chapter 28_Tracking the Shadows

The hallway on the east side was full of thick smoke. It was hard to breathe. Dark smoke covered the ceiling, and the air smelled like burned wires, broken walls, and gunpowder.

I stood at the entrance of the destroyed study and took a slow breath before walking inside. The smoke made my throat hurt and my eyes water. I wanted to look like a man who had just survived a terrible attack.

I changed the way I stood. I bent slightly, lowered my left shoulder, and held my dark jacket tightly around my body as if my ribs were hurting.

​Appearance was everything in our line of work. A man’s eyes could betray him in a second, but a well-timed tremor in the hand could fool even the sharpest bastard in the room.

​I stepped out into the smoke-filled hallway, coughing harshly, lifting one hand to shield my face from the drifting ash.

​“Magnus?” I shouted. My voice was rough and tired. I tried to sound scared and exhausted. “Magnus, is that you? Oh my God!”

At the end of the hallway, the strong steel door of the armory had been blown off. Two people stood still in the thick smoke.

Magnus stood there like a wall, his large body taking up almost the whole narrow hallway. He was badly hurt and bleeding. I could see a dark, wet patch spreading down the left side of his shirt and reaching his belt.

He held his rifle straight at me, the barrel pointed directly at my chest. Next to him, partly hiding behind his broad shoulder, stood the girl.

​Jarosława.

​My heart did a slow, sickening roll in my chest.

​She was alive.

​A cold, white-hot prickle of pure rage flared behind my ribs, so violent it almost broke my carefully crafted mask. The elite squad the best contractors money could buy, equipped with localized jammer tech and internal override codes had failed. Twelve men. Top-tier military background. And they hadn't managed to put a single bullet through a frail, terrified accountant and a half-dead brute.

​It was a nightmare. If she lived long enough to speak to the board, if she handed over the ledger encrypted in her memory, my entire operation was dead in the water. I would be dead before sunrise.

​I swallowed the fury, burying it deep beneath layers of rehearsed relief. I let my hand drop from my chest, palms turned outward, showing him empty hands as I took three slow, heavy steps forward.

​"Lower the weapon, Magnus," I breathed, letting my knees buckle just a fraction to sell the shock. "It's me. It's Tymoteusz."

​Magnus didn't lower the rifle. The barrel remained steadily locked on my chest, not wavering so much as a millimeter despite the fact that his face was ghastly pale from blood loss. His gray eyes were narrow, cold, and entirely unreadable.

​"You're supposed to be in Warsaw," Magnus said. His voice was a dangerous, low rumble, raspy from inhaling smoke and chemical residue.

​"I was," I lied smoothly, taking another small step, keeping my movements deliberate, predictable. "Then the perimeter alarms hit my secure line thirty minutes ago. I took the secondary bypass road. The main gate is totally destroyed, Magnus. There are dead men all over the driveway."

​I looked past his shoulder, letting my eyes land on Jarosława. I made sure to hold her gaze, offering a reassuring, tight nod. "Are you hurt, miss? Did they touch you?"

​She didn't answer. She pulled herself closer to Magnus's back, her hands gripping the torn fabric of his tactical vest. Her knuckles were stark white, her dark eyes wide and filled with a wild, feral distrust. She looked like a cornered animal, smelling blood in the air but not knowing which way to run.

​Smart girl, I thought, suppressing the urge to strangle her right there in the hallway. Keep hiding behind him. See how long he lasts.

​"Who were they, Tymoteusz?" Magnus demanded. He took a heavy step forward, forcing me to hold my ground. The sheer physical presence of the man was suffocating, even when he was practically on his deathbed. "They had level-one override access. They bypassed the outer turrets without firing a single shot."

​"I don't know," I said quickly, my brows furrowing into a tight knot of feigned confusion. I reached into my coat pocket, making the movement deliberately slow, and pulled out a bloody pair of tactical dog tags I’d stripped off one of the corpses near the foyer. I tossed them onto the floor between us. They clattered against the cold tiles. "I found those on the lead shooter near the main courtyard. Wraith-Nine markings."

