“You just hung up on the only person who can solve your problem.”
“No.” Matteo placed her phone beside the folder.
“I confirmed that you aren’t her.”
Leo exhaled slowly.
The younger gunman muttered something Sophie did not catch.
Matteo looked at him.
Whatever he had been about to say died immediately.
“Cut her loose,” Matteo ordered.
Leo hesitated only a fraction before slicing the second zip tie.
Sophie rubbed her wrists.
Red grooves circled both of them.
She stood.
Every instinct told her to walk toward the nearest door and keep walking until every light in Chicago stood between her and this warehouse.
Instead, she reached for the coffee.
Matteo watched her take another drink.
“You’re free to go,” he said.
“No, I’m not.”
Leo frowned.
Matteo’s expression hardened.
“You want to stay?”
“I want to survive leaving.”
Sophie put the cup down.
“You kidnapped me from my apartment in front of anyone who happened to be looking.
Whoever told you I was Chloe knew where I lived.
If this was just bad intelligence, I go home and eventually the police become my biggest problem.”
She nodded toward the folder.
“But if somebody deliberately substituted my address for Chloe’s, then the person who engineered this knows you took the wrong woman.”
Matteo said nothing.
“And if they wanted you to make that mistake,” Sophie continued, “letting me walk out alive doesn’t end it.
It tells them their plan failed.”
Leo’s face changed first.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Sophie saw it and knew she had found the pressure point.
Matteo opened the folder.
Inside were photographs, printed maps, handwritten times, vehicle descriptions, and several clipped pages arranged with the obsessive neatness of a man who trusted paper more than people.
Sophie did not touch anything.
She simply looked.
Matteo noticed.
“What?”
“Your information is too clean.”
Leo gave a short laugh.
“That’s a problem now?”
“It can be.”
Sophie pointed at the top photograph.
It showed Chloe entering an apartment building.
Her building.
The timestamp was several months old.
Another photograph showed a dark-haired woman entering a car.
The angle hid almost everything except the face.
Another showed the same building.
Same entrance.
Same corner.
Different days.
Sophie’s pulse slowed as the pattern formed.
“This isn’t surveillance,” she said.
