The penthouse office felt different at 2 AM. During business hours, it projected power and legitimacy—expensive furniture, panoramic views, the trappings of success. But in the dead of night, with only the desk lamp illuminating Eliot King's face, it felt more like what it actually was: a command center for criminal enterprise.
Vancouver Sell stood by the window, looking out at the sleeping city. He'd been standing there for the past ten minutes, perfectly still, processing the reports that had come in over the past three hours. Twelve simultaneous raids. Twelve locations compromised. Evidence recovered from sites they'd thought were thoroughly cleaned.
Behind him, King sat at his desk, reading through detailed accounts from their people who'd been monitoring law enforcement activity. His expression was unreadable, but Vancouver had worked with him long enough to recognize the slight tightness around his eyes, the way his fingers drummed once against the desk—rare physical tells that indicated King was truly angry.
"How bad?" King asked finally, his voice perfectly controlled.
"Variable," Vancouver replied without turning around. "Most locations were clean—we moved everything out within hours of Perez's death, just as planned. But they found traces. Partial documents that weren't completely burned at location seven. A laptop hard drive at location three that our tech team thought was destroyed but apparently wasn't. Security footage at location nine that should have been erased."
"Whose responsibility was it to ensure complete sanitization?"
The question was asked mildly, almost conversationally. Which made it more dangerous.
"Mine," Vancouver said flatly. "I coordinated the cleanup operations. The failures are on me."
King was silent for a long moment. "We had sixteen hours between Perez's death and when I expected the DEA to move against us. In that time, we cleared twelve locations, relocated millions in inventory, destroyed or removed thousands of documents and pieces of equipment. The fact that they found anything at all represents a failure of execution."
Vancouver finally turned from the window. "Agreed. But context matters. We were working under extreme time pressure, coordinating multiple teams across the city, trying to stay ahead of an investigation that was mobilizing faster than anticipated. Some oversights were inevitable."
"Inevitable oversights can result in federal prosecution."
"They can. But let's assess what we're actually facing." Vancouver pulled up his tablet and displayed a summary he'd compiled. "The evidence they recovered is fragmentary. Partial documents that will take them weeks to reconstruct and analyze. A damaged hard drive that might not yield anything useful. Security footage that shows vehicles and partial faces but probably isn't sufficient for identification. It's not nothing, but it's not catastrophic either."
King stood and walked to the window, looking out at the same view Vancouver had been studying. "Noah Jogensen executed twelve simultaneous raids with military precision, six hours after we killed his agent. He's moving faster and more aggressively than I anticipated."
"Which means we need to adjust our assessment of him," Vancouver said. "He's not a typical investigator. He's taking this personally, treating it as a war rather than a case."
"Good."
Vancouver looked at him sharply. "Good?"
"Personal investment creates predictability. Noah is angry, motivated by revenge for his fallen agent. That means he'll be aggressive, he'll take risks, he'll push boundaries. All of which creates opportunities for us to exploit." King turned from the window. "A dispassionate investigator following standard protocols is harder to counter. But someone operating on emotion? We can work with that."
Vancouver considered this. King had a point—emotional investment could be a weakness as much as a strength. But he wasn't certain Noah Jogensen was the type to let emotion override judgment.
"What are you proposing?" Vancouver asked.
"We accelerate our timeline. Originally, I planned to spend two weeks restructuring operations before resuming normal business. But if Jogensen is moving this fast, being this aggressive, we can't afford to go dark for that long. Our clients will lose confidence, our people will get nervous, opportunities will pass to competitors."
"So we resume operations while under active investigation?"
"Carefully. Selectively. Using new protocols and locations that Noah doesn't know about." King returned to his desk and pulled up a map of New York on his computer. "Perez documented our historical operations. But he's been dead for thirty-six hours. Everything we've done since then is unknown to the DEA. We use that window."
Vancouver understood the logic but saw the risks. "If we move too fast, we make mistakes. If we make mistakes while Noah is watching this closely, he'll capitalize on them."
"Which is why we need to be smarter than we've ever been." King highlighted several locations on the map—areas of the city where HTBB had no previous presence, locations Perez couldn't have known about. "New operations, new personnel, new protocols. We compartmentalize everything. Even if Chen breaks one part of our organization, he can't touch the rest."
It was a sound strategy in theory. In practice, it meant taking risks while under the most intense law enforcement scrutiny HTBB had ever faced.
