Chapter Four
They left the warehousethe same way she had left everything else in the last three weeks—without ceremony, without closure, without looking back.
The night outside hit her like a physical thing.Heat, still clinging even after dark, wrapped around her skin, thick and wet, carrying the smell of asphalt, oil, and distant rain.Georgia didn’t cool down so much as it held on, refusing to let go.The air felt heavy in her lungs, each breath an effort she hadn’t realized she’d been missing inside the building.
She was guided into the back of a vehicle she didn’t recognize.Not shoved.Not hurried.The door opened, and Nikolai waited until she climbed in on her own before following, sliding in beside her.The interior was dark, the windows tinted so deeply they reflected her own faint outline back at her.
Bulletproof, she realized distantly.
The door shut with a solid, final sound.
The engine turned over.The vehicle moved.
Eliza braced herself for panic.
It didn’t come.
Instead, her awareness narrowed to the small space between her and Nikolai.He sat angled toward her without crowding, knees turned slightly away, one arm resting loosely along the back of the seat.He smelled faintly of metal and something sharper beneath it—gun oil, maybe.Blood marked his sleeve, dark and drying.
Her gaze caught on it before she could stop herself.
Nikolai noticed.His eyes flicked down briefly, then back to her face.“Not mine,” he said quietly.
She nodded once, accepting the information without comment.
The city blurred past outside the windows, streetlights streaking into pale lines.She watched the movement instead of trying to catalog it, trusting that if she tried to understand where they were going too soon, fear would find a way in.
The vehicle slowed, then turned.
The road changed.Pavement gave way to something rougher.The lights thinned.Darkness pressed closer.
An airport.
Not the kind she’d flown out of before.No terminal glow.No lines of parked cars.Just a long, low stretch of tarmac and a control tower that stood dark and empty against the sky.
Silence greeted them as they rolled through the open gate.
Too much silence.
