Chapter 40: The Safehouse in Shoreditch

The loft on the south bank was compromised. Mac had delivered the terse assessment an hour after the data purge: Evelyn’s digital sweep had been too thorough, too targeted. It was only a matter of time before her physical assets—the people with guns and questions—caught up to the digital trail. They had to vanish, again.

This time, Anton led. “I know a place,” he’d said, a flicker of the old authority returning. “An unlisted property. Rogers Industries acquired the whole building years ago for a development that never happened. It’s just sitting there. Empty. Not even the board knows about it.”

It was a gamble, using a Rogers asset. But it was the last place anyone would look for him—a crumbling, graffiti-scarred brick building in the heart of Shoreditch, surrounded by trendy cafes and vintage shops, a monument to corporate indecision.

The apartment was on the top floor, a vast, raw space that had once been intended as a penthouse. Now, it was a shell. Dust sheets covered shapeless mounds of furniture. The floorboards were bare, and a fine layer of grime coated the massive, factory-style windows that looked out over the London skyline. It smelled of neglect and old dreams.

As Mac secured the perimeter, Sabe stood in the center of the cavernous room, his head tilted, his entire body still. He wasn’t just looking; he was listening. Anton watched him, fascinated. The frantic energy from the loft was gone, replaced by a deep, preternatural calm.

Sabe moved then, and it was unlike any movement Anton had ever seen. It wasn’t the purposeful stride of a CEO or the anxious pace of a fugitive. It was a glide, a dispersal of self so complete that his footsteps made no sound on the dusty floorboards. He was like a ghost haunting a house it already knew.

He went to the front door first. He didn’t just check the lock. He ran his fingers along the frame, feeling for the slight give of a pressure sensor that shouldn’t be there. He examined the hinges, his eyes noting the faint, tell-tale scratches of a previous forced entry—likely squatters, years ago. He reached up and, with a gentle twist, unscrewed the smoke detector from the ceiling. He popped the cover, his eyes scanning the interior before reassembling it with a soft click.

“What is it?” Anton asked, his voice unnaturally loud in the silence.

“Outdated model,” Sabe murmured, not looking at him. “Can be hijacked. Used as a listening device. We’ll disable the power to it later.”

He moved to the windows. He didn’t look at the view. He studied the locks, the seams where the frames met the brickwork. He placed a hand against the glass, feeling for the faint vibration that would indicate a laser microphone trained on it from a neighboring building. Finding none, he began pulling the heavy, moth-eaten drapes closed, plunging the room into a deep, murky twilight.

Anton stood by the dust-sheeted island that was probably the kitchen, feeling like an awkward guest in his own property. He was a man who commanded boardrooms, but in this arena, he was a novice. He was learning that safety wasn’t about the thickness of the walls, but the sharpness of the mind guarding them.

Sabe moved to the electrical panel, using the light from his phone to examine the circuit breakers. He flipped one off, then on, his head cocked, listening to the hum of the building. Satisfied, he moved to the vents, checking that the grilles were secure.

His work was silent, methodical, and utterly comprehensive. He wasn’t just checking for threats; he was understanding the space. He was learning its rhythms, its weaknesses, its secrets. He was turning a vulnerable, empty box into a defensible position.

Anton found a bottle of whiskey, miraculously unopened, in a cabinet beneath the kitchen island. He poured two fingers into a clean-ish glass and leaned against the counter, simply watching. He was mesmerized by the economy of Sabe’s movement, the absolute lack of wasted energy. This was the man who had waltzed with him, who had trembled in his arms in a bathroom. Now, he was a craftsman, and his craft was survival.

Sabe finished his circuit of the main room and disappeared into the bedrooms and bathrooms. Anton could hear the faint sounds of his work—the quiet slide of a window being tested, the creak of a floorboard he was memorizing. He was a sculptor, and silence was his marble.

When he emerged, the last of the daylight was a thin, grey line around the edges of the drapes. Sabe’s face was calm, the earlier tension smoothed away by the focus of his task.

“It’ll do,” he said, his voice a low hum in the dim room. “The building’s mostly empty. Good sightlines from the stairs. Only one viable access point besides the front door—a fire escape on the east side. I’ve rigged a silent alarm on it.” He gestured to a small device no larger than a matchbox he’d placed on the windowsill, its single, tiny LED glowing a soft green.

“You did all that in twenty minutes,” Anton said, handing him the glass of whiskey.

Sabe took it, his fingers brushing Anton’s. A spark, familiar now, but no less potent. “It’s what I do.”

“I know,” Anton replied softly. “I’m just… seeing it for the first time. The whole of it.”

He gestured around the room. “You see this place not as a space, but as a series of vulnerabilities and strengths. You see the world differently. You move through it like… like silence itself.”

Sabe took a sip of the whiskey, his eyes on Anton over the rim of the glass. The dim light carved out the planes of his face, making him look both older and ageless. “It’s the only way I know how to be. When you grow up feeling like the world is a threat, you learn to read its intentions. You learn to move without touching the edges.”

It was the most revealing thing he’d ever said about himself. Anton felt a pang of something sharp and protective. He thought of the disowned son, the disgraced soldier, the man who lived in the spaces between.

“Is that why you took this job?” Anton asked. “Because you’re good at reading threats?”

Sabe held his gaze, the storm in his eyes calm for once, reflective. “I took the job because the file said you were a ruthless bastard who cared more about his legacy than people. I thought it would be simple. A transaction.”

“And now?”

“Now I know the file was wrong.” He looked down into his whiskey. “The most dangerous threats aren’t the ones you can see coming. They’re the ones that make you forget, for a second, that you need to be watching.”

The admission hung in the dusty air. You are the dangerous threat, Anton. You make me forget my purpose. You make me want to put down the weapon and just be a man.

Anton understood. He felt it too. This pull between them was a glorious, terrifying vulnerability. In a world where they had to be ghosts, they kept reminding each other what it was to have a body, a heart.

“We can’t afford to forget,” Anton said, the CEO in him stating a grim fact.

“I know,” Sabe replied, the operative agreeing.

But they didn’t move. They stood in the twilight of the safehouse, two silhouettes in a world of covered shapes, the space between them charged with everything they couldn’t afford to feel and everything they were powerless to stop.

Sabe finally broke the silence, nodding towards the whiskey bottle. “We should get some rest. Tomorrow, we go after Vale Holdings.”

He was drawing the line, re-establishing the boundary between the man and the mission. Anton nodded, accepting it. For now.

As they prepared to bed down on dust-sheeted couches, Anton watched Sabe perform one last ritual. He placed his pistol on the floor beside him, within easy reach. It was a final, stark reminder of the world they were in.

But as Anton lay in the dark, listening to the soft, steady sound of Sabe’s breathing, he felt a strange sense of peace. The safehouse was flawed, but it was being guarded by a man who moved like silence itself. And for the first time in a long time, surrounded by uncertainty and danger, Anton Rogers felt, inexplicably, safe.

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