I move.
2
NADIA
The man bleeding on the warehouse floor is the only reason I am still alive.
This is not a thought I want to have.
It arrives anyway, the way every dangerous fact arrives in my life. Mildly. Annoyed at the inconvenience.
I draw the gun back into my hand and keep it on his chest.
His eyes do not leave my face. Not afraid. Not pleading. Steady. The steadiness of a man who has been pointed at before. He has decided, from the way I am holding the weapon, that I am not yet one of them.
He is not wrong.
I am already calculating.
Sirens. Maybe four blocks south. Closing.
The man I need to deal with first is the one bleeding on the concrete. Not the dead ones. Not Federov, who has run. Not thepress van that will be here before sunrise. Him. The variable that just walked into my night and rearranged it.
He has minutes before shock takes him. Less if I make him walk.
I am going to make him walk.
"Get up."
He is already getting up.
He moves like a man who has been shot before. Slow. Controlled. No wasted movement. He puts a hand on the table to steady himself. The table does not shake. The table is doing better than I am.
Fuck. Breathe.
The dead mercenary at the gap has a phone in his pocket. I hear it before I see it. Three short buzzes. A pause. Three more. The cadence of a check-in. Someone on the other end is about to know we are still here.
I cross to him.
I do not look at the man bleeding behind me or the bodies. I have looked at bodies in courtrooms, in photographs, and in PDFs in three languages.
I have never looked at one I watched die.
I am not going to start now.
I crouch and pull the phone out of his jacket pocket without touching the rest of him. The screen is unlocked. The message preview sits at the top.
One word.
FERRARO.
For a second, I cannot read it. The letters do not assemble. My eyes go over the word three times before my brain accepts that it is a word and that the word is mine.
They came for me.
Not the cash. Not Federov. Not the deal. Me.
I have been watching irregularities in the Moretti shadow banking network for a long time. Probes that come from outside. Sophisticated. Expert. Almost invisible. I have not surfaced any of it. I am not ready to. I do not know who is doing it.
