The man stepped across the doorway, his heavy boots grinding against the loose gravel caught on the concrete.

He didn't look like Elena Park.

Isabella froze in the shadow of the tire stacks, her finger resting lightly against the cold steel of her pistol. The man was broad-shouldered, wearing a tailored charcoal overcoat that had never seen the inside of a cramped newsroom. He pulled down the brim of a fedora, casting his eyes downward to let his vision adjust to the dim, flickering light of the single overhead bulb.

It wasn't Elena. It was one of Sterling's corporate fixers, a mid-level cleaner who handled the messy loose ends when local politicians needed a reminder of who paid their mortgages.

Isabella lowered the muzzle by a fraction of an inch, locking her breathing into a slow, steady rhythm. The journalist had been compromised. Either Elena Park had been picked up on her way to the meet, or Maya's communication lines had been tapped by a secondary intercept.

The fixer stopped three paces inside the garage, his gaze scanning the grease-stained floor and the silent rows of hoists.

"You're late," the man said, his voice echoing flatly against the concrete walls. "Sterling expected the package twenty minutes ago."

Isabella didn't answer. She let the silence stretch, her thumb resting on the hammer of the gun. The realization hit her with the cold weight of lead. The fixer wasn't here by accident. He had followed a breadcrumb, which meant the drop point had been burned before she even walked through the door.

"I know you're in here, Vance," the fixer muttered, his eyes narrowing as he spotted the faint shift in the shadows. "Facial recognition on the east perimeter camera caught you leaving the estate forty-eight hours ago. Sterling's security team put a name to the face before morning."

He reached slowly inside his overcoat.

"We can do this the easy way," the fixer continued, "or Captain Cross can explain to the press how a disgraced operative got herself killed resisting arrest in a downtown chop shop."

Isabella stepped out from behind the tire stacks.

The amber light hit the polished barrel of her pistol before it caught her eyes. She kept her posture loose, balanced on the balls of her feet, her gaze fixed entirely on the fixer's right hand.

"Tell Marcus his math is off," Isabella said, her voice dropping into a razor-thin whisper that cut through the hum of the refrigerator. "A copy doesn't cost a life. It costs an empire."