My parents gave me my brother's MacBook for my 18th birthday, unaware I overheard them planning to let me take the fall for his crimes.

"Step into the corner," Detective Perez ordered, her voice completely flat, operating entirely on tactical instinct. "Get down behind the steel filing cabinet. Cover your head."

I didn't argue. I dropped to the linoleum floor, pulling my knees to my chest behind the heavy three-drawer cabinet. The siren continued to wail, a deafening screech that made my teeth vibrate.

The Columbus Police Department headquarters wasn't some remote sheriff's outpost in the woods; it was a fortress in the heart of downtown. How could anyone breach it?

"They didn't breach it from the outside," I muttered aloud over the screech of the sirens. "They had someone inside."

Perez didn't look back at me, her gun leveled at the door handle. "Ryan’s consulting firm had security contracts with municipal networks across the state. Invoicing, IT maintenance, camera infrastructure. If his employers wanted remote access to the building's fire suppression and door overrides, they probably had it months ago."

Through the frosted glass panel on the office door, the strobe lights flickered.

Then came the sound of footsteps. Not running. Slow, measured, deliberate footsteps echoing in the empty hallway.

*Click.*

The door handle jiggled. The deadbolt held.

A low chuckle filtered through the wood.

"Detective," the accented voice called out. "Do not be heroic for a corrupt family. Eleanor and David Miller took four hundred thousand dollars in cash as an upfront payment to ensure their daughter signed the documentation. Did they not tell her that? What a tragedy."

The words struck me harder than any physical blow could have.

Four hundred thousand dollars.

My parents hadn't just sacrificed me out of desperation to save Ryan. *They had sold me.* They had taken a down payment to serve their eighteen-year-old daughter up on a silver platter to organized criminals as a disposable fall guy.

Tears spilled over my cheeks, but they weren't tears of grief anymore. They were pure, corrosive rage.

*Bang!*

The lock on the door exploded inward under the concussive blast of a heavy-caliber breaching shotgun. Splinters of wood and pulverized metal sprayed into the room.

Perez fired twice through the opening—*crack, crack!*

A grunt of pain echoed from the hallway, followed by the heavy thud of a body hitting the floor. But before Perez could advance, a black cylindrical canister rolled through the shattered threshold, hissing violently.