The cold alleyway beside the 12th Precinct smelled of damp brick and old rain.
Eva stared at the folded piece of paper Ethan held out to her. It was a printed server log, identical in format to the one Adrian Vance had used to destroy her world an hour ago.
But before her fingers could even brush the paper, a pair of headlights blinded them both.
Tires screeched. A silver Volvo aggressively mounted the curb, blocking the alley's exit.
The driver's door flew open. Mia was out of the car before it was even fully in park.
"Step away from her," Mia demanded, her voice slicing through the cold air.
She didn't look like a gallery assistant anymore. She looked like someone ready to commit a felony. Her hand was buried deep in her oversized coat pocket, aggressively gripping something unseen.
Ethan slowly lowered the paper. He didn't look threatened, just profoundly exhausted.
"Relax, Mia," Ethan drawled, taking a slow drag from a fresh cigarette. "I'm not the hit squad. I'm the IT department."
"You're a Carter," Mia spat, stepping physically between Ethan and Eva. "Which means you lie for a living. I saw Liam walk out of that precinct with the ice queen. He sold Eva out to save his own trust fund. Why should we believe a word you say?"
"Because Liam is currently walking into a trap," Ethan countered, his voice losing its usual cynical edge. "And he's too damn stubborn to let anyone help him. Especially her."
He pointed the glowing tip of his cigarette at Eva.
"Mia, wait," Eva finally spoke.
Her voice wasn't loud, but it carried a new, brittle weight. The panic from the morning was gone, burned away by the sheer arrogance of Chloe Sterling's 'reality.'
Eva stepped around Mia. She didn't look at Ethan as a friend anymore. She looked at him as a source.
"Show me," Eva said.
Ethan handed her the paper.
"We can't do this here," Mia argued, nervously scanning the street. "If the police, or Chloe's goons—"
"Get in the car," Eva ordered.
It wasn't a request.
Ten minutes later, they were sitting in the back booth of a 24-hour diner miles away from the precinct. The neon sign buzzed ominously outside the window.
The table was sticky. The coffee was black and tasted like burnt copper.
Eva spread Ethan's printout flat on the table.
"Adrian Vance showed me a log," Eva stated, her curator's brain automatically organizing the data points. "It proved Liam used his Omega clearance at 3:45 AM to wipe the harbor cameras."
"He did," Ethan confirmed, taking a sip of the terrible coffee without flinching.
"Then what are you trying to sell us?" Mia crossed her arms, glaring at him across the booth. "That he did it accidentally? That his finger slipped on the 'delete all evidence' button?"
"No." Ethan leaned forward, tapping a line of code buried deep in the printout. "I'm telling you that Liam wasn't the first one in the system."
Ethan pulled out a sleek, unauthorized tablet from his hoodie and woke the screen.
"I went digging after Liam's little standoff in his office," Ethan explained. "Liam wiped the visual feed. But he didn't check the city's automated traffic grid. He's a strategist, not a coder. I am."
He turned the tablet to face Eva.
"The police timeline says your father's car entered Pier 4 at 3:52 AM," Ethan said. "The visual evidence supports this. A car matching his plates crosses the toll booth camera."
"Right," Eva nodded. "And the man limping away at 4:03 AM."
"Exactly. It's a perfect timeline," Ethan smirked, though his eyes were completely cold. "Too perfect."
He hit a button on the tablet. A map of the city lit up with green and red dots.
"This is the raw data from the Department of Transportation's automated transponder system. It tracks the micro-chips in every modern license plate."
Ethan zoomed in on a specific intersection.
"At 3:55 AM, three minutes after your father's car supposedly entered the pier..."
He tapped the screen. A single, blinking red dot appeared.
"...Arthur Bennett's license plate pinged at the intersection of 4th and Elm."
Silence descended on the booth. Even the background hum of the diner seemed to fade away.
Mia stared at the screen, her brow furrowed. "That... that doesn't make sense. 4th and Elm is two miles away from the docklands."
"Precisely," Ethan said, leaning back.
"It's physically impossible," Mia continued, looking at Eva for confirmation. "A car can't be parked at the pier with a dead body inside, and simultaneously be driving through an intersection two miles away."
Eva stared at the blinking red dot.
Her mind raced back to her apartment. To Adrian Vance sitting at her kitchen island, radiating absolute certainty.
Intuition is a coping mechanism. Facts don't lie.
Adrian had weaponized logic against her. But right now, Ethan was proving that the logic itself was a forgery.
"They cloned the plate," Eva whispered.
The realization hit her like a physical blow.
"Or," Ethan corrected softly, "they hacked the transponder network to create a ghost ping. A digital decoy."
Mia looked between them, the reality of the situation finally overriding her hatred for the Carters.
"But why?" Mia asked. "If they already had the visual footage at the pier, why create a fake ping across town?"
"Because they made a mistake," Eva said.
Her voice was sharp. The victim was entirely gone now. The curator was back, dissecting the brushstrokes of a fake masterpiece.
Eva looked at Ethan, her eyes burning with a dangerous new clarity.
"They needed the car at the pier to frame Liam's father," Eva deduced, the pieces finally clicking together. "But whoever actually drove that car... whoever actually killed my father... they needed a way out of the area without being tracked by the traffic cameras."
Ethan nodded slowly, a dark respect forming in his eyes.
"They manipulated the grid to blind the police to their actual escape route," Ethan confirmed.
Eva looked down at her hands.
Adrian had lied. Chloe was covering up the lie. And Liam... Liam was taking the fall for it, intentionally or not.
She couldn't trust the law. She couldn't trust the corporate machine. And she couldn't even trust the man she loved.
"We are totally blind," Mia whispered, the terror creeping back into her voice. "We don't know who is real and who is the enemy."
"No," Eva said.
She grabbed the printed log and the tablet, sliding them to her side of the table.
"We know one thing for certain," Eva said, looking directly at Ethan. Her gaze was as cold and unyielding as the marble floors of Carter Holdings.
"What?" Ethan asked.
"Whoever created that ghost ping at 4th and Elm at 3:55 AM isn't a ghost." Eva's voice dropped to a lethal whisper. "And we are going to find out exactly where that car went next."