Nobody needed the rest of the sentence. Another loud bang echoed somewhere below them, closer this time. The younger agent near the door turned pale. "Ma'am, we need to move."
Monroe nodded immediately. "Safe elevators offline?"
"Completely dead."
"Then stairwells."
Holloway looked stunned. "You're evacuating us through an active breach?"
Monroe grabbed a flashlight from the table and handed it to Maya. "I'm keeping the witness alive. Everything else comes second."
Outside the conference room, the seventh-floor hallway glowed under weak emergency lighting. Agents moved fast and low, weapons drawn, while alarms pulsed faintly through the building. Maya walked beside Monroe, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in her wrists and ear.
Then she noticed something strange: the federal agents weren't acting confused anymore; they were acting prepared.
Monroe caught Maya studying her. "This isn't the first time evidence panic turned ugly."
"What does that mean?"
"It means corruption fights hardest when exposure becomes unavoidable."
Another distant gunshot cracked somewhere below. Holloway flinched visibly. "Who the hell attacks a federal building?"
Monroe answered without slowing down: "People who already know prison is waiting."
They reached the stairwell door at the far end of the corridor. One agent pushed it open carefully while another swept the dark stairwell below with a flashlight.
"Clear. For now."
The group started descending quickly. Emergency lights cast long shadows against concrete walls while rain hammered faintly against the outside structure somewhere beyond the stairwell.
Five floors down, Monroe's phone suddenly vibrated. No signal should have existed, yet somehow the call came through: Evelyn Brooks.
Monroe answered immediately while continuing downward: "Talk."
Evelyn sounded calmer than anyone else in the building: "Three names from Salazar's recording just disappeared from active monitoring."
Monroe's face hardened. "Escaped custody?"
"No," Evelyn corrected. "Protective relocation."
That stopped Monroe cold on the stairs. Maya saw it instantly: the federal government itself was already splitting apart over the investigation. Some people wanted exposure; others wanted containment.
Monroe lowered her voice: "Who authorized relocation?"
"I can't say over the phone," Evelyn paused briefly. "But if Hayes disappeared tonight, he won't stay missing for long."
Maya frowned. "You think they'll kill him?"
Evelyn's silence answered the question better than words.
The stairwell suddenly shook faintly beneath their feet. Then all the emergency lights flickered again. One agent cursed under his breath: "Somebody's messing with internal power routing."
Monroe ended the call immediately. "Move faster."
The group descended another floor before suddenly stopping again. Voices echoed upward from below—male voices, not federal. The agents raised weapons instantly. Everybody froze.
The voices grew louder: "Check every level! She's still inside!"
Maya's blood ran cold: they were talking about her.
One of Monroe's agents whispered sharply: "Back up!"
The group retreated silently up two flights before stopping again. Holloway looked like he could barely breathe now. "How do they even know she's here?"
Maya answered before Monroe could: "Because somebody inside the system told them."
Nobody argued, because by now everyone knew it was true: the corruption network had reached places far beyond local police.
Monroe looked toward Maya carefully. "Can you walk fast?"
"Yes."
"Good," Monroe replied, pulling a second handgun from her coat. "Because if they reach this floor before extraction arrives, tonight stops being an investigation."
Another voice echoed faintly from below, closer now. Then Maya heard something that froze her completely: Sergeant Hayes.
"We don't have much time!" his voice shouted from somewhere beneath the stairwell. "Find her before federal transport gets here!"
Holloway stared downward in disbelief. "Hayes is working with them?"
Maya slowly tightened her grip around the flashlight. "No," she whispered, finally understanding. "He's running from them."
The words hit the stairwell harder than the distant gunfire: He's running from them.
Agent Claire Monroe stared down into the darkness below while weak emergency lights flickered against the concrete walls. Voices continued echoing upward through the stairwell, sharp and hurried now:
"Split up! She couldn't have gone far!" "Check every floor!"
Then Hayes' voice again, rougher this time: "Forget the files! Find Maya Williams first!"
Holloway looked completely shaken. "Why would they care more about her than the evidence?"
Maya answered quietly before Monroe could: "Because I'm alive."
The realization settled over everyone at once: the leaked footage from Prestige Motors had already spread nationwide. Millions of people had seen her face, seen Hayes arrest her, seen the humiliation inside the showroom. If Maya disappeared now, the entire investigation would instantly look poisoned.
Monroe motioned silently toward the upper floors: "Move."
The group climbed quickly back upward, footsteps echoing sharply through the concrete stairwell while the voices below continued searching floor by floor. Maya's lungs burned by the time they reached the ninth-floor landing. Rain rattled faintly against distant windows somewhere above them while the building's emergency alarms pulsed through the darkness.
One of the agents pressed an ear carefully against the stairwell door leading into the ninth-floor corridor. "Quiet for now."
Monroe nodded once. The door opened slowly.
The hallway beyond looked abandoned under dim red emergency lighting. Office doors stood partially open while scattered papers drifted across the carpet from malfunctioning ventilation systems. The entire building felt wounded.