Dallas slips the brass key into a metal cabinet slot. The lock clicks, but not open, just enough to reveal a hidden drawer in the office wall.

Inside sits a church attachment form, a chapel key, and a routing slip stamped Mercer Holdings. The scratched code on the tag matches the slot exactly.

Murderbone growls low at the doorway as Elena pulls the slip closer. The paper lists a receiving point at the customs annex office, tied to the Liber Signorum Rubrorum by inventory code.

Dallas pockets the key and the chapel tag. The trail sharpens, Mercer is not hiding the book, they are using it to route the real cargo.

Dallas shifts from the wall cabinet to the rest of the office, checking the floor, desk, and file stacks with a slow, practiced sweep.

Under the desk blotter, he finds a second cargo slip folded into a packet of transfer notes. The destination is not a church at all, it is a coded receiving bay tied to the annex office.

Elena leans in, reading fast, then goes still when she spots a pressure-impressed line on the back page. It matches the routing sequence from the Liber Signorum Rubrorum.

Murderbone snaps his attention toward the hallway as the cabinet gives a dull knock from inside, once, then quiet. Dallas opens the top file drawer and finds a sealed manifest bundle wrapped around the brass key's twin tag.

The bundle lists chapel runs, the customs annex office, and a cargo code marked urgent tonight. Dallas has the office records in hand, and the route now points straight into the transfer chain.