Episode 3 begins with zara attempting to talk her way out of this corner by spinning a lie to DCI Rhys, claiming she only went to Luke’s house because he was spiraling and that she saw nothing but blood in the elevator before dipping. Rhys knows she is lying through her teeth, but without hard evidence, he’s forced to let her walk for now.
A flashback reveals how zara and Luke got entangled in this mess. Both were drowning in resentment, watching the high-level investment teams rake in millions while they worked for crumbs in trade processing. While Zara initially hoped a promotion would save her, Luke was already looking for a way out. During a cocaine break in the office bathroom, Luke confessed that people he met playing Call of Duty offered him £100,000 for his login credentials. They needed two people for verification, and once Zara was passed over for her promotion, her frustration pushed her to agree.
However, Zara wasn’t as naive as Luke. She insisted on meeting the hackers in person. Even though she wasn’t convinced by the meeting because she traced one of them to a storage facility, she eventually agreed since the heist took place.
In the present, Zara turns to YouTube to learn how to lift fingerprints from a vial she found at the scene of Luke’s abduction. But as she leaves the supermarket with her supplies, she is ambushed by Rhy’s partner, Ellie, and a mysterious new MI5 agent, Sam Finch. Ellie immediately catches Zara in her lie, noting that surveillance shows Zara was at Luke’s for 10 minutes, covered her hair, and had her cab drop her off far from the entrance—hardly the behavior of a worried friend.
Despite the red flags, Finch shuts down Ellie’s request for surveillance on Zara, raising major questions about MI5’s true agenda. This suspicion is confirmed when Yoshida, the team’s financial investigator, bypasses official channels to check the bank employees’ offshore accounts, since everyone’s regular bank accounts are squeaky clean. He discovers that the stolen billions were moved to accounts tied to Gould-Simmons, a household-name defense contractor. The transaction was suspiciously loud, with no encryption, suggesting these accounts are used for high-level bribes. Yoshida is certain MI5 knew about this within minutes of the heist.
Something huge is going on as Rhys’s boss suggests he step away from the case, someone is threatening him too. Rhy’s also has skeletons in his closet. We see him paying off some debts he owes, while the man he’s dealing with threatens to sell that debt to dangerous people. Why does everyone in this show owe money? His boss makes it clear that if Rhys doesn’t step back, his debt issue will be made public—a stain that would end his career.
Terrified and desperate, Zara visits a storage unit she previously traced the thieves to, hoping to strike a deal and prove she isn’t a liability like Luke. Instead, she’s chased out and flees to her mother’s house.
After meeting with Rhys, her mom realized why her daughter, who has not visited her in months, visited her the other day. She has found the cold wallet and refuses to release it to Zara, who wants to get out of the country, unless she gives her £1m of the £5m. Zara refuses, knowing her mother’s lavish spending would lead the cops straight to them, and storms out into the street.
However, when she gets to her flat, she is chased down the streets by unknown men but fortunately Rhys comes to her rescue, revealing the people chasing her are not the thieves but MI5.
Why Does The MI5 Want Zara?
According to Rhys, MI5 wanted to grab Zara and torture her for everything she knows, but because Sam Finch shut down official surveillance, Rhys had to go rogue to keep eyes on her himself which was why he was able to save her.
Zara finally confesses her role in the heist, though she maintains she was misled into thinking it was a simple bank hack. Rhys suggests they work together to find the thieves without MI5 being involved. Once the thieves are caught, MI5 backs off her and the thieves chasing her would be in custody. But there’s still a risk of Zara going to jail. Rhys mentions that she might get immunity for helping out, but it’s not a secure deal since everything would be under the table, because any official route means MI5 would find out.
It’s a no-win situation where she has to choose between running for the rest of her life or trusting a cop with his own set of problems. She agrees, and Rhys stashes her in a secluded hotel, warning her to use only cash to stay off the grid. The banter between the two suggests a growing chemistry. Rhys even pokes fun at her “YouTube detective” skills after she hands him the fingerprint she lifted from the vial. He jokes that he hopes she didn’t “like and subscribe” to the tutorial, because she could have just taken a picture of the fingerprint with her phone.
However, he needs her to go back to work. The £4 billion sitting in the account was actually liquidated pension funds, a process that happens annually but requires a sign-off from the investment committee. Rhys is certain someone on that committee is the “true” inside man.
There’s fire on the mountain for the thieves. When Zara visited the storage unit earlier, she purposely showed the fingerprint vial to the security camera. This has Morgan, the thief whose prints are on the bottle, spiraling with paranoia. They try to rough-handle Luke, who is seen alive, to tell them if Zara is onto them, but he doesn’t know anything. Despite the team’s reassurance that everything will be fine, Morgan starts to question why they are just taking their employer’s word for it. He suggests their employer might just be keeping them together to “neutralize” them once the job is done.
Luke, seeing the fracture, takes this opportunity to sow even more discord. He points out to Morgan that while he (Luke) has already been paid, the rest of the team is still working on empty promises of a big payout. Not gonna lie, I didn’t know he had it in him. The seed is planted, but we’ll see if it sprouts.
Despite Rhys’s boss telling him to keep Sir Toby Gould’s involvement—the owner of Gould Simmons—under wraps, as he could cost them their jobs, Rhys and Yoshida already tipped off the press once the reporter calls for a comment. They visit Sir Toby Gould, who is disrespectful and condescending as hell.
The money was moved ten minutes after it got to Gould’s account, and Gould won’t release the account statements, hiding behind national security. The cops already know he uses the accounts to pay bribes, which is why he won’t let them look through them. When Yoshida points this out, it strikes a nerve in Sir Toby, who rains insults on him.
Yoshida claps back by listing his credentials, as Toby assumes he’s just a lowly accountant. From Yoshida’s rant, you can deduce the man is pretty loaded. He lets the billionaire know his kids go to the same elite school as Gould’s—except his kids got in on merit while Gould’s had to have their way paid. Gould gets angry and kicks them out, but his assistant, sensing a PR disaster that could plummet their stocks and make them lose contracts, eventually agrees to hand over the statements but claims the thieves also stole £147 million from Gould’s own account. It’s unclear if this is true or just a way to paint themselves as victims too.
Zara fakes losing her mind at home to return to work, even though she requested leave, and uses the trauma of what happened to get a personal office. She also uses the trauma to get access to a colleague’s laptop to retrieve the risk assessment and figure out who signed off on the investments being liquidated. She realizes all the committee members signed off as a unit, but the issue is actually the risk assessment presented. It’s incorrect, and the only two members that should have flagged this before presenting it to the committee are Milo and Kate—with Kate being the primary suspect because she is known for her meticulous attention to detail.
After Rhys gets his friend at the lab to help trace the fingerprint under the table, he takes Zara to eat at a secluded place where he plays poker. We learn Rhys has a gambling addiction and tried to get a bank loan to pay off his £100k debt but was shut down. When he mentions talking to Zara’s narcissistic mother, Zara feels pitied and storms out.
The silent treatment that follows turns out to be a fatal mistake. While Zara is eating lunch the next day, she is ambushed by MI5 and forced into a vehicle. Because they aren’t speaking, Rhys won’t even realize she’s been abducted, he’ll just think she’s still giving him the cold shoulder.