"What about Mallman's transaction?" Vancouver asked. "We postponed it two weeks, but even that might be too soon if Noah is tracking our financial networks as closely as I think he is."
King pulled up financial projections. "Mallman's people contacted me this afternoon. They're not happy about the delay. They're suggesting that if we can't process their money reliably, they'll find someone who can."
"Let them."
King looked at him sharply. "Mallman represents thirty percent of our annual revenue. Losing him would be significant."
"Losing our freedom would be worse." Vancouver set his tablet down on the desk. "Eliot, we need to be realistic about our situation. Noah isn't going to give up. He's going to pursue this investigation until either we're in prison or he's exhausted every legal avenue. We can't operate normally under that kind of pressure. We need to go into defensive mode—minimize exposure, reduce operations, wait for the investigation to run its course or find a weak point we can exploit."
"How long?" King's voice was cold. "How long do you propose we hide? Six months? A year? While our competitors take our market share, our clients abandon us, our organization dissolves from inactivity?"
"As long as it takes to survive."
"That's not acceptable."
Vancouver felt a flicker of frustration—rare for him, but King's refusal to acknowledge the severity of their situation was becoming dangerous. "What's not acceptable is continuing to operate recklessly while federal agents are documenting our every move. We killed one of their own, Eliot. This isn't a normal investigation. They're not going to follow standard timelines or accept normal boundaries. Chen is coming for us with everything he has, and if we give him targets, he'll destroy us."
King's expression remained impassive. "Your lack of confidence is noted."
"It's not lack of confidence. It's tactical assessment. We're in a fight we might not win through conventional operations. We need to consider alternatives."
"Such as?"
Vancouver had been thinking about this since the raids, turning over possibilities in his mind. "Political pressure. King Financial has legitimate clients—wealthy, connected people. We leverage those relationships. Have them make calls, apply pressure on the DEA's leadership, question the investigation's legitimacy."
"That could work in our favor or against us," King said. "If it looks like we're trying to use influence to shut down a legitimate investigation into a federal agent's murder, it could make things worse."
"Agreed. Which is why it needs to be subtle. Not 'stop investigating us' but rather 'ensure the investigation is conducted properly, with appropriate oversight, without harassment of legitimate businesses.'"
King nodded slowly. "I have three clients who are major donors to the current administration. I can reach out, express concerns about overzealous enforcement, suggest that proper procedures are being overlooked in favor of revenge-driven tactics."
"Do it carefully. If Noah finds out we're trying to apply political pressure, he'll use it as evidence of consciousness of guilt."
"Everything we do is evidence of something in Noah's mind," King said. "The question is what we can actually prove in court versus what he can prove against us."
Vancouver's phone buzzed—an encrypted message from Russell, the technician who'd spotted Perez and was now gathering intelligence on Noah Jogensen's personal life. He read it quickly, his expression darkening.
"Problem?" King asked.
"Potentially. Our intelligence on Noah Jogensen shows he's even more dedicated than we thought. No family—divorced eight years ago, no children. His entire life is his work. Which means he doesn't have the usual pressure points we could exploit."
"Everyone has pressure points."
"Not everyone." Vancouver forwarded the intelligence summary to King's secure terminal. "Noah lives alone, modest apartment in Queens, drives a ten-year-old car, has minimal social life outside of work. No gambling problems, no financial vulnerabilities, no secrets we can expose. He's essentially a monk who happens to work for the DEA."
King read through the intelligence, his expression thoughtful. "What about professional vulnerabilities? Career ambitions, rivalries with colleagues, past cases that went wrong?"
"Still researching. But initial assessment is that Noah is exactly what he appears to be—a dedicated investigator with a clean record and strong professional reputation. If we try to destroy him professionally, we'll need real evidence of misconduct, not just manufactured allegations."
"Then we need to create opportunities for misconduct." King looked up from the terminal. "Push him. Pressure him. Make him so angry, so desperate to get us, that he crosses legal boundaries. Then we document it, challenge his warrants, get evidence suppressed, make him the story instead of us."
Vancouver considered this strategy. It was clever—turn Noah's greatest strength, his dedication, into a weakness by pushing him until he made mistakes. But it was also dangerous.
"That requires us to be visible enough to push," Vancouver said. "If we go dark, hide from surveillance, we can't provoke him. And if we're visible enough to provoke him, we're exposed to his investigation."
"Which brings us back to my original point," King said. "We can't afford to hide. We need to operate, carefully and intelligently, while simultaneously applying pressure to make Chen overreach."