She looks down the street, where the guards went.The wrong direction.
Someone moves behind her.
He slips into frame as if he’s been there the whole time, hiding outside the camera’s edge.He’s masked, average height, average build, wearing street clothes.Nothing remarkable about him.
My breath leaves me in a broken sound as he clamps a hand over her mouth.
She doesn’t even get a second to fight.He lifts her and drags her backward, out of the camera’s view.Gone in a blur of motion and blue hair.
“That’s not Jag.”I lurch forward, hands braced on the desk.“Jag’s bigger.Taller.Broader through the shoulders.”
“Whoever it is took her to the service road behind the shop.”Carl scans the screen, his voice thick with guilt and failure.“There’s a blind stretch there.No cameras.He must’ve known that.”
Theo freezes the frame, zooming in on the empty edge where she disappeared.
“He probably had a car waiting,” Carl says.“Engine running.In and out in under ten seconds.”
Monty exhales through his nose.
“Which means while we were chasing the decoy through the harbor, Dove was already leaving town.”I sit back, sick to my soul.
The room feels too small, the hum too loud.My heartbeat is everywhere, in my ears, my throat, my teeth.
“By the time the roads locked down, she was probably already outside city limits.”Monty gives my shoulder another squeeze and lets go.“Could’ve been driven straight to a private airstrip or transferred to a boat offshore.”
She was gone before we realized we fucked up.
I squeeze my eyes shut for half a second, just enough to survive it.
Jag didn’t orchestrate this.
“Pull the log of the tattoo parlor.”I meet Theo’s gaze behind his glasses.
Theo nods and turns back to the wall of monitors, fingers flying across the keys.The screen flashes, loads a grid of feeds, and centers on one.The hidden camera from the tattoo shop.
Since Jag concealed it near the ceiling, the overhead angle shows every corner of the main room.
The time stamp rolls back to ten minutes before I walked in, when the Strakh guards were still alive.
Everyone quiets.
The screen goes black.Not dim or shadowed.Gone.
“What the fuck?”My heart pounds.
“The lights in the shop,” Ross says.“Someone shut them off.”
There isn’t a drop of natural light or street bleed because the only window in the shop sits inside the room Jag built for me.Sealed off.
“Fuck!”I shove my hands in my hair, panic rising.
Theo hits a key, and the feed snaps to night vision.
Green washes over the screen, and my stomach drops.
The door opens, letting in a blast of blinding light and a rush of men dressed in black.In a blink, they’re inside with the door shut, trapping the Strakh guards in the pitch-black.
Each of them wears low-profile goggles as they fan out, already knowing where everything is.No hesitation.No whispered orders.
