Chapter 3 - The Price of a FalconNora’s hand flew to her mouth.
Julian Sterling.
The man she had fed tomato soup to on the floor of her bankrupt café—the man who had swept her floors and fixed a loose floorboard—was one of the most wanted, most reviled, and wealthiest men on the planet. Five years ago, Sterling Dynamics had imploded after a massive government leak compromised top-secret military satellite designs. While his chief engineers had gone to prison, Julian Sterling had vanished into thin air, rumored to have fled to South America, or worse, executed by foreign intelligence agencies.
And he had spent last night sitting on her sofa, eating grilled cheese.
The bell above the door chimed again.
It wasn't a customer.
Two men in identical charcoal suits stepped into the Lantern House. They didn't look like local police; they moved with the hyper-vigilant, fluid efficiency of federal agents or private security. The taller of the two—a man with a scar cutting cleanly through his left eyebrow—flashed a leather badge before sliding it back into his jacket pocket.
"Miss Nora Bellamy?" the scarred man asked, his voice flat and devoid of warmth.
"Closed," Nora said, her fingers curling around the edge of the counter. "We don't open until six tomorrow morning."
"Agent Vance, federal oversight division," the man said, ignoring her protest as he walked right past the closed sign and stepped into the dining area. His partner stationed himself silently by the front door, locking it from the inside and turning the sign to CLOSED. "We aren't here for pastries, Miss Bellamy. We’re here to talk about your guest from last night."
Arthur Pendelton scrambled backward, clutching his briefcase to his chest like a shield. "I have nothing to do with this! I'm just a bank officer! I'm leaving!"
Agent Vance didn't even look at Arthur. He kept his cold, gray eyes fixed entirely on Nora. "Mr. Sterling is a master of behavioral psychology, Miss Bellamy. He doesn't take shelter by accident. He doesn't pick random diners out of a city of six hundred thousand people. Why did he choose the Lantern House?"
"He didn't choose it," Nora lied, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. "I found him freezing on the sidewalk outside the Halcyon Crown. He looked like he was going to die."
Vance let out a dry, humorless chuckle. "Julian Sterling doesn't die of exposure, Miss government-grant baker. Men like him engineer their own exits. The question is: what did he give you before he left?"
Nora thought of the cream-colored envelope burning a hole in her pocket.
"He gave me nothing," she said, her voice ringing clear across the quiet room. "Except a clean floor."
Vance stepped closer, towering over the wooden counter. He leaned in, his breath smelling of stale coffee and mint. "Listen to me very carefully, Miss Bellamy. The technology Sterling developed wasn't just commercial aerospace software. It was an orbital grid capable of overriding every encrypted defense network on Earth. For five years, foreign powers and domestic agencies have been hunting for the decryption key—the final master file that unlocks the grid."
Vance’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits.
"And our intelligence models indicate that key was broken into five fragments. Four of those fragments are accounted for. The fifth... is hidden inside a secure ledger. And right now, our algorithms show that ledger was synced to an IP address originating from this building, exactly twenty minutes after midnight."
The room grew dead silent.
May you like
Nora stared at the federal agent, the pieces of the puzzle violently shifting in her mind. Cal hadn't just been hiding from the cold. He had used her café as a dead drop—a secure blind spot to upload the final piece of the most dangerous weapon in human history.
And he had left her right in the crosshairs.
