Raka landed left shoulder first and immediately knew something had cracked.
He didn't check it.
On the roof of the neighboring building, the wind carried rain and the smell of burning plastic. Naya got to her feet on trembling knees, then reached for the project folder still tucked behind Raka's jacket.
“Your shoulder.”
“Later.”
“If later means broken, it's already broken.”
“If it's broken, we still have to go.”
Below them, more sirens joined the chorus. The highway was packed with vehicles stopped to watch the archives building burn. Not one of those people knew that a few yards above their heads, two investigators were being hunted by men using the name of their own institution.
Naya opened the restaurant receipt again. The blue ink had run in the water, but three transactions were still visible.
“Not just an advance payment,” she said. “Look at the times.”
Raka held back a stab of pain as he bent over. “I've already seen the numbers.”
“Not the times.”
She pointed to the small stamp in the corner of the receipt.
“This restaurant recorded a payment at 9:14 p.m. The first transfer came in at 9:16. The second went out at 9:18. Two minutes. Too fast for a normal transaction.”
“So?”
“So the money didn't move from one account to another. It was already waiting.”
Raka looked at her.
Naya pulled out a phone with a cracked screen. “Lentera Timur was established this morning. But its holding account received money before the company was registered.”
Rain slapped their faces.
“A shadow account,” Raka said.
“Worse. Someone set up the route months ago, using Bram's identity.”
Raka looked toward the Arkapura Procurement Archives. The flames were starting to die down, but its windows still glowed red. He remembered the shooter's voice on the fire escape.
The person whose salary you pay.
“We need to find Bram.”
Naya gave a short, humorless laugh. “Bram may be waiting for us to bring the evidence to his office.”
“If he's a traitor, we'll know.”
“And if he isn't?”
“Then we'll know who framed him.”
They went down through the neighboring building's service stairs. Raka forced his shoulder to move while Naya counted every camera aimed at the corridor. Three cameras were dead. One blinked. The other two had just been turned away from the stairs.
“This isn't a coincidence,” she whispered.
“It isn't.”
On the ground floor, an old guard was closing a side door. Raka caught the door before it locked.
“Sir, we're with UIS.”
The guard looked at Raka's jacket, then at Naya's face. He didn't ask for identification. That was exactly what put Raka on alert.
“Go out through the back alley,” he said. “A black car is waiting on the main road.”
“You saw it?”
“Since you jumped.”
Naya grabbed Raka's arm. They didn't go out to the main road. Raka opened a door leading to the underground parking garage.
“That black car?”
“Bait.”
They ran between the concrete pillars. At the far end of the garage, a food-delivery van sat running with its rear doors open. A woman stood beside it, holding a red umbrella.
“Sinta,” Naya said.
The journalist glanced at Raka's shoulder. “You two always show up in ways that make my insurance premiums go up.”
“Can you get us out?”
“I can take you somewhere safe.”
“There's no safe place.”
“Good. That means your brain isn't injured.”
Sinta tossed the keys to Naya. “I secured a route to the old print shop on Jalan Kertanegara. There aren't any city cameras there.”
Raka was about to get in when the parking lights went out.
A second later, footsteps sounded between the cars.
Sinta lowered her umbrella. “How many?”
Naya studied the shadows on the wet floor. “Six. Maybe eight.”
Raka pulled open the van door. “Get in.”
“Raka—”
“Now.”
The first shot slammed into the hood of the car behind him. Raka moved before the second shot followed. He kicked a metal cart, sending it skidding between the pillars and forcing two attackers into cover. Sinta started the van. Naya crouched behind the door.
A man appeared on the right, pistol raised.
Raka caught his wrist, twisted his body, and drove an elbow into his throat. The gun fell. The man pulled a knife, but Raka used the van door as a shield. The blade sank into the metal. Raka struck his opponent's hand until he let go, then shoved him into the hood of a car.
More footsteps approached from behind.
Raka reached for the fallen weapon but didn't fire. He kicked the second attacker in the knee, seized his collar, and slammed him to the floor. A burst of gunfire shattered the parking lights.
“Raka!” Naya shouted.
The van reversed.
Raka ran, leaped onto the rear doors, and rolled inside as the van crashed through the parking barrier. A bullet pierced the door a few inches from his head.
Sinta hit the gas.
They shot into a narrow alley, leaving the garage behind in a cloud of smoke and the sound of alarms.
Naya immediately bandaged Raka's shoulder with cloth from the first-aid kit.
“Can I check it now?”
“If you're going to call me an idiot, wait until we've stopped.”
“I don't want to call you an idiot.”
“Good.”
“I want to call you reckless, stubborn, and nearly dead because you refused to shoot someone who was trying to kill you.”
Raka looked at her through the windshield.
“I didn't refuse to shoot.”
“Then what?”
“I refused to give them a story that we're the same.”
For a while, no one answered.
Sinta turned off the radio, which had been broadcasting news of the fire. The announcer's voice continued from a backup phone on the dashboard.
“The Special Integrity Unit denies the involvement of its personnel in the incident at the Arkapura Procurement Archives. Two investigators, Raka Adinata and Naya Prameswari, have been declared missing after allegedly taking investigative documents without authorization.”
Naya closed her eyes.
Sinta swore. “They're moving fast.”
“Not them,” Raka said.
He took out his phone. There was one new message from an unknown number.
Don't come to the office. Bram's been detained.
A second message arrived before he could show the screen to anyone.
Not by the police.
Raka stared at the two sentences. Then an address followed: Arkapura Freight Terminal, Warehouse 9.
Naya read it over his shoulder. “It's a trap.”
“Yeah.”
“We're not going.”
Raka slipped the phone into his pocket.
“Bram knows who the final recipient of the funds is.”
Sinta jerked the wheel to avoid a truck.
“And if he really has been captured?”
Raka watched the city race backward beyond the window. Billboards for Adrian Karsa towered among the buildings, displaying a philanthropist's smile beneath the slogan: Building Arkapura Together.
“If we don't go,” he said, “whoever took him will make sure he never talks.”
The van stopped in front of the old print shop. Raka opened the rear door, but Naya stopped him.
“We're walking into a trap without knowing how many enemies there are, what weapons they have, or whether Bram is still alive.”
Raka looked at her.
“Not without knowing.”
He held up the restaurant receipt.
“They're afraid of this piece of paper. That means they still haven't found what's behind it.”
Naya studied the numbers on the receipt. Suddenly, her eyes narrowed.
“Not transactions,” she said.
“What?”
“The circled numbers. Those three amounts aren't just monetary figures. If they're arranged by time…”
She took Sinta's pen, quickly wrote on the back of the receipt, then shifted the three numbers.
Raka looked at the new sequence that formed.
09-17-03.
Sinta leaned closer. “Coordinates?”
Naya shook her head. “A locker code. At the freight terminal.”
Raka smiled faintly despite the throbbing in his shoulder.
“So we're not going to Warehouse 9 to rescue Bram.”
Naya looked at him. “We're going to retrieve something.”
“And if Bram is there?”
“And if he isn't?”
Raka climbed out of the van. The rain had stopped, but the city was still dripping water from its rooftops.
“Then,” he said, “we find out who turned our heads into walking accounts.”
In the distance, sirens sounded again.
This time, there were more of them.