapore when she'd been told to leave.
What was one more mistake?
The rain made everything slick. Teresa's shoes—professional heels, chosen for the meeting, wrong for running if running became necessary—clicked against wet pavement. She was acutely aware of every sound, every movement, every person who might be following her.
Paranoia, probably. Webb had said they were tracking her, but that didn't mean they were actively pursuing. Didn't mean immediate danger. She had time. Time to get back to her hotel, examine the flash drive, decide what to do next.
She checked behind her. Casual glance, the kind anyone might make. Saw nothing suspicious. Just people. Moving with purpose or without it, everyone focused on their own lives, their own problems.
Teresa relaxed marginally.
That's when she saw them.
Three men. Different directions. Moving with purpose that felt coordinated. Street clothes but something about their posture, their spacing, their focus—wrong. All wrong.
Her training—such as it was—kicked in. YouTube videos and library books translating into action without conscious thought. Don't run—running confirms you're aware. Change direction casually. Head toward crowds. Public spaces. Witnesses.
She turned east. Away from her hotel. Toward Beach Road, where there would be more people, more lights, more safety in numbers.
The three men adjusted their vectors.
Teresa's heart rate spiked. This was real. Not paranoia. Not imagination. Webb had said they were tracking her, and now they were moving, and she'd spent a year learning tradecraft from internet videos but nothing had prepared her for the sick feeling of knowing you're prey.
She walked faster. Not running—not yet—but purposeful. Heels clicking rhythm against pavement, too loud, too obvious. She should have worn different shoes. Should have planned better. Should have listened to Webb and left Singapore hours ago.
Beach Road was busier. Teresa merged into foot traffic, trying to disappear into crowds the way Webb had disappeared in the Raffles bar. Anonymous. Unremarkable. Just another business woman navigating Singapore's night.
But the three men were still there. Closer now. Maintaining formation. Professional. Trained. Whatever they were, they weren't street criminals. This was coordinated. Planned.
The alley appeared on her right. Narrow opening between buildings. Dark but not completely. Teresa's mind calculated—if she could cut through, emerge on the other side, maybe lose them in the maze of streets beyond.
Tactical thinking. Strategic. She was good at strategy. Had gotten a perfect score on her game theory final at MIT. Could see patterns, calculate probabilities, assess risk.
The alley looked clear.
Teresa turned into it.
Five steps in, she realized her mistake.
Dead end.
The alley terminated in a brick wall maybe thirty meters ahead. No exits. No doors. Nothing but shadows and rain and the sick realization that she'd just done exactly what they'd wanted her to do.
Behind her, footsteps. Three sets. Coordinated. Closing.
Teresa spun. The three men were at the alley entrance now. Blocking her exit. Silhouettes against street light, faces unclear but posture unmistakable. Purpose. Intent.
Her hand found the pepper spray in her jacket pocket. Small comfort. She'd bought it three months ago, watched videos on how to use it, never actually tested it because you couldn't test these things without consequences.
She was about to face consequences.
The men moved forward. Slow. Deliberate. No rush. They had time. They had position. They had training and coordination and certainty.
Teresa had pepper spray and YouTube videos and the knowledge that her father had died investigating these people and she was about to join him.
"Teresa Agnes," the middle one said. American accent. Midwestern, maybe. "You've been asking questions."
"I have a right to ask questions." Her voice was steadier than it should have been. Than she felt. Fear made everything sharp—colors brighter, sounds louder, time slower. She could see individual raindrops. Count them if she wanted.
"You have the right to go home. To run your company. To forget about things that don't concern you."
"My father's murder concerns me."
"Your father died in an accident. Tragic but not suspicious."
"You're lying."
The man smiled. Couldn't see it clearly but heard it in his voice. "Lying would imply you deserve the truth. You don't. You're a complication. Complications get resolved."
They moved closer. Ten meters now. Teresa backed up, heels scraping wet concrete. Nowhere to go. Wall behind her, three trained operatives ahead. Math that didn't work in her favor.
She raised the pepper spray. "Stay back."
"That's going to hurt you more than us. Confined space, wind direction wrong. You'll blind yourself."
He was right. She knew he was right. But the spray was all she had besides strategy, and her strategy had brought her into a dead-end alley with no backup and no plan.
Eight meters.
Teresa's mind raced. Self-defense videos. Pressure points. Vulnerable areas. Strike hard, strike fast, create opening, run. Except there were three of them and one of her, and she'd taken exactly one self-defense class six months ago and the instructor had been very clear that against multiple trained opponents, the best defense was not being there in the first place.
Six meters.
"Make this easy," the man said. "Come with us. Answer questions. Maybe you get to go home."
"Maybe?"
"That depends on what you know. What your father told you."
Five meters.
Teresa's finger tensed on the pepper spray trigger. Useless but something. Better than nothing. Better than giving up.
The first attacker moved forward, reaching—
Sound of impact.
But not her being hit.
The reaching man's head snapped sideways, body following momentum, crashing into the alley wall with force that meant unconscious or dead or somewhere between. He dropped. Silent. Efficient.
Teresa's brain struggled to process. Someone else. Movement behind the attackers. Shadow becoming person, person becoming weapon, weapon becoming violence so precise it looked choreographed.
The second attacker turned. Training. Reaction. Hand going for weapon.
But the shadow was faster.
Much faster.
Combat happened in seconds. Precise. Brutal. Clinical. The kind of violence that looked easy because thousands of hours had made it muscle memory. Two more attackers down. Three in total. Under ten seconds.
Then the shadow straightened, and rain plastered dark hair against his skull, and Teresa could see his face for the first time.