​Magnus looked down at the tags, then back up at me. His expression hardened into granite.

​"Arthur," Magnus spat, the name coming out like a curse. "He sent them."

​"Arthur gone rogue," I agreed, leaning heavily into the narrative I needed him to buy. "He thinks you've compromised the entire network by keeping her alive. He thinks you're going to turn the codes over to the federal authorities. He ordered the sweep to clean the slate. Both of you."

​I watched Magnus carefully, measuring the rise and fall of his chest. His breathing was getting shallow. The blood pooling at his boot was thicker now. He was running on pure adrenaline and sheer, stupid spite.

​"We need to move," I insisted, taking another step closer, closing the distance between us until I was barely four feet away. "I have a vehicle hidden two miles south, past the old lumber mill. No GPS, no electronic footprint. If Arthur sent Wraith-Nine, he has the satellite grid monitored. We have maybe ten minutes before a secondary strike team sweeps the forest."

​Magnus hesitated. I could see the agonizing conflict playing out behind his eyes. He had known me for eight years. I had pulled him out of a ditch in Sarajevo; I had covered his back in Prague. To him, I was the last sane man standing in a world that had just turned inside out. He wanted to trust me because the alternative that everyone he had ever bled for was trying to kill him was too overwhelming to digest while hemorrhaging to death.

​"Magnus..." Jarosława’s voice was small, cutting through the heavy air. She tugged lightly on his vest, her eyes darting between me and the dark corridor behind us. "We don't know..."

​"It's okay," Magnus grunted, though his eyes never left my face. Slowly, painfully, he lowered the muzzle of his rifle toward the floor. "Tymoteusz is clear. He wouldn't have brought the tags if he was with them."

​A cold, satisfying victory curled in the dark corners of my mind. Hook, line, and sinker.

​"Come on," I said, stepping past Magnus to take the lead, putting my back to him to show ultimate trust. "Follow me. Stay low. The roof structure in the west wing is unstable."

​We moved in a slow, agonizing line down the burning corridor. I kept my pace deliberate, matching Magnus's heavy, dragging steps. Every few seconds, I glanced back, watching the girl. She was watching the floor, her feet slipping occasionally in the wet ash.

​She was useless physically, but the numbers locked in her mind were worth forty million dollars on the open market. Arthur didn't want her dead because she was a liability; he wanted her dead because I had promised to sell those codes to the cartel once she was out of the picture. And now, she was walking right into my pocket.

​We reached the rear exit leading out toward the service courtyard. The heavy steel door was propped open with a broken wooden chair, letting in gusts of freezing, pine-scented night air that whistled through the smoke.

​"The car is just past the tree line," I said, reaching for the doorframe to steady myself. "Magnus, let me take her arm. You can barely walk."

​I turned around, extending a hand toward Jarosława.

​She stopped dead in her tracks, two paces back. She didn't look at my hand. She was looking down at my waist.

​I froze.

While I was pretending to be part of the rescue, my heavy leather coat had moved up slightly above my hip. My personal gun was tucked into the holster on my belt. It was a customized SIG Sauer with a silver design on the side.

Then I noticed something on the floor. Right beside her boot, in the dim light from the burning hallway, was an empty 9mm bullet casing.

​Not the 5.56 rifle rounds used by Wraith-Nine. Not the heavy shotgun shells from the bunker.

​A 9mm casing, stamped with the exact custom crest of my personal ammunition. The same rounds I had used five minutes ago to execute the lead contractor who had failed to clear the basement.

​Jarosława’s eyes slowly lifted from the shiny brass on the floor, moving up my coat, until her dark, terrified gaze locked directly onto mine.

​She knew.

“Magnus,” she whispered so quietly that I could barely hear her.

Before she could say anything else, I quickly reached for the gun at my side.