The Sigma Asset 🏳️‍🌈 (bxb)║AMBYS WINNER 2022

60: The Examination

Will received a suspended sentence on compassionate grounds. When Charlotte told me the news, I promised myself that I'd say a prayer in the Donghwa Temple when I got home, in thanks for keeping Will outta jail. I had no idea how he'd have survived away from the sound of the ocean, let alone struggle through prison life.

I stopped asking myself where Noah was. It didn't matter. Sofi had arrested Ollie, two Sigma finance minions, Dani Fuentes, Ana Maria Santiago, and Lars Eriksen. Cal was dead. Arturo Torrente, a high-level operative from el Nube, was dead. With this much heat, Noah wouldn't resurface for weeks.

Ruby didn't challenge my dream-time recollection of Noah idly swinging Seven's keys. She put it down on my new witness statement as recall after the fact, and said it was common in witnesses who had undergone trauma. The memory, paltry eye-witness evidence that it was, had resurfaced too late to help Will anyways.

None of the evidence Sofi had amassed was enough to target Noah. Lars Eriksen had vowed to give information to the police, but he'd known too little about Sigma's, and Noah's, activities to be of any real use. Ana Maria Santiago had denied ever meeting Noah in person. Rafa's testimony about his deal with Noah had never arrived. And Will's experience of Noah, though...intense...had been fleeting.

If only I'd not been baked and sweating in Suite 306 while Rafa had been busy planting evidence in the printroom, and Noah had been busy setting the building on fire. Maybe I could have saved Raheem weeks earlier.

I guessed that Noah told Rafa to plant the files on Seven's computers mere moments before the building went up in smoke, ensuring that Rafa would be prime suspect. When Noah had instructed Will to take me as compensation, had he wanted Will in the building as a back-up arson suspect? I figured that nobody would ever know Noah's motives, because nobody would ever find him.

Thankfully Will had arrived at Seven for his midnight booking over half an hour late, or we'd have been in Suite 306 plotting my escape only to be dragged onto the sidewalk by Sigma Security.

Aching for home, and tired of running in ever-decreasing circles around Sigma, I got Nuna to buy me a flight to Seoul, frustration and guilt for Raheem plaguing my waking moments.

I had three days left to say my goodbyes, the first to Jules. When I found her, she was investigating an old gym near the seawall to replace her beloved Pier Studio, which had been reduced by the earthquake to lumps of driftwood circling on the North Pacific Gyre.

Jules looked pale and world-weary; she'd been in pretty good shape in the days immediately after she'd escaped from Lars Eriksen, but the past few weeks seemed to have gotten to her.

"I'm gonna miss you, Zeph." She dragged me into a tight hug while the real estate guy milled around us. "Things have been kinda tough around here."

"I'm sorry I've not been around."

"When can you come say goodbye to my folks?" Jules stalked around the gym, opening closets and pulling blinds. "They're really missing you."

I hadn't seen Gloria and Clive for weeks. I'd just disappeared out of their lives.

"Friday afternoon? I gotta have dinner with Charlotte's family Friday night. Then she's gonna drive me to the airport at like three a.m. Saturday."

"You're staying with Charlotte?" Jules's eyebrows rose. "She didn't tell us."

"She's being extra careful with the whole witness protection thing. I never go anywhere. Charlotte and Guillermo aren't supposed to be my guarantors because they're related to Will."

The real estate dude ushered us out of the gym and left us on the steps in the baking heat. As soon as his suit-clad figure disappeared along the sidewalk, I leaned into Jules to do what I'd come for: to confess.