The next morning came quietly.
No alarms. No urgency. Just the muted gray light slipping through the high windows and the low hum of the city far below. Rhoda woke already tense, her body remembering before her mind caught up.
Evan was awake.
She could hear him moving in the other room, controlled and deliberate, as if he'd been awake long before the light arrived. When she stepped out of the bedroom, he was at the counter, jacket already on, coffee untouched.
He looked at her once.
"You're late," he said.
"I just woke up."
"You woke up five minutes ago," Evan replied calmly. She swallowed and moved faster.
He didn't hover. Didn't rush her. He watched — not her body, not her clothes, but her hands, her face, the way she steadied herself. When she reached for her bag, he stopped her with two fingers against her wrist.
"Phone," he said.
She handed it over.
He slid a small earpiece into her palm instead. Barely visible. Light.
"You won't speak unless I ask you to," he continued. "If anything changes, you breathe and keep moving. Do not improvise."
Her heart thudded. "And if I'm asked something I don't expect?"
"Then you answer the question they think they're asking."
His eyes held hers. "Not the one they mean."
She nodded.
Satisfied, Evan stepped back. "Have a nice day at work." That hit her differently. She left without another word.
The bank door slid opened. The rush of air-conditioned air, usually a relief, felt like a cold shroud. Every click of her heels on the marble floor echoed in her ears, sounding like a countdown.
Smile. Breathe. Count.
She made it to her station, her movements mechanical. She set her bag down, the silver flash drive tucked deep inside a hidden pocket of her blazer. It felt like it was radiating heat, a localized sun that would surely be visible to anyone who looked too closely.
"Morning, Rhoda! You look like you just stepped out of a Vogue magazine," chirped Sarah, the junior teller at the next window.
Rhoda forced a laugh, her heart hammering. "Girl, I wish I was."
"Well, coffee's fresh. You're going to need it. Henderson is on a warpath this morning. Audit prep is driving him crazy."
Rhoda's stomach did a slow, sickening roll. Audit prep. That meant Henderson would be hovering. It meant the vault room—the very place she needed to be—would be a hub of activity all day.
She spent the first three hours in a daze of muscle memory. She cashed checks, verified signatures, and counted out hundreds with a precision that would have made Evan proud. But every time the front door opened, her eyes darted up, searching for a flash of black, a pair of dark eyes, or—worse—the leathered face of the older man from the crew. Her earpiece stayed silent, but she felt him there anyway — like a presence just out of reach, watching through her eyes. She noted everything: who lingered, who rushed, which guards chatted too long near the vault corridor.
At noon, a shadow fell over her desk.
"Rhoda. A moment?"
She looked up to see Mr. Henderson. He looked tired, his tie slightly askew. He had been a mentor to her, the man who had handed her her first promotion.
"Of course, Mr. Henderson. Is everything okay?"
"I've been looking over the security protocols for Thursday's audit," he said, leaning against her counter. He lowered his voice. "Ever since the... incident... last week, I've been on edge. The board is breathing down my neck. I need my best people to be sharp. I was thinking of having you do a double-check on the sub-vault ledgers this afternoon. Just to be sure the physical signatures match the digital entries."
The irony was so thick it was suffocating. He was handing her the keys to the kingdom.
"I can do that," Rhoda said, her voice remarkably steady despite the roar in her ears. "I have my break at two. I can head down then and finish up before the end of my shift."
Henderson patted the counter, giving her a small, paternal smile. "I knew I could count on you, Rhoda. You're the only one here who doesn't crumble under pressure."
He walked away, leaving Rhoda staring at her reflection in the polished wood of the counter. She wasn't crumbling, but she was breaking.
2:00 PM arrived with the inevitability of a guillotine.
Rhoda took her bag and headed toward the back. She passed the security guard—a man named Jim who usually joked about his grandkids—and gave him a tight nod. Her hand was inside her blazer, her fingers curled tightly around the cold metal of the flash drive.
She reached the heavy steel door of the records room, tucked away in a corner of the sub-vault area. It was silent here, the air thick with the smell of old paper and ozone. She swiped her badge. The light turned green with a soft click.
She stepped inside and locked the door behind her.
The terminal sat in the center of the room, its blue screen glowing in the dim light. This was it. The moment she stopped being an employee and started being a criminal.
Her hands started to shake—violently. She remembered Evan fisting his hand in her lapel, telling her to let them shake but to do it anyway.
She reached for the USB port. The drive felt like it weighed a ton. She thought of the crew, of Evan's possessive kiss, and of the cracks in her life she had never noticed before.
With a sharp, jagged breath, she pushed the drive into the slot.
The screen flickered. A command prompt appeared, lines of green code scrolling too fast to read. Then, a small timer appeared in the corner of the monitor.
11:00... 10:59... 10:58…
Her earpiece crackled softly for the first time.
"Good," Evan murmured.
The sound of his voice, low and precise, sent a rush through her that had nothing to do with fear. She wasn't counting money anymore. She was counting the seconds until her old life was gone forever.
Her earpiece whispered again.
"Two minutes," Evan said. "Confirm the left-side panel. Then stop."
She did exactly that. She was done and as she stepped out, she almost collided with her boss who had come down to see the vault.
"Everything's done, Sir."
Henderson— oblivious, thanked her as they sealed the vault and walked back toward the floor.
"Well done," he said. "You've saved me a headache."
She smiled, polite and professional, and returned to her desk.
Her hands trembled again once she sat down.
The rest of the day passed in a haze of controlled normalcy. When her shift ended, she didn't look for Evan.
She didn't need to.
Her phone vibrated as she stepped outside.
Unknown Number:
You followed instructions.
She exhaled slowly.
Rhoda:
Is it done?
A pause.
Unknown Number:
It's started.
She slipped the phone back into her bag and walked toward the street, the city moving around her like nothing had changed.
But she knew better now.
She had stepped into the vault.
And Evan had been there the entire time — unseen, untraceable, in complete control.