Around sunrise, exhaustion finally drags me under on the small couch. Not real sleep—just my body surrendering despite the adrenaline still fizzing through my veins like electricity.
The explosion rips me back to consciousness.
The blast wave hits first—raw physical force that punches through the windows and rattles my teeth, drives the air from my lungs so violently I can't even scream. It’s not our building, but it’s close. The sound follows, massive and rolling, the kind of concussion that inverts the world and leaves ears ringing in frequencies that shouldn't exist. Glass trembles in frames. Dishes clatter in kitchen cabinets. The couch shudders beneath me like something alive trying to throw me off.
Car alarms shriek through the neighborhood in cascading waves. Dogs erupt into frantic barking. Somewhere close, a child's scream cuts through everything else.
I'm on my feet before conscious thought catches up, heart trying to hammer through my ribs, hands reaching for weapons I don't have. The smell filters through next—smoke and chemicals sharp enough to taste, acrid and wrong, coating the back of my throat.
Close. The explosion came dangerously close.
Remy's already moving, weapon up, crossing to the window with the fluid economy of someone who's done this too many times to count. Luc emerges from the bedroom fully armed, scanning for immediate threats.
"Two blocks south." Remy's voice comes flat, cold, stripped of everything except tactical assessment. "Industrial building. Shaped charge, directional blast pattern, minimal collateral damage radius."
"How can you possibly know that?" My heart's still racing, hands trembling as I push upright.
"Because I know his work." Something goes dead in Remy's expression—not anger, something colder. "Lazarev. This is how he operates. Flush the prey, force the move, track the extraction route."
Luc's already at his laptop pulling security feeds. "Warehouse burning. No secondaries yet. Emergency services responding."
"Won't be any secondaries." Remy doesn't move from the window. "He's not destroying infrastructure. He's flushing us into the open so he can track which direction we run."
The tactical reality settles over me like ice water. "He knows we're here?"
"Close enough to bracket our position. The explosion's designed to spook without killing—at least not yet." Remy turns from the window, and the expression he wears makes my stomach drop. "Hunter's tactic. Flush the target, watch where they bolt, close the trap when they're exposed and panicked."
"So what do we do?"
"We don't run." He crosses to the table where tactical maps are spread, and I watch his mind work through the problem like he's dismantling a bomb. "Lazarev's using the same playbook from Yemen because it worked there. He'll expect standard extraction protocols. We violate every expectation. We stage a panicked evacuation, make it look like the flush worked, then rig this location and wait for him to investigate."
Luc glances up from the laptop. "You want to use this apartment as bait?"
"Too obvious for the primary trap." Remy's already calculating, fingers tracing routes on the map. "We stage evidence of hasty departure—clothes scattered, equipment abandoned, all the markers of people running scared. I rig shaped charges, position remote triggers, then wait nearby.When Lazarev comes to verify we're gone and search for extraction clues, I end this."
The words hit me like another blast wave. "You're using yourself as bait."
"I'm finishing what should have ended in Yemen." No apology in his voice, no room for negotiation. Just cold fact. "The Iron Choir will eventually cut their losses and reallocate resources. But Lazarev's vendetta is personal. He'll burn every asset he controls hunting me until one of us is dead. I'm choosing which one."
Luc leans forward, studying the tactical layout. "The Yemen precedent gives us operational advantage. You know his pattern, his methodology. You can predict his next move."
"Exactly." Remy's finger traces a line on the map. "Flush and investigate. He won't delegate verification to contractors—his obsession won't allow it. He needs to personally confirm we evacuated, needs to search for extraction route indicators. When he enters the kill zone, I detonate."
"How can you be certain he'll come himself?"
"Because Lazarev's obsessed with settling scores, obsessed with revenge for Yemen. He won't trust contractors to verify something this important." Remy meets my eyes, and what I see there is absolute certainty. "He'll investigate personally. And when he does, I'll be waiting."
Luc nods slowly, already running calculations. "I extract Isabella to secondary observation point with remote monitoring. You rig this location with shaped charges, stage panic indicators. Lazarev investigates, you spring the trap."
"Exactly."
Fear spikes through me, sharp and immediate, cutting through the tactical planning like a knife. "What about collateral damage? This is a residential neighborhood. There are families?—"
"Shaped charges are directional. Minimal blast radius, full containment within the target apartment." Remy's tone suggests he's already calculated every variable, run every scenario. "Adjacent units will register concussion but won't sustain structural damage. Zero civilian casualties."
"And if something goes wrong?"
He looks at me directly, and the certainty in his expression should be reassuring but somehow makes it worse. "It won't."
