The Moretti Global tower's parking garage has six security cameras on the executive floor and four on the floor below.
All ten go dark at 7:46 p.m.
I am at the Range Rover, keys in hand. I have just walked out of Alessandro Moretti's office for the second time in three days. I have not slept. The woman who walked out of that office is not the same as the one who walked in the first time. I do not yet know how to be the new woman.
The cameras go dark.
I clock it before the first man clears the pillar.
Two seconds.
Two seconds, Nadia. Always two seconds. Use them.
I drop the keys. I draw.
The Glock comes up the way she taught me. Lower. Wider. Weighted into the back leg. The first man clears the pillar atthree meters, and I put two rounds in his chest before he realizes my hand has not gone where his briefing said it would.
He drops.
The second man comes from the other side.
Faster. The kind of fast that means somebody has spent a lot of money on him. The somebody who has spent two years letting me think I was hunting him.
I drop the Glock and meet him with my body.
Krav Maga is not a martial art. It is a finishing tool. The point is not to win. The point is to be the one who walks away. I take his weapon hand at the wrist. I drive my knee up into his thigh. I drop him.
He is not going to be the one who walks away.
The third one is behind me.
I feel him before I hear him. I am already turning when the injector punches into my neck.
Eight seconds.
I use them.
The eight seconds end.
The garage tilts.
Dark.
Awareness comes backthe way training intended it to.
I keep my eyes closed. I count. Heartbeat at fifty-eight. Breathing at twelve. Mouth dry. I am in a chair. Metal. Cold. Thekind a man uses when he does not care about the comfort of the person in it. My wrists are zip-tied to the arms, double looped, by someone who has done this before. Ankles too. Phone gone. Glock gone. Leather jacket gone.
The room smells like the Hudson at low tide.
Red Hook.
I have been to Red Hook because I had Marco Rizzo move Sean Donovan less than three hours ago.
Sean is in Red Hook.
I am in Red Hook.
One of us is in a Moretti facility. The other is in a shipping container.
