eca. Red brick, iron fire escapes, grit. It was a world

nto the keypad. The heav

he'd mined on a laptop hidden in the laundry room. Caden didn

up. The loft was open, raw. Co

mmediately opened the second on

f the loft-a Faraday cage she had installed herself. Inside was her custom-built rig: air-gapped, running a

. Her fingers flew acro

flooded wit

N: G

SWO

S GRA

ive years. She wasn't Mrs. Holloway here. She was Ghost. Th

. Instead, she initiated the "Scorched Earth" protocol on her personal cloud accounts. She had been

L_ACCESS. Target:

ount, every digital footprint linked to the family server vanished. She wasn't deleting t

Delete

f Holloway Holdings, Carter, Cade

ce. "Mrs. Holloway's daily schedule didn't

"She's on strike. Ignore it. She'll run out

illions in a dark wallet

Eulalie's secure tablet bu

ind Elara

phone. Muscle memory. Her thum

fr

ould decline it. She would call

Manhattan skyline. The Empire S

ob," she

ed left.

der Caden's an

Piano Less

Dry Cleani

ing a hook from her flesh. Pa

use, the cloc

ng her legs. "Martha? Where's Mommy? I

a pot too hard. "Your mother

e's mad because I like Addie better.

ng from the stress and the whiskey. He sat on the edge o

pt

yanked the draw

e!" he

le

ered. She

to the bathroom medicine cabinet, rummaging through expired bottles. "Pet

he foyer sofa. The stack of magazines sat undisturb

a slice of pepperoni pizza. Grease stained her fin

solated monitors. She logged into a dark web

arman Algorithm. Reward: $50k.

ed her knuckl

, the code was co

ndow pinged

syntax... Ghost? Is that you? Y

typed ba

s asleep. N

her dark eyes, reflecting a fire t