Episode 5 begins with MI5 pitching Zara.
They want her to work with them, majorly because they don’t actually know where the pension heist investigation might lead. While the cops don’t care and would hunt it down wherever it leads, MI5 can redirect the investigation if it starts barking up trees it shouldn’t.
Zara wants a get-out-of-jail-free card and to keep her £5 million, but MI5 can’t do that. The best they can offer is a new identity. She reveals she’s already working on a higher-up at the bank who was likely involved in the heist, and she’s given 24 hours to find concrete evidence and give MI5 a call.
MI5 might not be wrong in trying to spearhead the investigation, because the thieves seem to be on a crusade. The stolen money turns up in a shady family trust set up by the chancellor, and this information is leaked to the press. It’s starting to look like the heist is being used to expose powerful people, or at least strip them of money they can’t publicly defend, since admitting those accounts exist would raise worse questions.
MI5 also reveals Rhys’s gambling addiction to Zara, suggesting Rhys was playing her to get her money. Zara confronts him, but Rhys manages to convince her that his job is the only thing keeping him sane because without it, he spirals right back to the poker table.
After a moment of vulnerability, the two end up sleeping together.
The next morning, they receive a match for the fingerprint: Morgan. While Rhys chases down Morgan, Zara heads back to work and runs risk simulations to trace the liquidation of the £4 billion. She gets caught by a colleague who points out that her simulations are slowing the server and people have complained. When Zara asks how he knew it was her, he explains that every simulation is logged by name.
When Zara checks the logs from the day the £4 billion liquidation risk was simulated, she discovers it was actually Milo who gave the committee the wrong risk assessment to sign off on. She confronts him immediately, and though he initially fakes ignorance, he cracks when Zara threatens to go to the cops. He admits he was recruited first, then Luke. Together, they later pulled Zara in.
Milo was given a number to call in case of emergency by the thieves.
They head to Milo’s house to retrieve the number, and Zara realizes he has such a nice apartment, which makes her wonder why someone already rich would get involved in something like this. He says he needs to pay off his mortgage, and that he and Luke knew the thieves were coming in gun-blazing, which makes Zara question why they really needed her.
Luke had lied that it was to verify information, but they actually wanted to make Zara the fall woman. According to Milo, Zara was the mess of the office, and after the thieves studied every employee’s backstory, they decided Zara was the perfect candidate to frame for a heist followed by a “suicide.” But since Luke got all jittery, he is now the fall guy. Luke is such a horrible guy.
To make matters worse, Milo was offered £20 million, while they offered Zara £100k. God knows how much they offered Luke, that he lied that it was £100k too. Realizing her life is not as she perceived it, and that the front she was putting on was seen through by people, she decides to give the number to MI5 in exchange for a new identity and implores MI5 to kill everyone involved, including Luke.
After receiving her details, she heads to her mom’s place and agrees to give her the money, only for them to check the cold wallet and find it’s zero. Her mom tried to hack it and steal the money for herself, triggering the security protocol that wiped it clean. Zara has a full-blown meltdown, screaming at her mother for her greed. But as she walks out of the house, the facade drops and we see her smiling. She had switched the cold wallet with a dummy; her real £5 million is perfectly safe.
Rhys’s investigation into Morgan leads him to Morgan’s daughter. Morgan called her the night Luke was abducted, and they ping the number to a barn, only MI5 already got there thanks to the phone number Zara gave them. The thieves are long gone.
Morgan had taken Luke’s offer to go after Zara and steal her £5 million in exchange for helping him escape. But the moment Luke was free, he tried to ditch Morgan, proving the deal was just a means to get out of the locked room. Morgan caught on, locked Luke in his car, and drove off. Once the rest of the crew realized Morgan had taken Luke for himself, they abandoned the barn.
Rhys is suspended, which I don’t get, just because his lead didn’t pan out? Or maybe because his boss already told him to stand down. Anyway, he heads home to find Zara waiting, and he is really mad. Zara offers to pay off his debt before she leaves the country, but Rhys is too hurt by her betrayal to accept.
Zara returns to her apartment to pack, which is objectively insane considering every dangerous player in London is hunting her and she has £5 million that could buy her a new life anywhere else. Inside the apartment, waiting in the shadows, is Morgan.
