I didn't finish the sentence.
Didn't need to.
Connor understood immediately what that meant.
"What's her connection to you?" he asked, voice carefully neutral, not asking the real question underneath.
"No connection. No operational relevance. She's American. Manhattan. Here because her sister died in a car accident. She's trying to understand what happened." I took another drink, throat tight. "I helped her find some information. We were supposed to meet tomorrow morning to follow up."
"That's not a good idea," Connor said immediately, no hesitation, pure tactical assessment. "We can get eyes on her place quickly. Protection. Surveillance. If you really think she's in danger?—"
"I do." The certainty in my voice surprised even me.
Connor nodded once, decisive, then glanced at Ellsworth.
Ellsworth disappeared without a word, already moving to handle it, footsteps receding down the hallway toward the tech room where he could mobilize whatever resources we had available.
Connor stood. Walked to the fridge. Grabbed a beer. Opened it with practiced efficiency and held it up, clinking the neck against mine with a hollow sound that echoed in the quiet kitchen.
"To old times."
The familiar phrase hit harder than it should have.
Carried weight neither of us needed to explain.
I repeated it quietly, feeling everything it meant. "To old times."
We drank in silence for a long moment, both of us thinking about things we didn't—couldn't—say out loud. Memories that didn't fit into words or explanations. Experiences that had shaped us into men who stood in expensive Parisian townhouses drinking beer at midnight while discussing surveillance and dead bodies and protection details like it was completely normal.
Like this was just life.
"They're really back?" I asked finally, breaking the silence that had stretched too long.
Connor nodded slowly, deliberately. "They are."
"How? We burned it down. Killed Thorne. Scattered. How the fuck did they rebuild?"
"Don't know yet. Been trying to find out since I got here." He took another drink, Adam's apple moving as he swallowed. "But I'm pretty sure I know why they're active now. Why they're hunting us again."
"Why?"
"They want the Nine either back under their wing or in the ground. No middle option. No walking away. We're either assets or threats, and threats get eliminated." He paused, jaw tight. "Only question is why now. Why after all this time? What changed?"
I didn't have an answer for that.
Nobody did.
It was the missing piece in a puzzle we couldn't solve.
So, instead, I asked what I'd been thinking all day, what had been gnawing at the edges of my mind since Ellsworth had pulled up detailed files on Étienne Moreau in under five minutes with resources I didn't understand.
"How vast are our resources? Really? What can we actually access?"
Connor sipped his beer, considering his words carefully. Deciding what to share. How much I needed to know.
"The Sanctuary is funded and ultimately run by a place called Dominion Hall. Estate in Charleston, South Carolina. It's owned by a family—the Danes. Big money with a capital B. Real money. The kind that doesn't run out or ask questions about expenditures." He paused, choosing words. "I did a couple missions out in the field with one of the brothers. Micah Dane. Good man. Solid operator. Combat experience. They're all good men, from what I've seen. The Sanctuary was their idea. We just happened to be the first test case."
He gestured around the room with his beer bottle, indicating the building, the operation, everything we were standing in the middle of.
