And I'd been alone with them ever since.
Morning came slow and gray, the kind of overcast Parisian sky that made everything look washed out and temporary. I showered, shaved, dressed in clean clothes that didn't feel clean enough. My reflection in the mirror looked tired. Older than I felt.
I thought about Mila.
It hadn't been hard to find her. I'd tracked her movements the same way I'd tracked targets—methodically, from a distance, staying in the periphery. She'd walked along the Seine, stopped at a boulangerie, bought something sweet. An éclair, maybe. She'd eaten it slowly, licking chocolate from her thumb, completely unaware that I was watching from across the street.
I'd wanted to go to her. Wanted to cross that distance, sit beside her, ask if she'd meant what she said about running into me by accident.
But I didn't.
Because I was no good for her.
I was damaged goods. A man hiding. A man running. And whatever spark had passed between us—it didn't matter. It couldn't matter.
She deserved better than someone like me.
So, I'd stayed where I was, watched her finish her pastry, watched her walk away. And then I'd gone back to my apartment and stared at the address Micah had given me until the ink blurred.
I made five passes near the address over the next three hours.
Not close enough to draw attention. Just close enough to get a feel for the place. The neighborhood was nicer than mine—clean streets, well-maintained buildings, the kind of area where money lived quietly and didn't apologize for it.
The building itself looked ordinary. Cream-colored stone, tall windows, a door that could have belonged to any upscale residence in Paris. Nothing about it screamed safe house or covert operation.
Which, of course, made it perfect.
On the sixth pass, I stopped pretending I wasn't going to do this.
I walked up to the door and pressed the call button.
A male voice answered in French, clipped and professional.
For a second, I thought I'd gotten the address wrong. That this was all some stupid prank. That Micah had sent me to some random apartment just to see if I'd actually follow through.
But then I remembered his face. The seriousness in his tone.
I cleared my throat and said the three words.
"I request sanctuary."
There was a pause. Then a just-perceptible beep, like my voice had unlocked something.
The male voice came back over the intercom, this time in English.
"Straight up the stairs, Mr. Ward."
The door clicked open.
I pushed it in and felt the heft immediately. The damn thing weighed more than some vault doors I'd breached. Solid. Reinforced. But from the outside, it looked absolutely ordinary.
The first thing I noticed when I closed the door behind me was the silence.
Complete. Absolute.
I couldn't hear the street. Couldn't hear traffic or voices or the hum of the city that had been pressing in on me since Iarrived in Paris. It was like stepping into a vacuum, a space carved out of the world and sealed off from it.
My instincts kicked in. I scanned the interior—carpeted stairs, muted lighting, walls that looked like plaster but probably weren't. Everything about the place screamed money and function in equal measure.
