THE MAN CALLED MOSES HALL
They ran.
Down two flights of stone steps, their footsteps swallowed by the hum of underground generators.
Zainab held the flash drive clenched in her fist—its sharp edge biting into her palm with each stride. The footage on it, recovered from the surveillance room, showed only twenty seconds of usable video. But in those twenty seconds, a name had been whispered through a hidden mic:
"Moses Hall has her."
Fatiha.
Obi gritted his teeth. "If Moses Hall is here, we need to move fast. He doesn't keep hostages long."
Zainab's heart drummed against her ribs. She had read files on the man. The Bureau's phantom interrogator. No known photo. No voiceprint. But stories—plenty of them—about screams buried behind diplomatic immunity and forgotten prisons.
They turned into a narrow hallway, its walls lined with peeling paint and flickering bulbs. At the end of the corridor, a steel door buzzed faintly with a live voltage symbol flashing red.
Obi touched the panel beside it. "Fingerprint access."
Zainab scanned the map. "Maintenance shaft—four feet to the left."
They pried open a vent panel, crawled through a dust-filled duct that felt like it hadn't been opened in a decade, and dropped silently into a dim back chamber.
On the other side of a one-way mirror—they saw her.
Fatiha was strapped to a metal chair, a red light blinking above her. A man stood just beyond the edge of the light. Tall. Bald. His face hidden behind a surgical mask. His hands moved with surgical precision—wiping down a pair of tools on a tray like a chef preparing for a meal.
Zainab froze.
"That's him."
Obi had already drawn his weapon.
Zainab shook her head. "No bullets. Not yet. He might panic and use her as shield."
Instead, she unrolled a pouch of sewing needles—each dipped in a subtle sedative she had carried since Ilorin. "He'll feel nothing. Then he'll feel everything."
They circled the room, entered through the service door quietly.
The man in the mask turned, expecting silence.
Instead, he got Zainab's voice, sharp and laced with venom.
"Back away from her. Now."
He didn't flinch.
"I was wondering when you'd come," he said, his voice calm, cultured. "You tailor girls always find your way back to the seam."
Zainab moved closer. "Untie her."
He tilted his head. "But she was just beginning to confess."
Before she could react, he flipped the tray at them and lunged.
Obi tackled him. They crashed into the side table. Instruments clattered. The room exploded into chaos.
Zainab ducked, rolled, stabbed upward with a needle.
Contact.
The sedative took three seconds to work.
Moses Hall staggered, blinked—and dropped.
Obi panted. "He's out."
Zainab ran to Fatiha, trembling as she undid the straps. The girl's face was bruised but conscious.
"Zee…" she croaked. "He said… he said they knew about Abuja. About the dress…"
Zainab froze.
"How?"
Fatiha swallowed. "There's a leak."
Behind them, Moses Hall laughed weakly from the floor.
"You think this was deep?" he rasped. "You haven't scratched the hem…"
Zainab turned.
"Then let me sew deeper."
She stepped on his hand. Hard.
He screamed.
Obi pulled her back. "We have to go. Now."
Sirens wailed above. The compound had been breached—but not by them.
Someone else had arrived.
They exited through the side shaft, emerged into a storm-soaked alley behind the orphanage. Their van was gone.
In its place—three black SUVs with Bureau plates.
And standing beside the lead vehicle… The Jackal himself.
Tall. Wrinkled. Smiling with the ease of a man who had seen coups rise and fall.
"Well," he said, lighting a cigar beneath the rain. "If it isn't the tailor and her misfit crew."
Zainab raised her chin.
"I'm not afraid of ghosts."
He exhaled smoke. "Good. Because after tonight… you'll become one."