She climbed down, positioned the chair back at the table, and began a new kind of observation. Every time the door opened, she noted everything: the angle of light from the hallway, the glimpses of corridor beyond, the timing between visits. Cross came every six hours. Someone else probably Webb did security checks every three hours, just opening the door to verify she was still there.
Patterns. Routines. Vulnerabilities.
On what she estimated was day two, something changed. Cross arrived looking agitated, his movements sharp. He dropped a newspaper on the table the New York Times, dated today.
The headline screamed: SENATOR CASTELLANO AGREES TO COOPERATE FULL TESTIMONY EXPECTED
Below it, a subheading: Sources Say Deal Includes RICO Charges Against Criminal Network
Cross's typed message was curt: Castellano is talking. Giving them everything. Names, dates, financial records. He's trying to save himself by burning everyone else.
"Including you," Sophia signed.
Especially me. Which means I'm running out of time. Cross paced the small cell, predatory energy barely contained. The FBI is moving him to a secure facility for depositions. I need to know where.
"I don't know where."
But Chen does. And she's coming for you. I've made sure of it.
"What do you mean?"
Cross showed her his phone a video file. When he played it, Sophia's blood ran cold.
It was footage of her in this cell, timestamp showing it was from an hour ago. She was sitting at the table, eating, looking exhausted and scared. The video ended with a message overlaid in white text:
Agent Chen Your witness is alive. For now. 48 hours to deliver information on Castellano's location. No tricks, no backup, or she dies. Instructions to follow.
"You sent this to her?"
Thirty minutes ago. She'll have no choice but to respond. She'll try to be clever, try to set a trap, but ultimately she'll give me what I want. Because she cares about you. Cross's smile was cruel. Emotions are always the weakness.
Sophia's mind raced. Chen wouldn't couldn't give up Castellano's location. It would mean multiple deaths: Castellano, probably Chen herself, and eventually Sophia once she was no longer useful. But Chen also wouldn't abandon her. Would try some kind of rescue operation.
Either way, people were going to die.
"There has to be another way," Sophia signed desperately. "Let me help you disappear instead. You said you had an exit strategy use it now. Take your resources and vanish. Castellano's testimony will put you away for life if you stay, but if you run now"
Running isn't justice. David deserves justice.
"David deserves for his brother to stay alive! To have a future! Throwing your life away on revenge won't bring him back!"
For a moment just a flash something human crossed Cross's face. Grief. Doubt. The shadow of the man he might have been before tragedy turned him into a killer.
Then it was gone, replaced by cold certainty.
You're right. It won't bring him back. But it will balance the scales. That's all anyone can hope for.
He left, locking the door behind him.
Sophia collapsed into the chair, hands shaking. Forty-eight hours. Two days before Cross's ultimatum expired and people started dying. She needed a plan. Needed some way to warn Chen without Cross knowing, some way to escape, something.
She returned to the air vent, pressed her ear against it not to hear, but to feel. The vibrations were stronger now. Multiple sources. Footsteps. Machinery. Distant impacts that might be doors closing.
And something else. Something rhythmic and familiar. A pattern she recognized from years of feeling music through speakers, through floors, through the bones of buildings.
A subway. The vibration of trains passing underground.
They were in New York. Still in the city. Near a subway line probably in an industrial area where trains ran frequently and ambient noise would mask any sounds from a makeshift prison.
It wasn't much. But it was information. And information was power.
Sophia climbed down and moved to the door, examining the lock mechanism from her side. The deadbolt was industrial-grade, but the door itself was mounted on hinges three of them, visible on her side since it opened inward.
Hinges could be removed if you had tools. And while the cell was bare, Sophia had something: the metal chair. If she could break off one of the chair legs, use it as a lever, she might be able to pop the hinge pins. It would be loud. Would attract attention. But if she timed it right during a subway pass, when the vibrations would mask her work she might manage it.
It was a desperate plan. Probably impossible. But it was better than sitting and waiting to be executed after Cross killed Castellano.
Sophia tested the chair, looking for weak points. The legs were welded to the seat, but welds could break under enough stress. She'd need to work on it gradually, applying pressure, creating fractures, all while appearing to cooperate whenever Cross or Webb checked on her.
She had forty-eight hours.
She'd better make them count.
That night or what she assumed was night based on meal patterns Sophia lay on the floor near the vent, feeling the building breathe around her. The subway vibrations came every twelve minutes. Regular as clockwork. Each pass lasted about thirty seconds of stronger vibration.
Thirty seconds to work on the chair leg. To bend it, stress the weld, create weakness.
She'd need at least twenty passes to break it. Maybe more. Which meant four hours of careful, patient work.
Sophia closed her eyes and thought about Maya. About her apartment in Brooklyn. About painting portraits and the simple pleasure of capturing truth on canvas. About the life she'd built, the person she'd become despite or maybe because of her deafness.
Cross thought he understood her. Thought her disability made her vulnerable, made her less dangerous.
He was about to learn how wrong he was.
When the next subway vibration came, Sophia got to work.