Chapter 2 - Midnight Breakers
The rain had turned into a torrential downpour by the time Tally unlocked the door to her modest third-floor apartment in Queen Anne. She dropped her keys on the console table, carried the cardboard box into her living room, and set it on the coffee table.
She didn't turn on the lights. The neon glow of a streetlamp filtered through her sheer curtains, casting long, skeletal shadows across the room.
What did I walk out with? Vance’s words echoed in her mind.
She looked at the box. Inside was nothing but standard office clutter. She pulled out the navy cardigan, the textbooks, the jade plant. Finally, her fingers brushed against the silver desk clock—the ten-year service award from Davis.
The clock had stopped at 9:15.
She picked it up. It was unusually heavy for its size. Tally had always assumed it was made of solid pewter, but as she turned it over, she noticed something she had never seen before. The back plate, which she assumed was sealed, had a microscopic seam along the edge of the engraving: To Tally, for a decade of dedication.
With trembling fingers, she grabbed a metal nail file from her purse. She wedged the tip into the seam and pried.
With a soft click, the back plate popped open.
There was no clockwork mechanism inside. Instead, nestled in a custom-cut foam insert, lay a sleek, black USB flash drive and a handwritten ledger in Davis’s frantic, slanting script.
Tally gasped.
She opened the ledger. It wasn't a record of Callaway Group's legitimate transactions. It was a secondary set of books dating back eight years—the real Winslow fund allocations, dummy corporations in Panama, and direct payments to shell accounts tied to Preston Hale’s family trust. Davis hadn't given her an award; he had used her office—the safest, most scrutinized room in the building—to hide his ultimate insurance policy. If the feds ever raided him, he could claim he knew nothing about the clock, shifting the blame entirely onto his "brilliant, detail-oriented" senior leader.
"You bastard," Tally whispered, tears of hot anger finally spilling over her lashes. "You set me up from the beginning."
Suddenly, the glass in her front window shattered.
A heavy brick wrapped in cloth crashed through the pane, scattering shards across the hardwood floor. Before Tally could scream, the front door was kicked open with a deafening crack.
Two men dressed in dark tactical gear and ski masks burst into the apartment.
"Where is it?" one of them barked, his voice muffled but lethal. "Where is the box?"
Tally didn't answer. Instinct took over. She grabbed the silver clock, shoved the ledger and the USB drive into her trench coat pocket, and scrambled backward over the couch as the second man lunged for her.
"Grab her!" the first man yelled.
Tally threw the heavy jade plant directly at the leader's face. The ceramic pot shattered against his shoulder, distracting him long enough for her to sprint toward the kitchen. She knew her apartment complex had an old fire escape off the kitchen window.
She threw the window open, the freezing rain blasting her face. Behind her, she heard her living room being utterly destroyed—drawers ripped out, her father’s photo smashed, books torn apart.
She climbed out onto the metal grating just as a heavy hand grabbed the fabric of her coat.
Rip!
The fabric tore, but Tally broke free, sliding down the wet, slippery metal stairs of the fire escape into the dark, trash-lined alley below. She ran, her expensive heels snapping off one by one, until she was barefoot on the wet asphalt, panting, terrified, and completely out of options.
She pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed the only number she had memorized from a business card Vance Thorne had slid into her coat at the bar.
It rang once.
"Thorne," the voice answered.
"They're in my apartment," Tally sobbed, ducking behind a dumpster as a black SUV cruised slowly past the entrance of the alley. "They tore it apart. Davis... he hid the books in my clock."
A brief pause on the line. When Vance spoke again, his voice was no longer smooth; it was a deadly, vibrating force.
"Where are you, Tally?"
May you like
"The alley behind 4th and Boston."
"Stay exactly where you are. My men are three minutes away. Welcome to the war."
