“You think this girl is the source?”
I grip the steering wheel. My leather gloves are sitting on the center console, drying, so my bare hands tighten against the leather until the steering wheel creaks under the pressure.
“She was there at 2:37 a.m.,” I say quietly. “She walked in right after the kill. Her eyes tracked the gun, the exits, the body. One breath, one calculation. Then she ran. You tell me what that sounds like.”
“A pro.”
“Exactly. Torch the car. I’ll handle the interrogation.”
I hang up and toss the phone onto the passenger seat.
I glance at the folder tucked inside my jacket pocket. The blueprints. The red Xs.
If she knows what is in this folder, she is dangerous. If she knows who sent Elias, she is an asset.
My eyes drift to her reflection again. She’s small. Delicate. Her wet hair clings to her frame. She’s fragile, like a bird with a broken wing. Her hands are bound in her lap—slender fingers, manicured nails.
They don’t seem like hands that have held a gun. They could very well be hands that arrange petals and fuss with floral arrangements.
Don’t be fooled,I tell myself.Spies don’t look like soldiers. They look like victims.
I consider the alternative. The cold, logical solution.
I could pull off right now and drive down a service road near the marshes. Two bullets in her chest would leave this problem in the mud. No witness. No loose ends. The car burns at the museum, and she vanishes into the statistics of a violent city.
It would be safe. It would be smart. It would ensure the Judge is protected.
But the Code stops me.
No innocents.
I don’t kill women unless I know they are combatants. I don’t kill children. It is the only line that separates me from the animals I hunt. If I cross it, I become them. I become the chaos I swore to control.
I don’t know what she is yet. I have suspicions, I have theories, but I don’t have proof.
Until I know for sure, she lives.
“You’re quiet,” I say, testing her.
She flinches. It’s a small movement, a tightening of her shoulders. She turns her head slowly to look at the back of my seat.
“You threw my phone away,” she whispers.
“It was a tracker,” I say. “If you’re innocent, I saved you from being found by the people who sent that bomber. If you’re guilty, I blinded your handlers.”
“I don’t have handlers,” she says. “I have a father.”
“We all have fathers,” I say. “Most of them are disappointed.”
She falls silent. The words seem to hit her harder than the physical threat. She turns away, pressing her forehead against the cold glass of the window.
I drive.
The city gives way to the outskirts. The skyscrapers fade into industrial parks, then into the dark, wooded hills of the private estates. This is the dead zone. The transition between the civilized world and my world. The streetlights disappear, replaced by the encroaching darkness of the forest.
My home, my fortress, sits on twenty acres of cliffs overlooking the ocean. It is isolated, defensible, and totally off the grid. I bought it the year after the coup. I reinforced the walls, installed military-grade surveillance, and hired a private army.
I don’t live in a house; I live in a bunker disguised as a mansion.
