Page 5 of Property of the Bikers

I close the thought and stand up.

Through the door, the clubhouse is running its regular Tuesday night. The bar is moving, glasses out, two conversations going at once over the sound of the pool balls breaking in the back corner.

A couple of the older patches are at a table near the far wall, cards out, the low murmur of a game that’s been running since six. The prospects are moving through the room doing the work prospects do, staying visible, staying useful, staying out of the way of anything they haven’t been invited into yet.

Nobody looks up when I come through. Not because they haven’t noticed. Because they know I’m not coming through looking for a response.

I move toward the back hallway and the offices where Reeve’s already at his desk, and Ghost is on the phone pulling men for the rotation, and there’s work to do before I sleep.

Whatever is moving through those shell companies is still in the setup phase. It hasn’t reached the gate.

I intend to know exactly what it is before it does.

Chapter Three

MIRA

It’s a Thursday afternoon when I hear it.

Viktor is in the living room. I’m in the bedroom folding laundry, which is the kind of ordinary thing I’ve been doing very deliberately for two days since I found the folder, because ordinary is the only armor I have right now, and I’m not taking it off until I’m ready.

His voice carries through the wall the way it always does when he’s not performing quietly. Low and unhurried, the voice he uses when he’s talking to someone he doesn’t need to impress.

I set down the shirt in my hands and stand still.

“The timeline holds,” he says. “Post-delivery, as discussed. She won’t be a problem after that.”

A pause.

“Correct. Clean and documented. No exposure.”

I pick the shirt back up. I fold it. Creased edge to creased edge, the way I always fold it, and I set it on the pile and reach for the next one. My hands are steady. I notice that about myself, the way I’ve been noticing things about myself for two days, cataloging them the way you catalog resources when you’re trying to figure out what you have to work with.

Steady hands. Good.

I wait until I hear him end the call. Until I hear the particular sound of him settling into the couch, the television coming on low. His three o’clock ritual, thirty minutes before his driver picks him up for his standing Thursday meeting across the city.

I’ve been waiting for this window for two days.

I go to the closet.

The bag is where I left it, behind the winter coats, packed three weeks ago in increments small enough that nothing looked missing. Two changes of clothes. Flat shoes. Prenatal vitamins. The envelope of cash, rubber-banded at the bottom, built up over three months in amounts Viktor’s monitoring never flagged because I made sure they were amounts it wouldn’t flag.

I pull the bag out and set it on the bed.

I change. Dark jeans, flat boots, a gray sweater. I pull my hair back, take off my wedding ring, and set it on the nightstand at the angle it always sits when I’ve taken it off to wash my hands. Viktor will see the ring before he sees anything else. The ring needs to look like I forgot it, not like I left it.

I open the inner lining at the base of the bag.

The ID is there. Elena Vasic. A name I wore through four countries and eighteen months of translation contracts before I walked into a conference in Vienna and made the mistake of trusting a man who listened too carefully. The woman who made this ID was thorough. It still looks like me.

I zip the lining back up.

My phone goes next. I open the settings and run a factory reset. Ninety seconds. I plug it back into the charger on the nightstand while it resets and lay it face down the way I do when I’m sleeping. The phone going dark inside the apartment buys me time. Viktor will assume I’m here until he walks through the door and finds that I’m not.

In the living room, the television is still running.

I pick up my bag.