Page 57 of South of Justice

“How do you want to play it?” Ryan asked.

“Soft entry first. If it’s locked, I have contingencies.”

He raised a brow but said nothing. He was letting her lead, like he had with the car purchase. She couldn’t work out if it was refreshing or patronizing, and now was hardly the time to analyze it.

The front door creaked open with surprising ease. Inside, the place was even more depressing: a patchwork of flickering fluorescents, dead ceiling fans, and dust motes in the slats of sunlight coming through the blinds. A single receptionist desk stood empty, the chair tucked in, unused. A fake snake plant in a plastic pot tried but failed to add some life.

“Charming,” Ryan muttered.

Lucía found a terminal behind the counter and booted it up. It wheezed to life. While she waited, she took a bottle of water from her pack and drank deeply, passing another silently to Ryan. He accepted it with a nod and glanced toward the hallway.

“Anyone here?”

“Place is on the books but barely functional,” she said. “They keep it open for paperwork that hasn’t been digitized yet. It’s basically a dead site.”

Ryan prowled the room like a caged animal while she worked. The desktop OS was a decade out of date. She inserted a USB patch loaded with custom scrapers and her fingers darted across the keys.

A few minutes later, she found the transactions she was looking for. Altamar Seafood. Her stomach flipped.

“Got something?” Ryan asked.

“Hold on.” She kept scrolling. A transaction was tagged “verified,” timestamped two days ago, but it was filed underan archive last accessed four months prior. That shouldn’t be possible.

She clicked into the metadata.

And froze.

Ryan noticed immediately. “What is it?”

Lucía swallowed hard. “These files were altered recently. But it’s hidden beneath layers that look old. Like someone scrubbed it and then put it back.”

Ryan moved closer, peering at the screen.

“That a problem?”

Lucía’s fingers moved quickly, pulling up a string of embedded markers. There. In the last line of obfuscated code, a digital signature. Not obvious. But she knew it.

Someone had known they would come. Someone had built the breadcrumb trail deliberately. The shell company, the tax filings, the child-size clothing invoice—it was too perfect. Like it had been designed to drag them to this very place at this very time.

Her heart stuttered. “Ryan, we need to go. Now.”

He blinked. “What?—?”

“It’s a trap.”

The words had barely left her mouth when the first shot cracked through the window. Glass shattered. Ryan shoved her to the ground. “Down!”

THIRTY-SIX

Ryan’s shoulderslammed against the floor with a jolt that knocked the air from his lungs. The first gunshot still echoed in his ears. He didn’t wait; he dragged Lucía with him behind the desk as shards of glass rained down in vicious arcs. They hit the tiles like sleet, skittering and sharp.

“Stay low,” he barked. His hand went to his hip and his PPK cleared leatherwith a snap.

Another shot cracked overhead. A fluorescent bulb exploded in a burst of sparks. One bullet sliced clean through the countertop, burying itself in the drywall inches from Lucía’s head.

She flinched, covering her ears. “They’re flanking,” she said, breath ragged. “Two shooters at least. Maybe more.”

He swore under his breath. He could see the shadows now—flickering movements outside the broken window, gliding like wraiths. Too disciplined for street muscle. Whoever they were, they were trained, armed, and not fucking around.