If it was random addicts looking for something to fence, the calculation changed. Dead junkies brought different problems—police investigations, social workers, the kind of attention that could expose the unit's existence. Better to break bones, create enough fear that they'd never come back, never talk about what they'd found.
But the movement on the cameras suggested something else. Too deliberate for addicts, too careful for standard thieves. Someone with skill but not professional training. Someone desperate enough to break into a unit that screamed danger from every angle.
The industrial district at 1 AM looked like the set of every crime movie ever filmed—empty streets, pools of sodium light, shadows that could hide anything. I parked three blocks from the storage facility, in the blind spot between two dead traffic cameras I'd mapped years ago.
The walk gave me time to observe. No Morozov vehicles yet, but they'd be coming. The air tasted like rain and rust, Brooklyn's particular perfume of decay and damp. My breath clouded in the cold, little ghosts that disappeared as fast as they formed.
I approached the storage facility from the east, where a gap in the fence had been "repaired" with wire I could cut in seconds. But I didn't need to. The access keypad at the side entrance accepted the maintenance code I'd acquired through careful persuasion of a former employee. The door opened silently, recently oiled hinges suggesting someone else had been maintaining this entry point.
Time to meet my uninvited guest.
Chapter 3
Eva
Thedreamalwaysstartedthe same way.
I was eight again, curled on the bottom bunk in the Hendersons' foster home, the thin mattress offering no protection from the springs that dug into my hip. Above me, Keisha snored softly. Across the room, the twins—Madison and Morgan—slept in their matching pink pajamas that Mrs. Henderson bought them because real daughters deserved nice things.
But there was another sound now. Heavier. Wet.
Mr. Henderson filled the doorway like he always did in this dream, his bulk blocking the hallway light. Just standing there. Watching. The football jersey he wore to bed stretched across his gut, and I could smell him even from across the room—beer and sweat and something sour that made my stomach clench.
"Just checking on my girls," he'd whisper, but his eyes would stay on me. The foster kid. The one nobody would believe.
In the dream, I couldn't move. Couldn't scream. Could only lie there with my eyes squeezed shut, praying he'd go away, knowing he wouldn't. His breathing got louder, closer. The floorboard by my bed creaked under his weight. A hand reached out—
I jerked awake gasping, my body already moving before my brain caught up. Fight or flight, and I'd learned long ago that flight just meant they caught you tired.
But I wasn't staring at water-stained ceiling tiles. Wasn't under a bridge or in a shelter or any of the other places I'd learned to sleep with one eye open. I was in the storage unit.
And I was staring into the barrel of a gun.
The man holding it made Mr. Henderson look small. Six-four at least, shoulders wide enough to block the fluorescent light bleeding in from the corridor. Everything about him was black—jacket, henley, tactical pants, even his mood. Like someone had taken all the darkness in Brooklyn and shaped it into human form.
His face belonged on a medieval battlefield. Sharp Slavic cheekbones, jaw that could cut glass, dark hair cropped military-short. But his eyes—Jesus, his eyes were dead. Not cold, not angry, just empty like whatever makes people human got scooped out and replaced with machinery. I'd seen a lot of dangerous men in my twenty-two years, but this one made my survival instincts scream in frequencies only dogs could hear.
The gauze wrapping his knuckles was spotted with blood. Fresh blood. Not his—I knew that instinctively. This was a man who made other people bleed.
The storage unit's concrete walls pressed in, ten by twenty feet of nowhere to run. The puppy whimpered from his newspaper nest in the corner, probably sensing death the way animals do.
One of Chenkov's men. Had to be. They'd found me faster than I'd thought possible, tracked me to this random storageunit in industrial Brooklyn like bloodhounds. The three hundred dollars I'd grabbed seemed like such a stupid reason to die now. But it wasn't really about the money, was it? It had to be the USB.
The man's head tilted slightly, studying me with the detached interest of a scientist examining a specimen. The gun never wavered. His finger rested alongside the trigger guard—professional, controlled, someone who knew exactly how quickly he could move it to firing position.
"What are you doing in my—"
His voice was deep, accented with Russian thick enough to spread on bread. But I didn't let him finish. Adrenaline detonated in my bloodstream like a bomb, that same chemical cocktail that had kept me alive through twelve foster homes and four years on the streets.
I launched myself at him with a scream that came from somewhere primal, somewhere that learned to fight before it learned to speak. Fuck the gun. Fuck the size difference. Fuck everything except the blind need to survive.
My nails found his forearm first, raking four parallel lines through expensive henley fabric and into flesh beneath. Blood welled immediately—his blood this time, hot against my fingers. I went for his eyes next, teeth bared, ready to bite and tear and destroy anything I could reach.
He moved with economic efficiency, no wasted motion, no anger. One massive hand caught both my wrists mid-swing, his grip iron but not cruel. He spun me like I weighed nothing, like I was made of air and desperate rage. Before I could process the movement, my back slammed against his chest, my arms crossed over my own body, wrists still trapped in his single-handed grip.
A straitjacket made of my own limbs.
I thrashed like something wild, feet kicking at his shins, head snapping back trying to break his nose. But he'd positioned himself perfectly—every angle of leverage neutralized, every possible strike telegraphed and countered before I could complete it. His other arm came around my waist, locking me in place without restricting my breathing.
