Chapter 3: Five Minutes

Nine a.m. The study.

Twelve people at the table.

Me at the wall with a coffee pot, because Camilla made sure everyone knew exactly what I was for.

"That's the mop," she'd said on the way in, loud and warm and cruel. "She does the floors. Don't mind her."

One of the captains actually laughed.

The bridge map went up on the screen and my whole body moved before my brain did — that old lean toward the board, that itch in my fingers to pick up a pen.

I made myself look at the carpet.

Camilla presented beautifully. She's good at this part. Voice like a documentary. Slides with clean arrows.

Then Dominic started asking questions.

"You've got the exchange at two minutes."

"Correct."

"Volkov held my sister four days to get me on a bridge for two minutes."

"Volkov wants the money."

"Or Volkov wants me." He tapped the table once. "Explain the water tower."

Camilla didn't blink. "Three hundred yards off the span. Our men will hold it."

"Whose men."

"Sal's."

"And if Volkov's are already there at four a.m., because he picked the bridge and we didn't?"

Silence.

Three seconds. Four.

I have watched people lose everything in four seconds. It doesn't sound like anything. It's just a person breathing wrong.

"We'd adapt," Camilla said.

"To what."

"To — the situation on the ground."

"You don't have a plan." He said it flat. "You have a nice map and no plan for the only thing that's actually going to happen on that bridge."

Sal jumped in. "Dominic, Camilla's the best we—"

"Sal, I've seen your books. You need my forgiveness more than you need your pride. Stop talking."

Sal stopped talking.

Dominic stood and buttoned his jacket.

"We're done. I take the bag myself. Tonight. Alone."

The lawyer half rose. "Dominic—"

"If you walk that span alone," the old man said quietly from the speaker, "you don't come back. And neither does the girl. They'll kill her the second you're down."

That sentence went through me like a blade.

They'll kill her the second you're down.

I know what that looks like. I know what it feels like to press both hands into a man's chest at 4:39 in the morning while the person who did it drives away with his headlights off.

Two voices in my head.

Not your business. You're the mop. You have a small, quiet life and it doesn't hurt anymore.

It always hurt. You just stopped calling it that.

Dominic was three steps from the door.

The coffee pot was still in my hand.

"Mr. Vitale."

My voice came out steady. It surprised me more than anyone.

Twelve heads turned.

Camilla's face went white, then red. "Mop—"

"Give me five minutes," I said.

The room made a sound. Someone laughed. Sal said, "Get her out—"

"She's holding a coffee pot," Camilla hissed. "Dominic, I'm sorry, I'll have her—"

Dominic Vitale didn't look at Camilla.

He turned all the way around and looked at me, and what was on his face was not surprise.

It was recognition. A man confirming a thing he'd suspected since 8:59 last night, when he watched a cleaner read ransom terms in nine seconds and lose all her color.