“That’s it?” Radek’s voice was low beside me. “They just leave?”
Arthur didn’t answer. He lowered his binoculars, mouth a flat line.
I’dseenher. An hour ago, during the initial recon, Grace had been visible through the tall windows of a ground-floor roomat the back of the house, walking with Conrad Richter. She’d been alive. She’d been on her feet.
Arthur had decided we’d call the police first. That was the right way to do things, he’d said. The right way just drove off in two marked cars.
A vision of my mother on the kitchen floor hit me before I could stop it. Bleeding from a gash above her eye. Glass everywhere. The reek of tequila. I’d begged the 9-1-1 dispatcher to make the police hurry. They’d come, but by the time theyarrived, my father was already dead, my mother was screaming, and I was covered in his blood.
The system had been too late that night. Tonight, the system showed up on time and still didn’t get the job done.
Not now, Garrett. Shove it down.
“He must have hidden her.” Arthur stuffed his binoculars into a pouch in his vest. “He had warning—saw them coming up the drive, or someone called ahead—and he put her somewhere they wouldn’t look.”
“And probably gave them an envelope full of cash not to look too fucking hard.” Fucking fucking fuck. “Is it my call yet? Do we go in now?”
“It’s my call, so it falls on me if it goes wrong. But yes, we go.” Arthur turned to the group, all of us wearing plate carriers with suppressed pistols, stun guns, and an array of equipment. “But we’re non-lethal. Chokeholds and takedowns. We put them out before they can raise an alarm. These are security guards, not combatants. Nobody dies tonight.” He pointed at Radek and three of the Pendragon operatives who’d joined us. “Your team takes the main gate. Flashbang. Move. Draw their attention forward while the rest of us enter through the pool doors at the rear.”
Radek nodded. “Rules of engagement if they’re armed and non-compliant?”
“Disarm and restrain. If someone pulls a weapon and you can’t control it, you do what you have to, but the goal is everyone goes home.” Arthur caught my eye, the same question hanging between us as earlier. He wanted to be sure I was thinking with the right brain.
I gave him a curt nod.
“Merlin, you’re our eyes from here,” Arthur said. “Anything changes, we need to know.”
“Copy.”
We moved.
Through the tree line in pairs, we stayed low, using the terrain to conceal our approach. The Pendragon men moved well, with consistent spacing, hand signals, and quiet feet. The company trained its operators well. After I’d left the Teams, they’d been my first stop. It was where I’d met the men who were forming Round Table Security—men I’d become so close with that I’d left the company once we pulled out of Afghanistan because I didn’t do close. Now here I was, and they were the ones helping me recover someone I finallywantedclose with.
Merlin’s voice sounded in my ear as we closed the distance: “Radek, you’re clear to the front door. Arthur, roving guard just went around the east side. You’ve got maybe ninety seconds on the doors by the pool.”
“Radek, go,” Arthur said.
The flashbang cracked the silence open. At the front of the house, a sharp white flare and a concussive boom would have blinded and deafened anyone within fifteen feet. From our position at the back of the house, we heard the shouts that followed. So far, so good. The guards were reacting the way we wanted them to.
Arthur and I slipped through the garden with Aleš and our other Pendragon man, Lukáš, pistols at the ready. The secondary entrance was exactly where Dmitry had drawn it—a gate, a stone path circling the pool, then a garden and a set of French doors at the rear of the house.
A guard came around the corner at a jog. He didn’t see us until Arthur was on him—one arm around his throat from behind to cut off his blood flow. The guard thrashed for less than a minute before going limp. Arthur lowered him to the ground, and Aleš zip-tied his wrists and ankles, while Lukáš gagged him.
Inside through the French doors, we entered a corridor lined with paintings in heavy gilt frames, which led to the hallway I’d seen Grace walking through with a guard.
“Two more tangos visible in the front windows,” Merlin said. “One in the foyer near the staircase, one deeper in, looks like the east corridor.”
Radek responded, “Foyer secured. Two men down. We’re heading east.”
Arthur gestured: he’d take Lukáš west. Aleš and I would head east.
I moved down the corridor with Aleš two steps behind me. We headed through an archway into a wider hall, taking turns to clear doors and corners. The estate had thick stone walls and carpets, muffling our sounds as we moved.
The next guard we encountered was at an intersection of two hallways, speaking into a radio. Facing away. Aleš and I closed the gap—I grabbed him from behind, arm around his throat, hand clamping his mouth before he could transmit. He clawed at my forearm and went limp. We zip-tied and gagged him.
I dragged the unconscious guard against the wall and started checking doors. A sitting room, empty. A bathroom, empty. A room with the door slightly ajar, emp?—
No. There was movement in the shadows. I signaled for Aleš to join me, and we swept the room, descending on a figure hunched behind a leather-topped desk. Dozens of papers were scattered across the rug, as though he’d been searching for something in a panic.
