The foyer was ornate and empty of people but occupied by the expensive items of a life spent on display. A sweeping staircase inlaid with dark wood lifted to a large landing, where there was a series of portraits that watched Blake’s movement with painted indifference. He kept to the edges, where statues threw long, safe shadows.
“Find cover, guards heading down the next corridor,” Jewell warned. Blake nodded and adjusted his route, slipping into an architectural cove holding a nude statue. He snugged up tight until Zane told him he was clear. He moved along a corridor that smelled of polished leather and old paper. Money. It smelled like money. He’d been in houses of those who flaunted their wealth. Zajac was making a statement to anyone who entered his realm.
“I can’t loop the next camera. It’s going to static in five, four, three, two, one.” Blake hustled across the open space and up the next flight of stairs. A security camera stared at him with a frozen green eye. He paused beneath it, breathing even. Nothing moved but his heartbeat and the sound of Jewell and Zane’srunning commentary about camera status and patrol locations through his comms.
A lamp clicked on down the hall. Footsteps. Blake felt the change in the air, an animal sense that had nothing to do with technology. He flattened himself behind a broad suit of armor, the metal cold against his face, and waited. A guard, His tempo regular, heavy boots setting off tiny tremors in the marble. He carried a flashlight, and by his speed, Blake judged had the arrogance of a man convinced that the area he was patrolling was secure. When the guard rounded the corner and moved up the hall, their eyes met. The guard’s shock at seeing him was the only advantage he had. Using it, Blake moved like a shadow folding in on itself. His hand closed over the man’s mouth, and the other grabbed the guard at the base of his chin with a practiced viciousness. The struggle was momentary and quick. The snap of the man’s neck was the loudest sound, and it was muffled by muscle and skin.
Blake eased the guard down, working quickly as he slid the man into a service closet, draped a hanging row of heavy coats across the body, and then pulled a stack of mop buckets to obscure any outline.
“No blood, no alarm.” Zane’s quiet tone filled his ear. “When he doesn’t check in, others will come in. Move.”
Blake understood the risk of taking the man out, but upstairs, the mansion felt like a different building, intimate and tight. The art gallery decorations gave way to private study doors that closed with soft authority. Blake paused at a library door and listened to the muffled murmur of voices behind it. He didn’t want to risk a run-in with guests or staff. He changed course, moving along the wall where the portraits ended and the private corridor began, scraping his fingers over cool plaster and counting heartbeats in his head.
Close calls built to a cadence. A distant radio squawked as an inattentive guard changed shift. Jewell breathed a single word, and a camera at the far end of the hall panned slightly, just enough to frame a corridor where nothing existed. Blake took that pivot as his cue and moved. He slid through the hall, the camera masking his approach. Zajac’s office door loomed ahead, two flights up an elegantly lit stairwell and around a half landing. Blake climbed without a sound, each step calculated, each muscle used to minimize the noise. A window without the drapes pulled through a slice of moonlight across the corridor, and he flattened against the banister to let a patrol pass on the floor beneath.
The office itself was guarded by an electronic lock and a man who thought he was conducting a last sweep. Blake waited until Jewell’s voice confirmed the electric lock had been deactivated. Access granted. The lock hissed and yielded. The guard on the other side turned as the door eased open, surprise flashing across his face. Blake did not hesitate. He caught the man with a grip that folded the world into two things, pressure and compliance. The chokehold was old school and precise, and he held long enough that the guard would never be a problem again.
Blake carried him inside the anteroom of the office, laid him on a leather couch. Then he took a moment to breathe, to let the adrenaline ebb. Jewell told him all was clear through the comms.
Blake moved to the right side of the anteroom. To the servant’s entrance to Zajac’s office, which held a hidden butler’s pantry where top-shelf liquor waited for the owner’s call. Blake turned the knob slowly, and the slightest sound echoed in his ears. He held the door still for almost a minute before opening it the slightest amount to look through the crack. His mark was working at his desk.
Zajac’s private office was glassed and backlit, but tonight, there was only one light on, a desk lamp, and a chair turned away from the window. Blake had mapped the interior from dry runs of the compound in his mind a thousand times. When his appointment arrived in five minutes, Zajac would intend to hold a sedate court with two of the most powerful men in Hungary. He would not expect a shadow across his shoulders.
