Page 76 of Jamie

“Names and numbers,” I explained. “Robbie said it was important.”

“On it.”

Then, I turned to Killian, who stood at the board beside Levi the cop, calm and sharp-eyed, taking everything in with quiet intensity. Cops made me feel weird, and I wasn’t getting over that any time soon. Sonya came in with a handful of files, greeted me with a smile, and slid into her chair. The entire Cave group was here.And maybe that included me?

Killian tapped the top row of photos. “Lassiter and Kessler sit at the top. Everything starts and ends with them.”

Next to Lassiter was Kessler, the household name. Tech giant. Billionaire. A man so high up the food chain it was hard to imagine him in the same league as these others.

I saw Mitchell right under Lassiter, with a yellowPost-it stuck to the bottom of his image—I assumed that color indicated he was dead. “Mitchell’s dead, so why is he still on the board?” I asked.

“He was involved right up until the end. He doesn’t get to be erased from this,” Killian said, catching my eye.

“Kessler’s a problem,” Levi tapped Kessler’s photo.

Caleb sighed. “Yeah, he’s got no lines leading to anyone beneath him. Not because he isn’t connected, and we won’t stop looking, but because he’s almost impossible to trace, his money shields him. Everything he does is run through ten firewalls, five shell companies, and a rotating cast of proxies. You try to follow the trail, and it vanishes like smoke.”

Killian gestured to the next row beneath, where Mitchell sat among a cluster of faces. “This is the next tier down—thirteen people, including Mitchell. Twelve remain—eleven men, one woman. The purple Post-its indicate we have enough evidence to take them down—testimony, payment trails, and intercepted communications. That’s eight out of twelve. The remaining four have been harder to pin down.”

“Maybe not anymore,” Caleb cut in, stepping forward. He slapped three purple Post-its onto theboard—over the FBI regional director, his brother, and Senator Huxley at the far end. “Robbie found exactly what we needed. Cross-referenced ledger entries and location data. That’s three more off the question list.”

“Who’s this?” I asked and pointed to a space where a photo would be, and the nameLyric Thornwoodwas written on a green Post-it. Yellow meant dead, purple meant fucked, and green meant…?

“Green is for ghost,” Caleb said. “The only Lyric Thornwood I can find has links to Kessler’s college years. The name barely leaves a digital footprint. There are no photos of them, and honestly, they may as well be dead for all I can find, but they’re still named on various transactions, so they stay there as a bad guy until we find out more.”

“That’s why there’s no string connecting him to anyone?”

“Yeah,” Caleb said and sighed. I hated loose ends. “But the fact that his name, Lyric, is attached to those Lyric-Night investments that Lassiter wanted to bring Killian in on? That’s just another weird thing in a list of weird things.”

“Okay, so we’re missing Kessler and Lyric Thornwood, but we hit the rest,” Levi said, lookingaround the room, his voice steady. “We take down who we can and isolate the ones we can’t. We press the button on what we have now before anyone else is hurt or taken, and start a separate operation on Kessler and find this Lyric guy? Are we agreed?”

Killian nodded. “Agreed.”

Caleb tapped his desk. “I’m almost ready. I need twenty-four hours to get the information packets for these last three secured and ready, plus fixing where the information lands because shit, this is the biggest thing we’ve done.” He nodded then. “But after that, yeah, agreed.”

“I’ll help you with that, C,” Sonya offered. “And once all the ducks are groomed with little tuxedoes and ready to be put in a row, then agreed,” she said.

All of them turned to me.

Why are they looking at me?This part wasn’t mine. I wasn’t one of them, not really—I was just waiting for the go-ahead to burn Lassiter to the fucking ground.Thatwas my job. Not strategy, not evidence chains, not takedown plans.

“Jamie?” Killian asked, his voice gentle but sure.

I looked at him, at the board, at the weight in their eyes. Thought about Robbie, and Enzo, and the way this mess had wormed its way into all of us.

I could say nothing because they didn’t need meto agree. I could walk out now while they were doing their bit, light the match, and vanish until I could take down Kessler after that.

But Killian was looking at me, wanting me to be part of this, so instead, I nodded. “Agreed.”

And weirdly… I felt good.

Also, I hadn’t even mentioned killing Lassiter once.

TWENTY-SIX

Killian

It felt anti-climactic at first.After all the planning, the sleepless nights, the obsessive double-checking, we pressed the button. And just like that, the first wave of packets were gone—routed to the agencies, the whistleblowers, the watchdog groups. They were curated batches of evidence, each tailored to its recipient. We held back on Lassiter. For now. Not because we didn’t have enough to bring him down—we did—but because this was Jamie’s part in this. Holding back on his packet of information was the strategy. Timing. Optics. One wrong step, and he’d slither free. I told myself we were being smart. Tactical. But deep down, I knew part of me wanted him to feel the walls closing in. To hear the whispers and wonder when the axe would fall. To sweat.

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