Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 215412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 862(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 862(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
The footage keeps rolling. Seconds tick by. Too many of them.
Then movement.
Dove appears in the doorway of the shop, wearing her skates.
That alone tells me everything. She didn’t plan to go anywhere.
She rolls over the threshold, slow and reactive, her instinct screaming that something isn’t right. Her posture changes, shoulders tensing, chin lifting, subtle, but I know her.
She looks down the street, where the guards went. The wrong direction.
Someone moves behind her.
He slips into frame as if he’s been there the whole time, hiding outside the camera’s edge. He’s masked, average height, average build, wearing street clothes. Nothing remarkable about him.
My breath leaves me in a broken sound as he clamps a hand over her mouth.
She doesn’t even get a second to fight. He lifts her and drags her backward, out of the camera’s view. Gone in a blur of motion and blue hair.
“That’s not Jag.” I lurch forward, hands braced on the desk. “Jag’s bigger. Taller. Broader through the shoulders.”
“Whoever it is took her to the service road behind the shop.” Carl scans the screen, his voice thick with guilt and failure. “There’s a blind stretch there. No cameras. He must’ve known that.”
Theo freezes the frame, zooming in on the empty edge where she disappeared.
“He probably had a car waiting,” Carl says. “Engine running. In and out in under ten seconds.”
Monty exhales through his nose.
“Which means while we were chasing the decoy through the harbor, Dove was already leaving town.” I sit back, sick to my soul.
The room feels too small, the hum too loud. My heartbeat is everywhere, in my ears, my throat, my teeth.
“By the time the roads locked down, she was probably already outside city limits.” Monty gives my shoulder another squeeze and lets go. “Could’ve been driven straight to a private airstrip or transferred to a boat offshore.”
She was gone before we realized we fucked up.
I squeeze my eyes shut for half a second, just enough to survive it.
Jag didn’t orchestrate this.
“Pull the log of the tattoo parlor.” I meet Theo’s gaze behind his glasses.
Theo nods and turns back to the wall of monitors, fingers flying across the keys. The screen flashes, loads a grid of feeds, and centers on one. The hidden camera from the tattoo shop.
Since Jag concealed it near the ceiling, the overhead angle shows every corner of the main room.
The time stamp rolls back to ten minutes before I walked in, when the Strakh guards were still alive.
Everyone quiets.
The screen goes black. Not dim or shadowed. Gone.
“What the fuck?” My heart pounds.
“The lights in the shop,” Ross says. “Someone shut them off.”
There isn’t a drop of natural light or street bleed because the only window in the shop sits inside the room Jag built for me. Sealed off.
“Fuck!” I shove my hands in my hair, panic rising.
Theo hits a key, and the feed snaps to night vision.
Green washes over the screen, and my stomach drops.
The door opens, letting in a blast of blinding light and a rush of men dressed in black. In a blink, they’re inside with the door shut, trapping the Strakh guards in the pitch-black.
Each of them wears low-profile goggles as they fan out, already knowing where everything is. No hesitation. No whispered orders.
The Strakh guards freeze, confused, hands out, blinking into nothing. They can’t see a damn thing. They spin, backs to each other, trying to orientate, trying to figure out why the lights went out and who just entered the shop.
My throat closes as I count six goggled men. Military haircuts. Lean builds with zero wasted movement.
“Night vision goggles.” Monty exhales sharply.
“Yes.” Carl nods. “Lightweight tactical vests with holsters and blades mounted at their thighs. Coms in their ears. Matching gear, right down to the boots.”
Each one knows exactly where he’s going.
The guards don’t.
It’s a slaughter.
A hand clamps down. A blade flashes, and the first guard goes slack without a sound. Another drops near the counter, taken from the side before he can even turn his head.
Six against four.
Unfair doesn’t begin to cover it.
The remaining guards reach for their guns, fingers scrabbling at holsters, but the men in goggles are already on them. One disarms. Another strikes low. A third steps in and finishes it.
No gunshots. No yelling. Just bodies folding to the floor in the quiet hum of night-vision static.
It’s over in seconds.
I can’t breathe.
They didn’t come for a fight. They came to clear the room.
“These aren’t street thugs or local muscle.” Monty rubs his nape.
“This was funded and rehearsed,” Carl says. “High-end gear. Military spec.”
I’m going to be sick. The room spins, needles fill my gut, and pain grabs in my chest.
The feed keeps rolling.
Night vision holds steady as the green-hued bodies shift. The six attackers no longer move like predators. They sweep the room, checking pulses and confirming kills.
“They waited until you dropped Dove at the mechanic shop.” Theo pauses the video and compares the time stamps. “See? They timed it to the second, attacking the tattoo parlor right as you were leaving the garage.”