Page 56

“Left corridor,” Yuri says, blood on his own jaw from a graze I didn’t see land. “My contact said the rooms used for holding are usually toward the back, away from the main entrances.”

We push through two more guards stationed at a junction, the fight brief and violent, over almost as fast as it starts. My hands don’t shake. My focus doesn’t waver.

Every part of me that usually runs calculations about risk and cost has gone quiet, replaced by something simpler and more absolute, a clarity I haven’t felt in this way in years.

The corridor narrows, concrete walls closing in tighter the further back we go, and I can feel it now, some certainty building in my chest that we’re close, that whatever’s waiting at the end of this hallway is exactly what I’ve spent two days tearing my organization apart searching for.

The overhead lights grow sparser this deep into the building, throwing long shadows that shift every time one of my men moves through them ahead of me.

A final guard steps out from a doorway ahead, weapon raised, and I don’t slow down long enough to give him the chance to fire first.

The exchange is fast, decisive, over before he fully understands he’s already lost it.

He goes down, and I step over him without looking back, Yuri close behind me, both of us moving with the same singular focus now that nothing else in this building matters beyond what’s behind the next door.

The silence that follows his fall feels louder than the gunfire that preceded it, a held breath the whole hallway seems to be sharing with me.

“That’s it.” Yuri points toward a metal door at the end of the corridor, heavier than the others we’ve passed, a lock mechanism built for exactly the kind of containment we’ve been searching for two days to find. “Has to be it.”

I don’t answer him at all. I’m already moving, weapon still raised, blood from the graze on my arm dripping steadily onto the concrete floor beneath me, every other sensation in my body reduced to background noise against the one thing that matters now.

My legs carry me faster than conscious thought directs them, some part of me already ahead of where the rest of me has physically arrived.

The building around us has gone quieter, whatever resistance remained either cleared or fallen back, the sound of gunfire from the floors above growing distant as my men finish securing what’s left of the perimeter.

Down here, in this narrow stretch of hallway, there’s only the sound of my own breathing and Yuri’s steady presence beside me, both of us closing the last few meters toward a door that might finally hold everything I’ve spent the last two days willing myself to find.

I reach it before either of us says another word, my hand closing around whatever mechanism holds it shut, every instinct in me screaming to tear it open faster than my body can actually move.

Yuri covers the corridor behind us, weapon still trained back the way we came, giving me the second I need without either of us having to say it out loud.

My hand finds the mechanism, cold metal under fingers that are shaking now for the first time all night, not from fear of what’s on the other side but from something closer to desperate hope, two days of searching compressed down into this single narrow stretch of time before the door actually opens.

I can hear my own pulse pounding in my ears louder than anything else left in this building, louder than the distant gunfire still echoing somewhere above us, louder than Yuri’s steady breathing beside me.

Whatever’s waiting on the other side of this door, I’ve fought through everything this building could throw at me to reach it.

Nothing left standing between us now except the last few inches of metal under my hand, and I intend to close that distance in the next few seconds, no matter what waits behind it.

38

HARPER

I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting alone in the dark when the sounds start, distant at first, something that might be thunder if thunder came in short, rhythmic bursts instead of long, rolling ones.

My whole body’s stiff from hours in this chair, wrists raw where the restraints have rubbed them through skin already sore from the fight earlier.

It isn’t thunder. I’ve heard enough of it now to recognize gunfire even muffled through concrete walls and a locked door, and my whole body goes rigid at the sound, adrenaline flooding back in even though I have no idea yet whether it means rescue or something worse.

My pulse climbs so fast it makes me lightheaded, the room tilting slightly at the edges of my vision.

The sounds get closer. Shouting mixes in now, voices raised in a language I don’t understand, tangled with something that might be English, and I strain against the restraints out of pure instinct, needing to move even though there’s nowhere for me to go.

I press my bound hands as close to my stomach as I can manage, some old instinct taking over even in the middle of everything else happening around me.

A door slams somewhere down the hall. Then another, closer. Whatever’s happening, it’s moving through this building fast, and I can’t tell if that’s a good sign or the worst one I’ve had since they took me.

I hold my breath and wait, every muscle locked tight, my heart pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat and my wrists where the restraints have rubbed them raw.