Male. Late thirties. Grey eyes—not blue-grey or green-grey, just grey, like color had leached out. Dangerous in a way that made her step back instinctively even though he'd just saved her life.
He looked at her. Their eyes met.
Teresa's hand still clutched the pepper spray. Still raised. Still ready to use it even though the immediate threat was neutralized. Her breath came fast, shallow. Adrenaline and fear and confusion mixing into something that felt like shock.
"Who are you?" she managed.
He didn't answer immediately. Calculating something. Assessing. His hands were bloody—not his blood, probably—and he stood between her and the exit like he couldn't decide if he was protection or threat.
"Who are you?" she asked again. Louder. More insistent. Demanding answers because answers were the only currency she had left.
"Someone who just saved your life."
His voice was flat. Empty. The kind of emptiness that came from filing away everything that made sounds human until only function remained.
He turned to leave.
"Wait." The word came out before Teresa could think about it. Strategic error—letting someone leave when they had information. Or maybe strategic necessity—keeping someone close who'd just killed three men to protect her. She couldn't tell. "Those men. Who are they?"
"Problems you don't want."
"I'm asking what they are, not whether I want them."
Something changed in his expression. Brief. Almost invisible. Like she'd said something unexpected and he didn't know how to file it.
He turned back. "They're called The Order of Reckoning. They're interested in your investigation."
The Order. Webb's warning. Her father's encrypted files. Two hundred years of systematic targeting. All of it real. All of it true. And this man—whoever he was—knew about it.
"How do you know about my investigation?" Teresa asked.
"I've been watching you for three days."
The words hit like cold water. Three days. Seventy-two hours. Someone had been tracking her movements, cataloging her patterns, observing her life while she thought she was being careful. While she thought her YouTube videos and library books had taught her enough to stay safe.
"You've been—" She stopped. Processed. Three days of surveillance meant deliberate. Planned. Either with The Order or against them. Binary choice. "Then you're either with them or against them."
"Against."
"Why should I believe you?"
"Because if I wanted you dead, you'd be dead."
Factual. Clinical. The same empty voice that made the statement feel true even though truth was the last thing she should trust right now. But he'd killed three men to save her. Had revealed himself, compromised his position, intervened when he could have walked away.
That had to mean something.
"I need information," Teresa said. Strategic pivot. Use the opportunity. This man knew things—about The Order, about surveillance, about violence that looked like professional training. "About The Order. About my father's death. About—"
"No."
Flat refusal. No negotiation. Just no.
"I need—"
"No." Firmer now. He was looking past her, calculating something. "You need to leave Singapore. Tonight. Don't go home. Don't contact anyone you know. Disappear."
"I'm not running."
"Then you're dying."
He said it the way you'd describe weather. Observable fact. Temperature. Precipitation. Your death. Choose quickly.
Teresa stared at him. Every instinct screamed complexity—this wasn't simple, wasn't binary, wasn't something that could be reduced to run or die. She'd spent a year investigating. Following money. Building evidence. Proving her father hadn't died in an accident. And now someone was telling her to walk away. To disappear. To forget everything she'd worked for.
She couldn't do that.
Wouldn't do that.
Her father's smile—the real one, the Sunday morning one—flashed through her mind. The promise she'd made at his funeral. The year of counting days and learning tradecraft and refusing to accept that good men just died.
"Come with me," she said.
"No."
"You said you've been watching me. That means you know things. About them. About what they're planning."
"I know you need to leave. Now."
"Then help me leave. Be my... I don't know. My security. My guide. Whatever you were doing before."
He went very still. Processing. Calculating. Teresa could see the wheels turning behind grey eyes, some internal equation being solved that she couldn't understand because she didn't have the variables.
Finally: "Seventy-two hours. I give you three days. After that, you're on your own."
Relief flooded through her. Not safety—she wasn't safe, was possibly less safe with a trained killer than without—but something. A path forward. Help. Alliance. Whatever this was.
She held out her hand. "Teresa Agnes."
He looked at her hand. Didn't take it. The rejection felt deliberate. Significant. Like physical contact meant something he wasn't willing to give.
"Follow me," he said instead. "Don't trust anyone."
"Not even you?"
He started walking. Quick efficient steps that she'd have to hurry to match. Teresa followed, heels clicking against wet concrete, pepper spray still in her pocket, flash drive from Marcus Webb still burning evidence against her side.
Behind them, three unconscious men. Ahead, someone who'd been watching her for three days and had just killed to save her life. Around them, rain and Singapore night and the grey bleeding edges where nothing made sense anymore.
"Especially not me," he said without turning around.
Teresa kept pace. Matched his stride. Followed him out of the alley into streets that felt both more dangerous and less than they had minutes ago.
She didn't know his name. Didn't know why he'd saved her. Didn't know if she could trust him or if this was another mistake in a year of mistakes.
But she knew three things:
One: The Order of Reckoning had killed her father.
Two: They'd just tried to kill her too.
Three: The man walking ahead of her—grey eyes, empty voice, violence like choreography—was either going to help her find answers or get her killed trying.
Teresa had spent a year learning to live with uncertainty. Learning to investigate instead of accept. Learning to question instead of trust.
She could live with this uncertainty too.
At least for seventy-two hours.
At least until she found the truth or the truth found her.
The rain kept falling. It always did in Singapore. Appropriate, somehow. Everything bleeding together until you couldn't tell where safety ended and danger began.
Teresa followed the stranger into the wet Singapore night and wondered if she'd just made the best decision of her life or the last one.
Time would tell.
It always did.