Chapter 3

The office was quiet by nine.

By eleven it was just Charlotte.

She didn’t mind. She had always worked best when the building emptied out and the phones stopped and there was nothing between her and the work except the hum of the air conditioning and the city lights coming through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Armstrong & Associates occupied the fourteenth floor of one of Bangkok’s newer commercial buildings. The view was good. Charlotte had chosen this office partly for that reason, though she would never admit it to anyone.

She was going through the Viroj trial schedule when the email arrived.

She almost missed it. It came into a general inbox — the firm’s public contact address, the one that caught everything from new client enquiries to spam. Her assistant filtered it every morning. At 11:14pm on a Tuesday there was nobody filtering anything.

Charlotte saw it because she happened to glance at the wrong tab.

The subject line was blank.

The sender was an address she didn’t recognise. A string of random numbers and letters that meant it had been generated somewhere and used once and would never be traceable. She knew enough about these things to know that much.

She opened it.

There was one line.

Your sister won’t finish this trial.

Charlotte read it twice. Then she set her coffee down very carefully on the desk and read it again.

It wasn’t the first threat. That was the thing. Since Becky had taken on the Viroj prosecution there had been others — vague things, the kind that came with high-profile cases involving dangerous people. A letter to the firm’s address three months ago. An anonymous call to Becky’s personal number that Becky had mentioned once and then dismissed. Charlotte had filed each one with the police. The police had noted them. Nothing had come of it.

This was different.

She couldn’t have explained exactly why. The words were simple enough. But there was something about the specificity of it. Won’t finish. Not shouldn’t or better not. Won’t. Like it was already decided. Like someone had already made a plan and was telling her about it as a courtesy.

Charlotte closed the laptop.

She stood up and walked to the window and looked out at the city. Bangkok at this hour was still alive — it never fully went to sleep — but quieter than the day, the traffic thinned out, the lights of other buildings burning steadily against the dark.

She stood there for a long time.

The problem was the obvious one. The Viroj network had connections everywhere. She had known this when Becky took the case. They had talked about it — or tried to. Becky wasn’t someone who entertained conversations about pulling back from something once she had committed to it. Charlotte had raised the risks once and Becky had looked at her with that particular expression she had, the one that was patient and immovable at the same time, and said that someone had to prosecute him. That had been the end of the conversation.

Charlotte had spent the months since managing her worry quietly, the way she managed most things. Watching. Keeping track. Telling herself the police were aware, the firm had security measures, Becky was careful.

But the police hadn’t prevented anything. The firm’s security measures were designed for corporate concerns. And Becky was careful in a courtroom, not in a parking garage at 10pm when she was the last one leaving.

Charlotte pressed her fingers against the glass.

She knew what she needed to do. She had probably known since the second anonymous letter, if she was being honest with herself. She had been avoiding it. She was good at avoiding things she didn’t want to face. It was one of her less flattering qualities.

She walked back to her desk and sat down.

She opened her personal phone. Not the work phone. The personal one she kept in her bag.

She went to her contacts and scrolled. She had not deleted the number. She had thought about it more than once over the past three years and each time she had stopped herself without fully examining why. She told herself it was professional. That it was useful to have. That it meant nothing to keep a contact.

She had always been good at telling herself things.

The name sat there on the screen.

Engfa.

Charlotte stared at it for a moment. Then she pressed call before she could think about it any further.

It rang once.

It rang twice.

“Charlotte.”

Just her name. That was all. But Engfa’s voice was exactly as she remembered it — low and even, with that particular quality of stillness that had always made Charlotte feel, simultaneously, completely safe and completely unsettled.

“I’m sorry for calling so late,” Charlotte said.

“It’s fine.” A pause. “What’s wrong?”

Straight to it. No small talk. No how have you been or it’s been a while. That was Engfa. Charlotte had always appreciated it and found it maddening in equal measure.

“It’s Becky,” she said.

She heard the shift. Subtle, barely there. But she had known Engfa long enough to hear the things she didn’t say. “Tell me.”

Charlotte told her.