Blake walked to one of the marble columns that decorated the office in opulence. He closed the distance with the slight whisper of cloth. His approach was silent. Up close, he smelled Zajac’s cologne, heavy and oppressive. Zajac sat with his back to the glass, a broad shape in a shirt and waistcoat, fingers ticking a pen over a ledger. Blake’s hand slid to the knife at his calf. The blade was thin and perfectly balanced.
He moved. His hand clamped over Zajac’s mouth, and his blade found the soft space beneath the man’s ribs. “You’re done feeding the world drugs and guns. You’ve been convicted by the world, and you’re dead. On a personal note, I’ll find you in hell and make you pay for the video framing my woman.”
One motion, clean and brutal. The blade pushed beneath the ribs where there was no chance of body armor. Zajac made a small sound, not loud enough to carry beyond a few steps. Blake pressed the second motion deeper, slow and decisive, until the man slumped, a weight surrendered to the chair. There were no witnesses. There was only the close, hot taste of metal and the quiet of breath leaving a body.
Blake did not gloat. He did not look at the body. He moved to the desk, thumbed the leather folder from the blotter, and slid papers and a single thin envelope into a breast pocket. Whatever the information revealed was for tomorrow’s worries.
“Incoming. Front gate,” Zane said, kicking Blake into action. With the guards focused on the front gate and the arrival of guests, the household spun into receiving mode, and he madefaster time down the stairs. He dipped into hiding places twice to miss patrolling guards, but his exit was faster than his entrance. He slipped back through the service door and into the night. The generator’s growl was steady and loud. He jogged to the metal door and opened it.
“Power flux coming,” Jewell said.
“Hold there,” Zane told him. The power of the grid came back on, and the generator stopped, only to have the grid go out again. Seventeen seconds of darkness. Jewell was fucking magic. Blake sprinted, all his focus on covering as much ground as he could during the darkness. The culvert lay ninety meters away through a broken fence and a marshy meadow. Blake ran, breathing hard, his feet sure, and the paperwork he grabbed hitched tight to his chest.
A loud shout from the compound behind him gave him a burst of energy as he dove into the old washout. He sprinted to the culvert where the throat of the ancient system swallowed him. The stench registered, but urgency washed the odor past him with barely an acknowledgement. Stagnant water slapped at his boots until the ceiling lowered. He went to his hands and knees, crawling through the sludge and holding a fast pace that tore at his knees. The gloves he wore were the only thing that allowed him to go as fast as he did. He focused forward, moving with dedicated intention and leaning on the strength of a trained body to keep him going.
“They’re searching the grounds,” Zane’s told him. “Not your way, yet.”
“They found Zajac and the two guards,” Jewell informed him. “Police have been notified. Helicopters are being dispatched.”
Fuck. Helicopters. He needed to get the hell out of there, quickly, before the helicopters spotted his exit vehicle. Far too long later, although it was only minutes, the tunnel spat him out onto the riverbank. No skiff waited. That had never been part ofthe plan. His extraction was a route down the river. He pulled out a plastic bag from his kit, put the documents into it, loaded it into his kit, zipped it, and put it on his back. He pulled himself up, wrapped the folder in plastic scrap, and ran with the river at his shoulder, using shallow fords and reed beds to break any line of sight. He waded out into the cold water and started to swim downstream.
Zane’s voice crackled in his ear. “You’re out. No helicopters in your area. One has been dispatched to the compound. ”
“Affirm,” Blake said.
He did not look back, instead staying in the cold water until he approached the cache where he’d placed his vehicle and a false identity waited.
CHAPTER 20
Elise sat with her back against the cold stone of the hearth and watched the lake breathe in the dark. The cottage had fallen into darkness with the lamps out. The windows were black mirrors, and every small sound seemed too loud. Rook lounged in the armchair, a silhouette that should have been reassuring yet somehow wasn’t. Which wasn’t fair. But he wasn’t Blake. She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them because the waiting made her limbs feel cold.
She turned her head and asked, quiet enough that her voice didn’t seem like noise, "Are you worried, Rook?" The question landed in the room and waited. It felt both childish and necessary for her sanity. Even giving voice to the concern made the waiting feel less like a trap and more like something they were sharing.
Rook did not look startled. He shifted, "No," he said. "I’m not worried in the slightest. Blake is the best at what he does. And no, I’m not going to tell you what he’s doing. He should be here shortly."
