Page 199 of Fractured Allegiance

"9:50 PM: Ramon triggers the false manifest. Makes the call that sends Dom and his men to the docks.

9:55 PM: Keisha activates the jammer. A camera loop goes live simultaneously.

10:00 PM: We enter through the parking garage. Marco drives—clean plates, diesel van, staged as maintenance. He'll wait in the alley behind the building, engine running.

10:02 PM: We kill the power to the north stairwell panel. Service lift goes to manual. We ride it to the subfloor corridor.

10:04 PM: We climb the vent shaft to the roof access hatch. Ramon provides overwatch from the roof—anyone tries to follow us up, he handles it.

10:06 PM: We breach the penthouse level. Keisha stays at the shaft exit, jamming communications so guards can't radio for backup.

10:08 PM: We extract Lydia and reverse course. Down the shaft, through the corridor, into the van.

10:10 PM: We're gone before anyone realizes what happened."

He slides the timeline across the table. "Two minutes in the lift. Two minutes in the shaft. Two minutes to grab her. That's six minutes inside enemy territory. Anything longer, and we're compromised."

I study the plan, turning it over in my mind. "Who goes in for her? You or me?"

Elias meets my eyes. "Both. You know the layout. I know Drazen's people. We move together, cover each other's blindspots. When we find her, whoever's closest gets her out. No ego. No hesitation."

"And if she doesn't trust us?"

"She sent you to me," Elias says simply. "That means she trusts us enough to try. The rest we prove by getting her out alive."

I nod slowly. It's a solid plan. Tight. Dangerous. But possible.

"What about extraction after?" I ask. "We get her out of the building, then what?"

"She comes here first," Elias says. "This apartment's clean. You got it yourself, or trust whoever that got it arranged for you? Your people in the bureau?”

I nod. “My handler.”

“No one else knows about it except you and me now. We regroup, assess, figure out next steps. If you can get Bureau protection without exposing her, we go that route. If not, I've got safehouses she can disappear into until this blows over."

"You trust me with that?"

He looks at me for a long moment. "You're Bureau. I'm not. We don't operate by the same rules. But right now, we want the same thing—her safe. That's enough."

He stands, folding the floor plan back into his pocket. Tucks his pistol into the holster at his hip.

"One more thing," he says, pausing at the door. "If you make the wrong choice for the right reasons, I'll understand. But if you get her killed because you thought your badge was more important than her life, I'll put you in the ground myself."

"Understood."

He opens the door, steps into the hallway, and is gone.

I stand there for a moment, staring at the closed door.

Then I pull out my phone and look at the timeline he left behind.

9:50 PM. Less than twelve hours from now.

Twelve hours to prepare.

Twelve hours to make sure I don't fuck this up.

Because this time, I'm not standing outside her door doing nothing.