The text from Micah Shine read,MVB hired Koch Group Security Services. 12 guys. They flew private from Teterboro last night. I just found out.
When Blaze had contracted with Rogue Security for the Monaco rescue, some of the guys had talked about Koch Group.
While Rogue was a valid security service offering bodyguards and defensive tactics, Koch Group was mercenaries. Their recruiting brochure offered Russian prison convicts and ex-soldiers too violent for the Russian Army the chance to travel the globe and murder people.
Koch Group’s sales motto wasAnything, Anyone, Anywhere.
The New York airports were a four-hour flight from Cedar Rapids, and they’d left the night before.
Blaze glanced up at the house.
The screen door to the kitchen was ajar.
He was sure he’d pressed it closed, and Sarah would have pulled it shut if he hadn’t.
Blaze ran.
17
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
SARAH
Sarah flipped the knob on the stove, turning the gas off under the eggs, and blotted droplets of water off the berries with a kitchen towel.
Confusion hummed in her head, resisting leaving her home where her mom had braided the rag rugs and polished the furniture, and yet Blaze’s instructions to get in the car superseded all that.
She flipped the eggs onto toast sitting on paper plates and set them on the counter near the door, ready to take.
When they left.
When they abandoned her house and farm.
But Blaze had told her to.
But—this obedience thing was just a game they played, where he told her to do—things—and shedidthem because otherwise, she was too self-conscious and aware that sheshouldn’tbe doing those things.
Even though she wanted to.
Even though shereallyliked doing them.
Leaving her farm wasn’t part of the game.
What was she doing? She shouldn’t abandon her farm because some bad guys mightor might notbe coming.
If anything, she should be preparing todefendit.
Sarah spun on her heel, her other foot already reaching to step toward the gun safe in the living room to retrieve her varmint rifle and her hand plucking her phone from her pocket to call Katie to send Martin over and put out the word that the fight wason,but a strange man stood in her way.
Dark-eyed, dark hair shaved to stubble, knife-edged slashes of cheekbones, and jaw smeared with green and gray greasepaint, taller than she was, and upper lip lifted in a sneer, he said in throaty, accented English, “Mary Varvara Bell want to talk to you.”
The man grabbed her wrist, his fist like a manacle.
Sarah tried to yank away, flopping like a panicking line-caught fish.“No!”
He spun her, dragging her back against his body and slapping his meaty hand over her mouth.
More men stood in her kitchen, glaring out the windows.A lot of men.So many men’s arms and legs wearing green and black stripes crossing each other and ending with guns pointing at the floor or waving at the ceiling, and faces painted in jagged patches,somany men.
