Monroe turned toward Maya: "Stay between us."
Maya nodded. As they moved down the corridor, Holloway leaned closer to her, his voice staying low enough not to carry. "I need to tell you something before this gets worse."
Maya looked at him carefully. "Worse?"
Holloway gave a grim smile. "Trust me, we haven't reached worse yet." He glanced briefly toward Monroe before continuing: "The Porsche should never have been displayed publicly."
"You knew?"
"Not everything," Holloway admitted quickly. "But I knew federal investigators requested delays on the sale twice."
Maya frowned. "Then why put it on the showroom floor?"
Holloway's expression darkened with shame. "Because someone very powerful insisted the vehicle remain visible."
Monroe overheard the last sentence immediately: "Who?"
Holloway hesitated. Then the hallway lights flickered again. For one terrible second, total darkness swallowed the corridor before the red emergency lighting returned weaker than before.
Holloway lowered his voice further: "Atlanta Deputy Commissioner Warren Pike."
Monroe stopped walking instantly. Even the agents reacted. Maya recognized the name immediately: Warren Pike appeared constantly on local television beside mayors and police chiefs talking about public safety and community reform—a respected face, a trusted face.
Monroe's jaw tightened. "Pike's name wasn't on the leaked audio."
"No," Holloway replied softly. "Because Pike never spoke directly to Salazar."
The implication chilled Holloway. Maya suddenly understood how corruption survived so long: the smartest people never touched dirt with bare hands.
One of the agents moved quickly toward Monroe. "Ma'am, tactical teams lost camera access to floors six through eight."
Monroe looked toward the elevators farther down the corridor, then toward the stairwell they had just exited. "They're herding us upward," she muttered.
As soon as the words left her mouth, Maya heard footsteps somewhere behind them—fast, closing distance. The agents raised weapons instantly. A shadow appeared at the far end of the hallway near the emergency exit. Everyone froze.
Then Sergeant Daniel Hayes stepped into the weak red light with both hands partially raised.
He looked terrible: rainwater soaked his uniform completely; his face was pale, exhausted, and streaked with sweat. Worse than that, he looked terrified in a way Maya had never seen before.
One of the agents immediately aimed at his chest: "Don't move!"
Hayes ignored the gun entirely. His eyes locked onto Monroe first. "They got into the building faster than I thought."
Monroe's voice turned razor-sharp: "You expect us to believe you're helping now?"
Hayes took another careful step forward. "You don't understand what Pike's people are trying to do."
"No," Monroe snapped. "What I understand is that you publicly assaulted an innocent woman and nearly destroyed this investigation."
Hayes looked toward Maya then. For a brief second, guilt crossed his face again, but fear crushed it almost immediately. "Maya," he said quietly, "they don't care about the evidence anymore."
Maya folded her arms tightly against the cold. "Then what do they care about?"
Hayes swallowed hard before answering: "The recording inside the compartment wasn't the only copy."
Silence hit the hallway. Monroe stared at him. "What are you talking about?"
Hayes looked over his shoulder toward the dark stairwell behind him like he expected armed men to appear any second. "Salazar built a dead man's switch," he said quickly. "If anything happened to him, copies of the recordings were supposed to go public automatically."
Monroe frowned. "That didn't happen."
Hayes nodded grimly. "Because somebody intercepted the release system before it finished."
Maya's stomach tightened. "Who?"
Hayes looked directly at her now: "Deputy Commissioner Pike."
The emergency lights flickered again. Then gunshots exploded somewhere below them on the eighth floor, closer than before. Everybody in the hallway flinched instinctively. One of the agents cursed under his breath: "They're moving up."
Hayes took another step toward Monroe. "Listen to me carefully: Pike thinks Maya knows where the missing recordings are."
Maya stared at him in disbelief. "I don't!"
"I know that," Hayes replied immediately. "But Pike won't believe it."
Another burst of gunfire echoed upward through the stairwell, followed by the sound of men shouting, coming closer. Monroe immediately turned toward her agents: "We move now."
But before anyone could react, the lights died completely again. And this time, the hallway did not come back on.
Darkness swallowed the hallway so completely that for one terrifying second, Maya could hear nothing except breathing and distant gunfire somewhere below the building. Then flashlights snapped on all at once: white beams sliced through the black corridor while agents shouted overlapping commands.
"Move!" "Cover the stairwell!" "Stay low!"
The sudden chaos echoed violently through the federal office floor. Maya instinctively stepped backward until her shoulder hit the wall. Agent Monroe grabbed her arm immediately and pulled her forward through the darkness: "This way!"
Another burst of gunfire exploded from somewhere below the eighth-floor staircase—closer now, much closer.
Sergeant Daniel Hayes moved beside Monroe with surprising urgency. "They're pushing up too fast. Pike must have brought private contractors."
One of the agents swung his flashlight toward Hayes sharply: "You don't get to act like one of us now!"
Hayes ignored him. The group moved quickly down the corridor while emergency alarms pulsed weakly overhead. Office doors stood open along both sides of the hallway like abandoned rooms after a hurricane.
Maya's heart hammered against her ribs. Everything happening felt impossible: just hours earlier, she had been arguing over car paperwork in a luxury showroom; now armed men were hunting her inside a federal building during a citywide corruption collapse.
Holloway stumbled slightly behind them. "Where are we even going?"
Monroe answered without slowing down: "Roof access."
Hayes immediately shook his head: "Bad idea."
Monroe turned sharply: "You got a better one?"
"Yes." Hayes pointed farther ahead through the darkness. "There's an old records tunnel beneath the building connected to the original courthouse next block over."
One of the agents frowned: "How the hell do you know that?"