Before the first pale rays of Manhattan sunlight managed to slice through the smog and concrete canyons, Marcus sat in the back of an all-night diner three blocks from police headquarters, nursing a black coffee.
The bell above the door chimed softly, and Detective Vasquez slid into the booth across from him. She looked exhausted, her trench coat damp from the lingering morning mist, dark circles bruised beneath her sharp eyes.
She set a heavy, leather-bound ledger on the table between them, its pages yellowed at the edges.
"You're out of your mind, Vance," Vasquez whispered, her voice tight with suppressed panic. "Do you have any idea what it took to get this out of Harrison’s wall safe? If I’m caught, I’m not just losing my pension—I’m looking at twenty years in a federal penitentiary for industrial espionage and theft of police property."
Marcus opened the ledger carefully, his fingers tracing the handwritten entries penned in heavy black ink. The names, the dates, the property addresses, and the specific cash amounts distributed to various precinct commanders lined up with mathematical precision.