Chapter 62

Chapter 62
…After walking back to the desk, she sat again, propped her elbows on the wood, and pressed her fingers to her eyes. She wanted to run to Callum and tell him everything… about the cipher, about Reagen, about the second vault. 

She could almost see his face when she said it, the way he would go still before he began to move the pieces in his head. 

He would lock the estate down. He would send men ahead. He would make a plan that left nothing to chance.

And in making that plan, there would surely be noise.

Reagen would hear the movement. If she was watching the banks… and of course she was… she would feel the tremor and strike fast. Last time, Kaitlyn had underestimated how quickly Reagen would act.

Kaitlyn breathed in through her nose, then out, slow. She forced her thoughts to steadiness. Her father’s note had been clear—be careful who you trust. It did not say trust no one. It said be careful. She trusted Callum, but trust did not cancel strategy.

She would not rush into a trap with her hand open.

She pulled the ledger back and looked through the numbers once more, checking her own work. 

The phrase at the heart of it… arranged the fall… still sat there. She drew a small circle around the three words, then a second circle around the word cleared. 

Cleared how? Cleared by whom? Money moved through banks like water. If her father had built a second vault under the first, he had done it because he knew someone would come for the obvious one and call it proof. 

The second would hold the real records… names, dates, transfers, messages. The second would hold the blade.

Her pen tapped the desk.

She needed to see what was inside that box.

Not tonight. It would be closed. And walking alone to a quiet bank in the middle of the night was a way to vanish. 

She needed daylight, traffic, and a cover. She needed to move like a person doing something ordinary.

Tomorrow, then.

She would go early, before anyone expected her to leave the estate. She would take one car, no escort. She would choose a route with cameras that didn’t belong to Blackthorn and didn’t belong to Reagen’s people. 

She’d wear a cap and a coat and keep her head down. She would be back within an hour. She would tell Callum after.

Her stomach turned at the last thought. She did not like hiding anything from him. Not now. But if she told him tonight, he would not let her go in alone. He would make a move, and that move would light a flare in the dark.

If she could get the contents of the second vault first, they would choose the ground for the fight. Not Reagen.

Kaitlyn closed the ledger and slid it into the bottom drawer. She turned the key in the drawer’s small lock and then took the key out and set it on the desk, a decoy for anyone who came looking. The real prize… the notebook with the tin and the card, she kept with her.

She stood, crossed to the window, and pushed the curtain aside.

A figure moved at the edge of the courtyard, half-hidden behind a clipped hedge.

Kaitlyn held still, breath caught in her chest.

He stepped into the light and stopped, as if he knew she was watching.

Moore.

Even at this distance, she recognized the posture… the straight shoulders, the way his hands stayed at his sides, relaxed, as if nothing in the world could surprise him. 

He didn’t look up at the study window. He looked toward the gate, then toward the guest wing, then back to the path at his feet. After a moment, he turned and walked out of sight.

She let the curtain fall back.

“Thank you,” she said again. If he had left the envelope, he had done more than pass along a secret. He had chosen a side, for her safety.

She looked at the clock on the wall. Three hours until dawn.

Her body ached with tiredness, but her mind would not rest. She sat on the couch with her feet on the rug and her hands open on her knees. She breathed. In. Out. In. Out. She had been trained for many things… reading a room, hiding in noise, saying only what was needed. 

She had not been trained for this part, for the weight of her father’s voice speaking to her from an old folded paper.

If you have found this, then I did not stop what was coming.
I am sorry.

She blinked away the sting in her eyes and spoke into the empty study.

“I found it,” she said. “I’m not stopping.”
The handle moved.

Kaitlyn stood at once, heart sharp in her throat, the canvas bag already in her hand.

The door opened a few inches. Callum stepped in and closed it behind him. No jacket. No tie. Sleeves pushed up, the lines of worry still in his face from the night before. His eyes found hers at once, and his shoulders lowered the barest amount.

“You’re awake,” he said softly.

“So are you,” she answered.

He looked at the desk, at the closed drawer, at the tidy circle of lamplight. He didn’t ask what she had been doing. He studied her face instead, the way her hand held the strap of the bag, the intent in her eyes.

“I was going to find you in the morning,” he said. “Talk to you.”

“I know,” she said.

They stood there, a thin ribbon of air between them that felt like an entire decision.

“Walk with me?” Callum asked after a moment.

“Tomorrow,” she said, the word heavy with all it carried.

He heard the resolve in her tone, and he didn’t push. He nodded once, as if to say he understood that there were times when a person had to hold a thing in their own hands before they could place it in another’s.

“Be careful,” he said.

“I will,” she answered.

He reached for the doorknob, paused. “Kaitlyn.”

She lifted her chin.

“If you find something that hurts, don't keep it to yourself,” he said quietly.

“I won’t.”

He opened the door and left as quietly as he had come.

Kaitlyn stood in the silence. She looked down at her bag, then at the window, then at the spot on the rug where the envelope had first touched the floor.

She turned off the lamp, eased the door open and slipped into the hall, heading to her room.

Tomorrow, she will go to the bank.

Tomorrow, she will open the second vault.

And after that, she would tell Callum everything… about her father’s warning, about the phrase, about the knife hidden under their feet all this time.

But tonight, she carried it alone, because the first move had to be hers.

The second vault would change everything.