“I do when those orders keep you alive.” Luka stepped closer.
Ash moved between us. “Let's sit down and work through this.”
Luka's jaw tightened but he stepped back and moved to the couch
Dmitri took the other chair and left me the spot across from all three of them, which felt pointed.
“We went from a hands-on assault to a sniper,” Luka said. “That's a significant escalation. Which means something changed.” He looked at me. “What did you do after we met at the Drake?”
“Nothing. Came back here. Stayed close to the house.” I thought about it. “Ran into Rafael at a bar. That's it.”
The room went quiet.
“Rafael,” Luka repeated.
“We know each other. It was a coincidence.”
“In this business, coincidences are just patterns you haven't identified yet.” Luka's voice had gone flat and careful in the way it did when he was working something out. “How much did you tell him?”
“Nothing. We talked about Chicago. His investments in the fight scene. That was it.”
“And he knows you're connected to Declan.”
It wasn't a question. I'd told Rafael I was staying with my stepfather. The conversation had felt easy and surface-level at the time. Now it sat in my chest like a stone.
“He didn't push on it,” I said.
“He didn't have to.” Luka looked at Dmitri. “Pull everything we have on Rafael's operation. Any connections to the fight network, any financial ties to the promoters we've already flagged. And I want to know who he's been talking to in the last two weeks.”
Dmitri was already on his laptop. “On it.”
“I could be wrong,” Luka said, his voice steady, not conceding the point so much as setting it aside. “But we follow the thread. If it goes nowhere, we go back to the other leads.” He looked at me again. “Now. The shooter. The pattern on the shot doesn't match what we have on the ghost from the first attack.”
“Different operator?”
“Possibly. Could mean whoever's behind this has more resources than we thought, or it could mean they changed contractors after the first job didn't produce the result they wanted.” His eyes bore into mine. “Either way, the situation has changed. The hotel conversation assumed a single operator with a specific brief. This is a different calculus.”
“Which is why I'm not moving to the safe house,” I said. “Whoever this is has already mapped the house. They had a sightline and they've tested it. If I move, they track me to the new location and I've handed them a fresh target and burned your asset in one move.”
Luka studied me for a long moment. I watched him run the logic and come up against the same wall I had.
“If you stay,” he said, “they have a sightline they know works.”
“Then we change the exposure points, not the location. We're already doing that.” I held his gaze. “And I'm not leaving Declan here with a skeleton crew while I'm tucked away somewhere safe.”
The silence stretched out. Ash watched us both. Dmitri kept his eyes on his screen.
Luka looked away first. “We reinforce the perimeter. No movement without two people minimum. The windows on the east side stay covered.” He looked at Ash. “I want a second sweep of the surrounding buildings. Whoever had that sightline had to set up somewhere. I want to know how long they'd been there.”
“Already pulled the request,” Ash said.
“Good.” Luka stood and started moving, the restless energy he usually kept locked down bleeding through now. “Troy, I'm going to ask you something and I need you to answer it straight.”
“When have I not?”
“Regularly.” He stopped pacing and faced me. “After the hotel. After we talked. Did you change anything? Your routine, your contacts, how you were moving through the city?”
“I tightened up. Stayed closer to the house.”
