Connor floored it.
Tires shrieked. The SUV fishtailed onto the street, engine roaring. Bullets pinged off the rear panel, spiderwebbing the back window. Norah cried out and ducked, clutching the seatbelt across her chest.
“Everyone breathing?” Connor demanded.
“Barely,” Landon muttered, looking back. “Boss—you gotta see this.”
Marshall twisted.
The alley was receding, swallowed in fog that still poured from the dock like smoke from a battlefield.
And in that fog—centered under the red spinning beacons—stood Ksenia Sidarov.
Perfectly poised. Unconcerned.
Her ballgown pooled around her feet like ink. Her hair immaculate. Her hands folded lightly in front of her. Mercenaries moved around her with professional urgency, but she didn’t move at all.
She watched them flee.
Calm. Calculating.
And faintly, unmistakably, amused.
Marshall faced forward again, jaw clenched so hard it hurt.
CHAPTER 29
MARSHALL
Connor drovelike the roads personally offended him, the SUV eating up the dark stretch of highway outside Alexandria. Streetlamps flashed across the windshield in long, pale stripes. Every time one passed, Marshall caught a brief reflection of Norah’s face in the glass—tired, shaken, pale beneath the leftover grime and smoke.
He kept her hand wrapped in his, anchored there on the bench seat between them. He didn’t realize he was gripping too hard until she gave a faint squeeze back. Not pulling away—just reminding him she was still connected.
Landon sat in front of them, quiet, watchful. Even he wasn’t cracking jokes, which told Marshall more than anything how close that kill box had come.
Marshall’s pulse refused to settle. His mind still ran in tactical patterns of mirrors, blind spots, rate of closure on the vehicle behind them. He checked Connor’s route on the console twice, then again, even though nothing had changed.
The danger was behind them. He knew that. His body didn’t.
Black Tower Security’s Alexandria facility appeared over a low rise like a matte-black monolith, all clean angles and perimeter lighting. The BTS outposts always looked likeinnocuous government buildings from the outside—by design—but Marshall could still see the security bones underneath. Cameras. Motion sensors. Kill-switch barriers.
Home turf.
Connor keyed through the gate. The barrier rose. Marshall’s muscles didn’t unclench until the first set of steel shutters closed behind them and the second gate rolled shut.
Only then did he breathe.
Inside, the cool air smelled faintly like antiseptic and cedar—the safehouse perfume Black Tower pumped into their residential wing. Familiar. Controlled. Secure.
Norah exhaled a trembling breath the moment the door locked behind them.
“Medical bay first,” Landon said, gesturing down the corridor.
Ordinarily Marshall would have waved him off. He patched his own bruises. But tonight wasn’t ordinary, and his grip on Norah’s hand hadn’t loosened since they left the loading dock. So he nodded, steering her gently forward.
They passed the operations hub, where a few analysts worked the late shift. Stephen stood among them, half-turned toward a monitor. His head jerked up when he saw Marshall and Norah.
For a beat, the whole room seemed to still.
