She looks magnificent.
Ivan looks up at her through the pain and the shock. He sees the steel I told her she had.
"Don't," he gasps.
Wren looks at me. "Kade?"
I get to my feet. Swaying. I look down at the man who profiled her, hunted her, tried to carve us apart in the dark.
I should let her finish it. It would be justice.
But she's not a killer—not that kind, not the kind that executes a man in the dirt. She shot to save my life. The weight of what comes after a shot like that is one thing. Asking her to carry an execution is another thing entirely, and she shouldn't have to.
There's a tactical calculation too.
A dead cleaner tells Black Helix nothing. An unconscious one wakes up and reports a failure—a three-man entry team neutralized, their specialist taken off the board, and in twenty-four hours, a data breach that dismantles their entire network drops across five federal inboxes. That combination doesn't just wound an organization like Black Helix. It fractures it. Ivan Kova surviving to deliver that report is more useful to me than his corpse.
"I've got him."
Ivan hears something in my voice. His eyes track to me with the specific recognition of one professional reading another.
"Bishop." He chokes. "Wait. I can give you the?—"
I drop to my knees beside him, wrap my good arm around his neck, and close the choke before he can finish the sentence.
Carotid compression. Clean.
"No more," I tell him.
He claws at my forearm. His nails dig in. He bucks once, twice. His strength is already gone—shock and blood loss are doing my work for me. I hold on through the ten secondsof resistance. Hold on until I feel the fight drain out of him completely.
I let go.
I shove him onto his back, reach into my vest pocket, and take out the Black Helix pendant—the small obsidian disk I pulled off the first operative in Wren's apartment hallway four days ago. I've been carrying it like a stone in my chest ever since.
I set it on Ivan's sternum.
No words. Their calling card, returned.
I shove myself upright and slump back against the dirt.
"Kade!"
Wren drops the shotgun and falls to her knees beside me, hands on my face, checking.
"I'm okay."
"You're not."
"He's down." I reach up and wipe a smear of dirt from her cheek. My hand leaves blood. I hate it. "You stopped him."
"We saved each other."
She tears the hem of her shirt and presses the fabric against the knife slash on my thigh.
"Hold this."
I hold it.
