Malcolm Avery was the older janitor most people at Ridgewell Systems barely noticed. That Tuesday morning, he was finishing the marble floor in the company's main lobby when Lydia Crane walked through the doors carrying coffee.

Emergency lights washed the lobby in red. Malcolm pushed Eli behind the reception desk as the doors opened. A figure entered wearing a Ridgewell security jacket, but the shoulders were too broad and the shoes too clean for any officer on the night roster.

The figure crossed toward the clock.

Malcolm switched on the floor buffer. Its motor roared to life, filling the lobby with a mechanical scream. The intruder flinched. Eli ran for the service corridor while Malcolm sent the buffer rolling between them like a shield.

By the time the lights returned, the intruder had vanished. The clock's rear panel hung open. The data capsule was gone.

Eli was crouched beside the service elevator, breathing hard. "I copied the file before the lights went out."

"Everything?"

"Not the voice recording. It stopped halfway through."

Malcolm looked toward the doors. Rain had blown across the marble, making new silver tracks over the old coffee stain. He suddenly understood the spill. Lydia had not been careless. She had been testing whether he had hidden something beneath the floor-level clock cabinet, and she had used humiliation to make him kneel in public where cameras could watch his hands.

"She knows we found it," he said.

Eli's phone vibrated. A message appeared from an unknown number: COME TO THE TWENTY-NINTH FLOOR ALONE OR YOUR MOTHER GOES TO JAIL.

Eli's face drained. "They can charge her?"

"They can accuse anyone if they control the records."

Malcolm took the phone. "You are not going upstairs alone."

They rode the service elevator with the copied file hidden inside a roll of replacement trash bags. On the twenty-ninth floor, Lydia waited beside the vanished archive wall. Graham Sloane stood behind her, his silver hair immaculate and his expression nearly bored.

"Mr. Avery," Sloane said. "You were hired to clean this building."

"No," Malcolm replied. "I was hired to find what you left in it."