I rewind.
“There.” She points at the timestamp. “14:19. The driver makes a phone call from the sedan. Now jump to when our SUV arrives.”
I do.
“14:36,” she notes. “Seventeen minutes between that call and us pulling up. But look—the two shooters enter the building at 14:23. That’s only four minutes after the call.”
“So, the call wasn’t to alert them we were coming. They were already in position.”
“Exactly. Which means someone told them earlier. Someone who knew our schedule before we left the safehouse.” Sasha takes the laptop from me, her fingers grazing my knuckles. I don’t miss the way she lets the contact linger a beat too long. “Let me see the full footage.”
She scrubs through the timeline, stops, rewinds, and then stops again.
“There.” She points at a man entering the building at 13:22. “Dark jacket. Duffel bag. Watch his eyes. He’s scanning windows and rooftops.”
I lean closer. Her scent hits me; something clean and soft that has no business being this distracting. I shake my head and take a closer look.
She’s right. The man’s body language screams training. “How did I miss that?”
“You were looking for them arriving together. They came separately to avoid suspicion.” She keeps scrubbing. “Here’s the second one. 13:46. Same jacket, same bag, same behavior.”
“So, they were in position almost an hour before we arrived. Someone gave them advance notice.”
“Pyotr and Yuri didn’t know where we were headed until we told them, just before we left. It couldn’t have been them. And I’m telling you, it wasn’t Boris.”
“You’re good at this.”
“My brothers made sure of it. Dmitri started teaching me threat assessment when I was twelve. Alexei taught me to spot surveillance when I was fourteen.” She hands the laptop back. “They said if I was going to be a Kozlov, I needed to know how to stay alive.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
“It is.” She picks up her coffee. “Looking at every stranger as a potential threat. Analyzing every conversation for hidden meanings. Never feeling completely safe anywhere.” She glances at me. “Do you ever feel that way? Like you can’t turn it off?”
“Every day.”
“Is that from the military?”
“Mostly.” I take a drink of coffee. “There was a mission that went wrong a few years ago. People died who shouldn’t have. I couldn’t prevent it.”
“What happened?”
“Bad intelligence. Wrong location. By the time we realized it, it was too late.” I stare at the laptop screen. “I left after that. Couldn’t trust my judgment anymore.”
Sasha doesn’t push for details. She just sits there with her shoulder pressed against mine. “My brothers blame themselves for things they couldn’t control, too. It’s exhausting watching them carry that weight.”
“You carry it, too. I can see it.”
“Maybe. But at least I know I’m not alone in it.” She sets down her coffee. “That’s the difference between London and here. In London, I was safe but alone. Here, I’m never safe, but I’m not alone.”
“Which do you prefer?”
“I’m still figuring that out.”
We work through the rest of the footage. She catches details I missed—a car that circles the block twice, a man who appears on three different cameras within ten minutes, and a woman who watches the building for too long before moving on.
After a while, Sasha’s head drifts to my shoulder. Her breathing slows—soft, even.
I keep the laptop on my knees and stay perfectly still, like I’m holding a loaded weapon that’ll fire if I move.
