"The USB drive," I breathed, the pieces rapidly snapping into place. "Leo hid it inside his own glove padding. That's why the police never found it."
"And you just hand-delivered it right back to Silas," Marcus said, his face tightening with frustration. "I heard him yelling in his office after you left. He knows you're Maya Vance. He knows you planted a camera in that box. He’s packing up the office right now. He’s going to burn Apex MMA to the ground tonight with the ledger inside, collect the insurance, and disappear. And he sent Jax and Rocco to this hospital to make sure Leo never wakes up to testify."
A cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck. "You moved him?"
"Seventh floor. Name is John Doe. The nurses think he’s a transfer from County General," Marcus said. He held out the burner phone. "I can't go to the cops, Maya. If Silas gets away, he’ll ruin my little girl. I need that USB drive to prove I was blackmailed. You need it to put Silas behind bars for what he did to your brother. I can get us into the gym tonight through the freight doors. But I can't crack his safe."
I stared at the giant man who had haunted my nightmares. He was asking me to trust the weapon Silas had used to destroy my family.
"If this is a trap," I said, finally lowering my hands, "I won't sweep your leg next time. I'll break it."
Marcus gave a grim, humorless nod. "Midnight. The loading dock."
Seven hours later, the industrial park surrounding Apex MMA was completely dead. The streetlights flickered against the heavy fog rolling in off the harbor. I wore all black, my yellow delivery jacket left behind in the van. I slipped through the shadows behind the gym, finding the rusted metal door of the loading dock slightly ajar.
Marcus was waiting inside, cloaked in the darkness of the storage room. He silently waved me forward.
We crept through the labyrinth of weight machines and heavy bags. The gym was eerily silent without the thumping music and the roar of the fighters. The smell of bleach was overpowering.
We climbed the metal staircase to the VIP office. The door was unlocked. Inside, the office was a disaster. File cabinets were emptied, papers shredded across the floor. Behind Silas’s heavy oak desk, a large painting had been torn off the wall, revealing a heavy steel wall safe.
"He's coming back for it," Marcus whispered, standing guard at the glass window overlooking the dark gym floor below. "Hurry."
I knelt in front of the safe. It was an older electronic keypad model. I pulled a small thermal imaging tool from my backpack—a trick I had learned during my six months of obsessive preparation. I shined it on the keypad. The residual heat from Silas’s fingers hours earlier still showed faint thermal signatures on four numbers.
"Four, seven, nine, two," I muttered. I punched the combination in. The green light flashed. The heavy steel bolts clicked, and the door swung open.
Inside sat a stack of cash, a passport, and sitting right in the center, the silver USB drive.
I reached in and grabbed it, my heart soaring. We had it. The proof.
Suddenly, the harsh fluorescent lights of the gym floor below snapped on, blindingly bright.
I spun around, clutching the USB drive to my chest.