Across the floor, Mateo didn’t look up.His fingers were already moving faster, windows rearranging themselves as he drilled down.“Already seeing it,” he replied.“That ledger shouldn’t be active.That account’s supposed to be dormant.”
“Confirm the identity and status of the person accessing it,” Kol said.
A pause.Not long—just long enough to matter.
A flicker of red edged the display.
“It’s her,” Mateo said, slower now.“Eliza Reed.She filed a routine travel notice with her firm three weeks ago and never returned.Her access should’ve been shut off.Instead, it looks like she’s being forced to manage transactions through legacy pathways.”
Mateo’s jaw tightened.“No other digital footprint since.”
Kol’s gaze tracked the container feed as it slipped from port view and reappeared inland.He stopped watching the video and followed the numbers instead—the delays, the spacing, the subtle corrections that spoke of constraint rather than collaboration.
“She’s being made to work,” he said.
Mateo finally looked at him.“You sure she’s not part of this?”
Kol nodded once.“She was taken.Kidnapped.Threatened.Probably beaten.Sold before we could save her.There is no version of this where she’s doing it willingly.”
Elias appeared at his shoulder without announcement.
He studied the data the way he studied men—without haste, without assumption, letting patterns speak for themselves.“You sound very sure of that,” Elias said.
“I am.”
Elias didn’t ask how.
Kol tagged the route and sent the packet upstream, watching as the alert propagated through layers of compartmentalization designed to protect the Covenant from itself.“The buyer will be watching for delivery confirmation,” he added.“They’ll escalate if they don’t get it.”
Elias considered that.“We’re late.”
Kol’s mouth tightened.“We were late when she was taken three weeks ago.”
Silence passed between them, measured and unflinching.
“Then we make it right,” Elias said at last.“Go.Take what and who you need.Bring her back.”
Kol was already moving.
Behind him, the screens continued their quiet vigil, numbers sliding into place as the Iron Covenant turned its attention toward a name it had once lost.
Unfinished business had a way of resurfacing.
Kol intended to end it.
****
Three weeks was a longtime to disappear.
Eliza learned that early—learned it in the way the human body learned things it had never been designed to carry.In bruises that never fully faded, blooming and receding in sickly shades before settling deep beneath the skin.In the ache that lodged itself into her joints and refused to leave, no matter how carefully she moved.In the constant headache and the way time lost its edges, stretching and compressing until it stopped behaving like anything she recognized.
The room they kept her in was small.Not cramped enough to trigger panic outright, but the walls were close enough that there was no forgetting where she was.No windows.White walls scrubbed clean too often, the smell of disinfectant sharp enough to sting the back of her nose and linger on her tongue.The light stayed on constantly—a low, buzzing fixture that flattened everything it touched and made it impossible to tell whether it was day or night.
Sleep came in fragments.
Never long enough to be restorative.Never deep enough to let her drift.Her body learned to rest in short bursts, snatching minutes when it could, surfacing again at the smallest sound—the scrape of boots, the whisper of fabric, the click of the door mechanism engaging.
She learned the rules quickly.