Chapter 39 Closer to Home

Chapter 39 Closer to Home
Reyes left the device with Marco for further analysis and drove back to Washington that night, leaving behind a short list of names: everyone on her team with clearance to know about the secondary financial records, cross-checked against any documented connection to Victor Hale’s office in the last five years.

Six names.

Gia read through them at the worktable in the studio, Marco beside her, Ivy’s portfolio still sitting where it had always sat, watching this latest investigation unfold the way it had watched every other one.

Five of the six meant nothing to her. Career federal employees, unremarkable histories, the kind of biographical sketches that told her nothing because nothing about them had ever needed to stand out.

The sixth name made her set down her coffee.

Daniel Reyes.

“Her brother,” Gia said.

Marco looked at the name. Looked at her.

“You’re sure,” he said.

“I’m sure,” Gia said. “She mentioned him once. Months ago. A younger brother, a paralegal, working his way toward law school through a federal clerkship program.” She looked at the file. “This says he’s been in Hale’s office for the last eighteen months. Filing clerk. Limited but real access to case documents.”

The studio was very quiet.

“Reyes gave us this list herself,” Marco said slowly. “Including his name.”

“Which means either she doesn’t know,” Gia said, “or she does, and she’s daring us to say it out loud so she doesn’t have to.”

She called Reyes that night, using the foundation’s line out of habit now, though Marco had swept it twice since finding the device and confirmed it clean.

“You put your brother’s name on the list,” Gia said, no preamble.

The silence on the other end lasted long enough that Gia almost said it again.

“I know,” Reyes said finally.

“Did you know before you sent it, or after?”

“Before.” Reyes’s voice had none of its usual precision. It sounded, for the first time since Gia had known her, like the voice of someone who had been awake too many nights in a row. “I have known for six weeks that Daniel works two floors below Hale’s office. I told myself it didn’t matter because his access is limited. Filing. Document intake. Nothing classified enough to matter.”

“But you put him on the list anyway.”

“Because I am not going to be the kind of prosecutor who protects her own family from scrutiny while asking everyone else to submit to it,” Reyes said. “If I leave him off because he’s my brother, and it turns out later he was the leak, I have just helped Victor Hale destroy this case from inside my own family. I would rather know now.”

Gia sat with that.

“Have you asked him?” she said.

“No,” Reyes said. “I wanted you to see the list with no context first. I wanted to know if your instincts landed on him the way mine did, without me steering you there.”

“They did,” Gia said.

“Then we have a problem,” Reyes said, “and I don’t know yet whether it’s the problem we think it is.”

Daniel Reyes agreed to meet them two days later, in a coffee shop in Alexandria that Reyes chose specifically because it had no connection to her office, her family, or anything Hale’s people might already be watching.

He was younger than Gia expected. Twenty-six, maybe twenty-seven, with his sister’s same careful way of choosing words before he spoke them, and none of her composure underneath the choosing.

“My sister told me what this is about,” he said, before either of them had said anything. “I want to be clear. I didn’t do this.”

“Nobody said you did,” Gia said.

“You’re here,” Daniel said. “That means somebody thinks I might have.”

Marco’s voice was even. “Your sister put your name on a list of six people with access. She didn’t single you out. We’re talking to all six. You’re the first because you’re the one she trusts enough to ask first.”

Daniel looked at his coffee for a long moment.

“There’s something I haven’t told her,” he said.

The table went very still.

“Three weeks ago, a man came to my desk,” Daniel said. “Said he was doing an internal security review. Asked about file access protocols. Normal stuff, the kind of thing that happens periodically. I didn’t think anything of it.” He looked up. “Until he asked, very casually, whether I’d ever discussed my sister’s caseload with anyone outside the office. Family dinners. That kind of thing.”

“What did you tell him?” Gia asked.

“I told him the truth,” Daniel said. “That I don’t talk about her cases. That we barely talk about work at all, because she’s careful, and I respect that about her.” He paused. “But he kept asking. Did she ever mention names. Did she ever mention Los Angeles. Did she ever mention a family called Lombardi.”

Gia’s stomach went cold.

“Did you tell him anything?” she said.

“No,” Daniel said. “Because I didn’t know any of those things. She’s never told me anything. That’s the truth, and it’s also the reason I think he believed me and moved on.” He looked at his sister’s empty seat at the table, the one Reyes had insisted on leaving open in case anyone was watching, in case it needed to look like Daniel was meeting friends, not federal investigators. “But I should have told her about the conversation. I didn’t, because I didn’t want her to think I’d done something wrong by talking to him at all.”

“Why didn’t you tell her?” Marco asked.

Daniel’s jaw tightened. “Because the man who asked me those questions had federal credentials. Internal Affairs. If I told my sister someone from Internal Affairs was asking about her caseload, and it turned out to be nothing, I’d have made her paranoid about her own office for no reason.” He looked at Gia. “I was trying to protect her. I think I made it worse.”

Marco said nothing. He was watching Daniel the way he watched everything that mattered, with the stillness that gave nothing away about what he’d concluded.

Reyes arrived twenty minutes later, having waited outside per the plan, watching the street for anyone watching them.

Gia told her everything Daniel had said.

Reyes’s face did something Gia had never seen it do before. Something closer to fear than the careful stillness she usually wore, controlled but visible at the edges.

“Internal Affairs doesn’t run security reviews on filing clerks,” Reyes said. “Not without a reason, and not without notifying the supervising attorney first. Which means whoever questioned Daniel either falsified credentials or has enough actual authority within the department to bypass that protocol entirely.

“I’ll check the IA log tomorrow. If there’s no record of an authorized review on that date, we’ll know for certain it was him, or someone using his credentials.”

“Which points back to Hale,” Gia said.

“Which points to someone with Hale’s level of access asking pointed questions about my caseload, three weeks ago, through my own brother, without my knowledge.” Reyes’s hands were flat on the table. “He didn’t need to wiretap my office. He went around me entirely.”

“He’s not just protecting himself,” Marco said slowly. “He’s actively hunting for what you have. Actively, not defensively.”

Reyes looked at her brother for a long moment. Whatever passed between them, she didn’t share it with the room.

“You should have told me,” she said quietly.

“I know,” Daniel said.

“We’re done here for now,” she said. “But you need to understand what this means. If he came to you once, he’ll come again. And next time, I need to know the same day.”

Daniel nodded.

Reyes turned back to Gia.

“This changes the math,” she said. “He’s not waiting for Paris. He’s actively building toward something now, today, while we’re sitting in this coffee shop. Which means we don’t have four weeks anymore.”

“How long do we have?” Gia asked.

Reyes looked at her brother, then at the window, then back.

“I don’t know,” she said. “And that is the most frightening answer I have ever given anyone in this investigation.”