Echoes in the Ledger

Chapter 11 – Echoes in the Ledger

The safehouse was quieter now. Not calm—never that—but quiet, like the hush before a storm breaks.

Elias sat at the long table, eyes red-rimmed, skimming through the final pages of West Solarin's hidden ledger. Each page felt like a punch to the gut. Not just names and dates, but ciphers, side notes, incomplete conversations written in West's narrow script. She had always been three steps ahead—but she'd left behind a path laced with riddles.

Amara stood by the window, watching the skyline, restless. She hadn't slept in two days.

"She knew about Myra," she said, breaking the silence. "And she knew someone else would try to silence her."

Elias looked up. "Then why leave the message? Why tell you to warn me?"

Amara turned, her voice low. "Because she didn't know who the real traitor was. She didn't know who to trust."

He leaned back, processing. "But she trusted you."

There was something in the way he said it. Heavy. Grounded. Like he needed her to believe it as much as he did.

Amara crossed the room, dropping a flash drive on the table.

"I decoded one of her encryption strings. It led to this."

Elias plugged it in. A video loaded. Grainy, but real.

West again.

She looked different this time—sharper, like she'd just come from running or maybe from hiding.

> "Amara… if you've made it here, then it means the chain is broken. I can't protect you anymore, but I can leave you with this: it was never just Myra. She's the face. The voice. But there's someone else. The man pulling every string."

Elias leaned forward. "A name. Give us a name."

But the video glitched. Froze. Just as West's lips formed the start of a name—Da...—the screen turned to static.

"Damn it," Elias muttered. "We were so close."

"Wait," Amara said. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded paper—one of the physical notes West had hidden. It had one phrase scribbled across it.

> 'Ask Daniel if the painting is still in Zurich.'

Elias raised a brow. "Daniel?"

Amara nodded slowly. "He was West's art broker. I met him once. Soft-spoken. Always wore gloves."

Elias's eyes narrowed. "And Zurich? That's not random. Myra mentioned Zurich once in passing—back when she was laundering campaign money overseas."

It clicked.

The painting wasn't art. It was a code name. A vault. Zurich wasn't just a city. It was a lockbox.

"Get Mason," Elias said. "We're going to Switzerland."

---

Meanwhile…

In a sleek tower overlooking Lake Geneva, Myra poured herself another drink. She watched the encrypted feed cut out from their safehouse, and smiled.

"They'll come to Zurich," she said.

Behind her, a man stepped into the light. Expensive suit. Hands gloved.

"I told you they would," he said quietly. "Just as she did."

Myra turned. "Do they know who you are?"

The man smiled faintly.

"No. But soon, they will."

Snow greeted them at the airport. Clean, quiet, almost too perfect. Zurich had a way of masking its secrets behind precision. But Amara and Elias had come for the mess—the part no one dared to touch.

Daniel's gallery was nestled between old money and new power. A sleek building with matte black windows and no sign outside. Elias knocked once. Then twice. Then again.

A soft click. The door slid open.

Daniel stood there, older than Amara remembered. The gloves were still there—thin black leather. His eyes flicked between her and Elias, then settled on the cold air behind them.

"You shouldn't be here," he said.

"We need the painting," Amara replied. "West left us a trail."

His expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes did.

"Come in."

---

The gallery smelled like wood polish and winter. Every painting had a hidden lock beneath it, but Daniel walked them to the very back—to a blank wall.

"West said you'd come, if everything else failed."

He pressed his gloved hand against the wall. A panel slid open. Behind it, a digital scanner, old but secure.

"Her voice print's still coded in," Daniel explained. "But she knew that might not be enough."

From beneath the scanner, he pulled a small key wrapped in faded silk.

"Only two of these exist. One stayed with her. The other—was meant for you."

Amara took it with trembling hands.

The wall split open, revealing a vault room. Not cash. Not gold. Information.

Files, tapes, blueprints. All of it marked Solarin. Most of it tagged Classified. Internal.

But one box stood out—burned at the edges, labeled only DAEDALUS.

Elias opened it carefully.

Inside: photos. Surveillance images. Receipts. A map of properties in the Balkans. And at the very top—a sealed envelope, addressed to Elias.

He opened it.

> "If you're reading this, Elias, it means I was right. About her. About him. There's a man embedded in our system. He was once part of the agency. You knew him as David Monroe. I knew him as Daedalus. He's the one pulling Myra's strings. And he's the reason I died."

Elias's hands trembled.

David Monroe had been his mentor once. The man who taught him strategy. Justice. Control.

And he was the one behind it all.

"He's alive," Elias said, barely above a whisper. "I saw his file. He was declared dead ten years ago."

"Then they lied to you," Amara said.

And just like that, the stakes shifted again.

---

Outside the gallery, someone watched from across the street. A woman in a red coat. Earpiece in. No expression.

> "They have the box," she said into the mic.

> "Let them," came the reply. "The trap's already set."

Zurich's calm didn't last.

They barely made it two blocks from the gallery before the first tail appeared. A man in a tan coat, pretending to check his phone, but his eyes followed them too closely. Then another, across the street. Then a third—this one didn't even bother hiding.

"We're boxed in," Elias said under his breath.

Amara didn't answer. She was already scanning exits. Alleys. Doors. Anything.

Mason's voice crackled in through their comms. "Four heat signatures behind you. I'm trying to find a clean route out."

"Try faster," Elias muttered.

A burst of movement—and then all hell broke loose.

---

The chase was fast, brutal. Through tight streets, over frozen cobblestone, into an underground car park where a nondescript black SUV waited. Mason was already behind the wheel, shouting, "Get in!"

Shots rang out behind them. Elias pulled Amara into the vehicle just as glass shattered. Mason swerved. Tires screeched. And they were gone.

---

Back at the temporary hideout, Amara slammed the box of files onto the table. Her hands were shaking—but not from fear.

From fury.

"They're always watching. Always a step ahead."

Elias rubbed his jaw. "Because they knew we'd come. The moment West mentioned Zurich, we played right into it."

"Unless…" Mason's voice drifted as he scanned through surveillance feeds. "Unless she wanted us to."

They turned toward him.

"She mentioned David Monroe, right? But look at this." He projected a frame from the gallery's security camera. One of the men in the tan coat. Elias leaned in.

It was him.

David Monroe.

Older. Scarred. But unmistakably alive.

"She didn't just leave us a trail," Elias whispered. "She baited him out."

"And now he knows we're coming," Amara said.

"No," Mason corrected. "Now we know who to aim for."

---

That night, sleep didn't come easy. Elias sat alone in the hallway, the envelope from West still in his hand. He read it again and again. And on the back, in faint handwriting, he found something else.

> Tell him. Don't trust anyone.

The words West had said before she died. The ones that haunted Amara.

Tell him.

The message hadn't just been for Elias.

It had been for Michael.

West had known he'd be captured. That he'd survive. That he was part of something she couldn't explain in time.

Amara stepped out of her room, rubbing her eyes. She saw Elias reading, and sat beside him, quiet for a while.

"She loved you, didn't she?" Elias asked.

"Like a daughter," Amara said softly. "She was harsh, impossible sometimes… but she believed in me. Even when Myra turned everyone else away."

He nodded. "Then we owe her this."

They sat in silence, the kind that felt almost sacred.

Together, but alone with their thoughts.

---

Meanwhile…

Deep in a private holding cell, Michael opened his eyes.

Bruised. Weak. But breathing.

And across from him, in the dim light, sat Myra.

"I warned them," she said. "But they never listen."

Michael coughed. "They'll come."

She smiled faintly.

"I'm counting on it."