He’s been sitting on that incriminating audio file of Crowe for seventeen years and never leaked it to the press.Why?Because it would’ve endangered Dove?
If Jag couldn’t topple Crowe with decades of prep, I’m not delusional enough to think I’ll do it in one night.
This won’t be a reckoning.It’ll be a retrieval.
Mikhail exhales softly and shifts screens.Maps snap into place.Routes clarify.Data stops swimming and starts pointing.
My pencil stills.
Whatever he’s seeing, it’s real now.
“What do you have?”I close the sketchbook.
He turns a screen toward me.
Shipping routes?Air traffic logs?What am I looking at?
“They moved fast.Multiple boats, private planes, and vehicles.”His fingers dance across the keys.“I have not identified Dove yet, but Jag is here.”He hovers the cursor over a building in downtown Los Angeles.
The information lands in my chest and detonates.
“They split them up?”I ask.
“Possibly.Or they arrived separately.This will not be a clean extraction.”He opens a digital blueprint.“Jag has been watching this nightclub for years.”
“They’re being held in a nightclub?”
“There is a kill room in the basement.”
“What’s a kill room?”My heart hammers.
“That is what Jag calls it in his notes.”
“What’s a fucking kill room, Mikhail?”
“A room where the killing happens.”
“Why is there a fucking kill room in a fucking nightclub?”Panic swamps my bloodstream.“You think that’s where they’re holding Jag and Dove?Why the fuck would they be in a kill room, Mikhail?”
“Calm down.”He squints at me.“Jag is useless to Crowe if he is dead, and he will not cooperate if Dove is harmed, yes?”
“Yeah.Okay.They’re alive.”
Saying it doesn’t quiet the howling in my wrecked heart.Alive can mean anything.It can mean they’re being brutalized and raped.Barely alive isn’t the same as alive.
“His blueprints detail the layout.”He zooms in on the diagram.“Guards at every entry point.Cameras at all angles.The best security money can buy.I do not see a way in, let alone a way out.”
“I see a way.”I grab my sketchbook and flip it open.
Pages of half-mad contingencies slide past, routes that assume luck, timing that assumes mercy.I don’t stop on those.I skip to the last page, the one that will get me killed if I miscount a breath.
Spinning the book around, I shove it toward him.
Mikhail studies it, leaning in, eyes sharpening, and a slow grin spreads across his face.Teeth this time.Real ones.
“For this…” He taps the page.“You need The Ghost.”
“Yeah, I do, deep and dirty.”Anticipation heats my chest.“Bombs away.”
