Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Milkshake, milkshake, milkshake—
I shut down the memory before it can fully surface. This is what compartmentalization is all about. The first thing they teach you at the agency, and the last thing that actually saves your life. You take whatever’s bleeding inside you and wrap a bandage over it and put it in a box and you shove that box so far down it might as well be in another universe.
Nate thinks I’m at a work dinner tonight. Told him I have some magazine contacts, potential sources for follow-up pieces, maybe even future story ideas. A lie so mundane it practically tells itself.
The truth is that I haven’t seen him since I walked out of his penthouse four nights ago with his apologies still ringing in my ears and red marks blooming on my skin, wondering if that would be the last time I’d see him.
I’m still not sure.
My phone buzzes.
Intel confirmed. Meeting tonight, 22:00. Red Hook warehouse, Pier 11. Kozlov will be there.
It’s Bayo. Finally.
I’ve been waiting for this since our last briefing, when I told him everything Vanguard shared at the Statue of Liberty. The government contracts, the so-called peacekeeping missions, and his growing certainty that Global Dynamix is turning him into something he doesn’t want to be.
What I didn’t tell Bayo was the whole truth of what happened that night, that America’s golden-boy superhero wrapped his hand around my throat and didn’t let go until I drove my fingers into his windpipe in self-defense.
Some intel you keep for yourself.
I text back: Copy. What’s the approach?
Come to the safe house. We need to gear you up.
I look at myself one more time. The journalist stares back—soft cashmere jumper, artfully messy hair, the kind of woman who attends magazine dinners and asks softball questions and has never killed anyone in her life.
I peel her off like a second skin. Put in my earrings.
Time to go to work.
Kat opens the door before I can knock, her cool eyes doing a quick assessment, checking for threat level, emotional state, and visible injuries.
“You look like shit,” she says when she’s done.
“Cheers, darling. You’re a vision yourself.”
She glares at me and steps aside to let me in. Bayo is at the monitors, brewing something that smells and looks like motor oil but is allegedly coffee. Allegedly.
“There she is. Miss Mia. The woman of the hour.” He looks up from the screens, his face illuminated by the glow. “Ready to get your hands dirty?”
“Been ready for weeks.” I drop into the chair beside him. “What do we have?”
Bayo pulls up a satellite image of the Red Hook waterfront. The warehouse in question is a hulking rectangle of corrugated steel, squatting at the end of a pier that juts into the harbor like a broken finger.
“Kozlov’s using it as a transshipment point,” he says. “Our contacts inside the Bratva confirm he’s meeting with Global Dynamix representatives tonight. Some kind of handoff.”
“Handoff of what?”
“Dunno. That’s what we need you to find out.” He zooms in on the building. “Best guess? Documentation. Records. Something that proves the connection between Kozlov’s trafficking operation and Project Prometheus.”
“What’s the security?” I ask.
“Light exterior presence, it seems. Most of Kozlov’s men will be inside for the meeting.” Bayo switches to a thermal image, bodies glowing orange against the cool blue of the structure. “We count maybe fifteen, but that could change. Kozlov doesn’t like witnesses, so it’ll be his most trusted people.”
“Entry points?”
“Main door here”—he taps the screen—“loading dock on the east side, a hole in the ceiling over here, and there’s a maintenance access on the roof. That’s our best bet. Old ventilation system. Should be a tight squeeze, but you’ve done worse.”
“The Prague embassy,” I say, remembering with a wince. “That was so narrow I had to dislocate my bloody shoulder.”
“Which you did,” Kat says. “And then complained about it for six months.”
“Yeah, well it still makes a funny sound when it rains.”
Bayo ignores us both. “I’ll be running comms from here. Kat will be positioned two blocks out in the extraction vehicle. If things go sideways—”
“They won’t.”
“If they go sideways,” he repeats, “you call for extraction and we come get you. Response time is approximately four minutes.”
Four minutes. In a gunfight, that’s a lifetime.
“I’ll be fine.” I stand, moving toward the weapons rack. “Let’s get me dressed.”
Forty minutes later, I’m crouched on a rooftop three buildings away from the warehouse, watching the pier through a compact monocular.
The November wind cuts through my tactical blacks like they’re nothing. I’m wearing my work uniform tonight, lightweight armor under a fitted jacket, both knives strapped to my thighs, suppressed Glock in a drop holster, and enough tech sewn into my clothes to make Q Branch weep with envy. The earrings stay in—my connection to Bayo, my lifeline if everything goes to hell.