Not relocate him.
Extract him like a tumor.
Within seventy-two hours.
Because dead witnesses don’t testify.
I open a secure channel to my operations lead.
“Change of plan,” I say.
He answers instantly. “Talk.”
“Two fronts,” I tell him. “Jordan stays mobile and secured. No predictable patterns. Double escorts. Ghostline only.”
“Understood.”
“And Morazin,” I say, voice hardening. “We break him out first.”
A pause. “That fast?”
“Yes,” I say. “Because the Nine is already scheduling his disappearance. If he vanishes, the hearing Jordan wants becomes a fairy tale.”
Another beat.
Then my lead says, low, “We’ll need a team.”
“We have a team,” I say. “We have motivation. We have time counting down like a bomb.”
I end the call and turn my attention back to my comm with Jordan.
She’s quiet. I can hear her breathing, controlled but fast.
“You saw it,” I say.
“Yeah,” she whispers. “I saw all of it.”
I close my eyes for half a second. The room still smells like polished lies, but underneath it, I can taste the sharp metallic tang of the Nine’s grip tightening.
“They’re coming,” Jordan says softly. “For me. For him. For you.”
I open my eyes.
“Let them,” I say.
I step out of Suite Twelve and into the corridor, and the cool air hits my face like a slap.
Behind me, the trap has sprung.
Ahead of me, the war has just gotten personal.
CHAPTER 25
JORDAN
Gur’s morning air tastes like rust and sweet oil—like the planet woke up chewing on machinery.
I’m hunched over a table in a back room of the Defrocked Nun that’s pretending to be a “suite,” but it’s really just a control box with curtains. The walls are thick enough to muffle the casino’s heartbeat, yet I can still feel it through the floor—bass notes like distant thunder, coins clinking, laughter with teeth in it.