She laid it out the way she would present something to a client — clearly, in order, without letting her voice do anything it wasn’t supposed to do. The Viroj case. The previous threats. The email tonight. The timeline of the trial, three weeks to closing arguments. The fact that the network had connections she didn’t fully understand and that the police had been aware and unhelpful and that she didn’t trust the situation anymore.

Engfa listened. She didn’t interrupt. She didn’t make sounds of acknowledgement or ask Charlotte to slow down or repeat herself. She just listened completely, the way she did everything — with her full attention, nothing held back.

When Charlotte finished there was a silence.

It wasn’t uncomfortable. Engfa’s silences never were. They were just — processing. Charlotte had learned that. She waited.

“The email account will be untraceable,” Engfa said finally.

“I know.”

“Have you told Becky?”

“No.” Charlotte looked at her hands on the desk. “She’ll tell me she’s fine and keep going.”

“She probably is fine.”

“I know she’s probably fine.” Charlotte paused. “I’m not willing to find out she isn’t.”

Another silence. Shorter this time.

“You said the Viroj network has military connections,” Engfa said.

“That’s what Becky’s evidence is showing. Procurement fraud, weapons routing through official channels. She has documents.” Charlotte stopped. “Engfa. How bad is it. Honestly.”

A beat.

“Honestly,” Engfa said, “networks like this don’t send warning emails to be theatrical. They send them because they want you scared enough to pull back. If she doesn’t pull back—”

“She won’t.”

“Then the email stops being a warning.”

Charlotte closed her eyes.

She had known this. She had known it when she picked up the phone. She had known it probably since the second letter. But hearing it said plainly, in Engfa’s calm steady voice, made it real in a way that the past few hours of sitting with it alone had not.

“I need someone inside,” Charlotte said. “Close to her. Someone she doesn’t know is there.”

“You want protective surveillance.”

“I want someone who can actually do something if it comes to that.” She opened her eyes. “Not a security guard. Not a panic button. Someone who knows what they’re doing.”

Silence again. Longer.

Charlotte waited. She was aware that she was asking for something significant. She was aware that calling Engfa after three years of nothing to ask for something significant was — a lot. She was aware of all of this and she was asking anyway because it was Becky.

“I have someone,” Engfa said.

Charlotte exhaled. “Who?”

“My best captain. She’s just come off a field rotation. She’s ready.” A pause. “She’ll need a cover. Something that puts her inside the firm.”

“I can bring her in as a junior associate. New transfer, my recommendation. Becky will train her.” Charlotte was already thinking through it. “Becky will question it. She’s in the middle of the trial. But she’ll do it if I ask.”

“The captain has no legal background.”

“Then she’ll have to learn fast.”

Something that might have been the beginning of a dry sound came through the line. Not quite a laugh. Engfa didn’t laugh easily. “She will.”

“There’s something else.” Charlotte kept her voice even. “This has to be completely off the record. If Viroj’s network has military connections then I don’t know who inside the system I can trust. I need this to be small. Just your captain and whatever support she needs.”

“Understood.” A beat. “It will be off the books. My responsibility.”

“Engfa.” Charlotte stopped. Started again. “If anything happens to Becky—”

“It won’t.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“No,” Engfa said. “But I can promise you I’ll put the right person in that room.” A pause that felt different from the others. Heavier somehow. “You called me. That means something.”

Charlotte didn’t answer that.

She wasn’t ready to answer that.

“Send me everything,” Engfa said. Her voice was back to business, clean and direct. “The case files, the threats, Becky’s schedule, the firm layout. Everything you have.”

“Tonight?”

“Tonight.”

Charlotte pulled her laptop back toward her. “Alright.”

“Charlotte.”

She stopped. “Yes.”

A pause. Three years of silence sitting inside it. “I’ll handle it.”

Three words.

Charlotte sat with them for a moment. Then she nodded, even though there was no one in the room to see it.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

She ended the call.

The office was still quiet. The city was still out there beyond the glass, going about its night, completely indifferent to the fact that everything had just shifted. Charlotte sat very still for a moment. Then she opened her laptop and started pulling together everything Engfa had asked for.

She worked for two hours without stopping.

It was the first time in weeks that her hands weren’t shaking.