"And if Lazarev doesn't come?"
"He'll come." Luc's certainty matches Remy's exactly. "Obsession doesn't allow for delegation. He needs personal confirmation, needs to search for extraction route clues. The pattern's predictable precisely because obsession follows patterns."
I watch the monitor. Remy moves with efficient precision—checking wireless triggers, adjusting his phone's angle, setting up the kill zone with the same focus he used in the warehouse. Then, in the early afternoon, he disappears from the phone's view. Finding a position nearby where he can trigger the charges when Lazarev enters.
Luc makes coffee—strong and black, the kind designed to keep you functional through long surveillance shifts. We settle in to wait.
Hours crawl past as the afternoon begins to fade.
The screen shows Remy's phone feed—empty apartment, staged chaos, drawers hanging open, clothes scattered, all the careful details designed to sell panic. The shaped charges are invisible in the feed's angle, but I know exactly where Remy positioned them. Know exactly how much devastation they'll unleash within that minimal radius.
My hands won't stay still. I press them flat against my thighs, force them to be calm. But my fingers keep curling into fists anyway, nails biting crescents into my palms hard enough to hurt.
Every minute that passes without Lazarev showing feels like the trap failing. Like maybe he's smarter than we calculated. Like maybe he won't come at all and we're sitting here waiting for nothing while he circles around to hit us from a direction we didn't anticipate.
The worst part is the waiting itself. The sitting still while Remy's out there alone, positioned somewhere nearby with his finger on the trigger, waiting to kill or be killed. Every scenario my mind conjures gets progressively worse—Lazarev bringing a team instead of investigating alone, Remy's position compromised, the charges malfunctioning, collateral damage despite all his calculations.
Luc doesn't tell me to relax. Doesn't offer empty reassurances that everything will be fine. Just refills my coffee when the cup runs dry and keeps his own attention fixed on the screen with the same unwavering focus.
His silence somehow makes it worse. Because Luc knows the odds. Knows exactly how operations like this can go catastrophically wrong. And he's not pretending otherwise.
Outside the window, Rotterdam continues its ordinary day. People walking dogs. Cyclists pedaling past. A woman pushing a stroller. Normal life flowing around us while we wait for violence.
The contrast makes my stomach turn.
Remy's voice crackles through the comm, sudden and startling. "In position. Maintaining radio silence from here. Confirm receipt."
"Confirmed," Luc responds immediately. "We'll monitor and alert if situation changes."
Then silence settles over the monitoring station like a physical weight. Just the hum of equipment, distant city sounds, and my own heartbeat too loud in my ears.
Light shifts as afternoon bleeds toward early evening. Shadows stretch long across the street. The apartment building where Remy rigged the trap sits quiet, windows dark, looking thoroughly abandoned.
Exactly like we want it to look.
Movement appears on the screen as the night embraces the sky.
A figure approaches the building—male, tactical gear, moving with professional caution. He pauses at the entrance, checking for surveillance, then picks the lock with practiced ease.
"Is that him?" My voice sounds too loud in the quiet apartment. "Is that Lazarev?"
Luc leans closer to the screen. "Movement pattern matches contractor training. Wait for facial confirmation."
My pulse hammers so violently I can feel it in my throat, taste it on my tongue. This is it. This is the moment everything hinges on. If it's not Lazarev—if he sent someone else to investigate—then the trap fails. Then Remy positioned himself as bait for nothing.
The figure enters the building, disappears from view. Seconds tick by, each one stretching into eternity while my hands grip the desk edge hard enough that my knuckles go white.
Then the phone feed shows him entering the apartment—weapon drawn, clearing the space with tactical precision. When he moves into the frame's optimal range, I catch a clear view of his face.
Lazarev.
Relief hits so hard I actually gasp—then terror follows immediately because now it's real. Now Remy's trap is sprung and there's no calling it back, no stopping what comes next.
He's older than I expected from Remy's descriptions. Harder. Damaged in ways that go deeper than physical scars—the kind of damage that comes from years carrying guilt and rage and projecting both onto someone else until the obsession consumes everything.
His expression reads cold, focused, calculating. It's the look of a man who believes he's about to confirm exactly what he wants: Remy Pascal evacuated in panic and left clues behind about where he ran.
He enters cautiously, clearing each room with professional thoroughness. Finds the scattered clothes, the open drawers, the abandoned equipment suggesting hasty evacuation. Pauses in the living room center, looking around slowly, calculating.
