"Sir—""You can stay here. I won't blame you." Saul paused, then added, "Or we could switch places. You go in and play the hero. I'll stay here and worry about you..”Leo just stared at him incredulously. "Switch places? You want me to go in there?""Why not? You're younger. And probably better at running than I am."Leo's eye twitched. "One, I am older than you and two this is clearly insane!""Probably." Saul opened the car door. "But I'm going either way."He was halfway out when Leo grabbed his arm.The grip was firm, not painful, but insistent. Saul turned back to look at him.Leo's eyes were different now. The joking, the frustration, the exasperation, all of it had faded, replaced by something raw. Something scared."Sie," Leo said quietly. "Take little risk. Please."Saul waited."If the plan fails, if something goes wrong, we'll find another way." Leo's voice was barely above a whisper. "You have resources. You have money. You have an entire empire at your disposal. You don'

But the cops wouldn't get here in time. By the time they tracked the van, Saul and Daniella would be wherever these men were taking them. And whatever they wanted, whether it be ransom, revenge, something else, they'd have hours to get it.'Unless someone stops them now.'Saul looked at the men in the back with them. One was young, early twenties, maybe, with acne scars and nervous hands. The other was older, heavier, his gun resting on his knee like it belonged there.'They're not watching me,' Saul felt his eyes narrow. 'They're watching Daniella.'He shifted his weight. The zip ties cut into his wrists. He ignored the pain and focused on the van's movements. Every bump. Every turn. 'We're slowing down,' he thought.The van turned again. The tires squealed."What the hell?" the driver shouted.The van slowed. Not gradually—abruptly, like someone had slammed on the brakes. Saul was thrown forward, his shoulder slamming into the back of the front seat. Daniella cried out through h

Saul spotted Leo leaning against the vending machine that was positioned by the entrance, a bag of chips in his hand. He'd already eaten half of them. Crumbs dotted his burgundy suit. The fluorescent lights of the station hummed overhead, casting everything in that particular shade of sickly yellow that made even healthy people look unwell. The machine itself was ancient, one of those old models with the metal coils that never quite pushed the snacks far enough forward, and someone had scratched a phone number into the glass decades ago, the digits now worn smooth by a thousand impatient fingers."Sir," he said, his voice low. "You look like hell.""Feel like hell," Saul said.Leo grinned. It was a tired grin, but genuine. He crunched another chip, the sound loud in the relative quiet of their corner. "The car's totaled.""I'll buy you a new one.""You'd better. That was a limited edition." Leo said it without heat, without real accusation. He'd driven that car through a warehou

The conference room on the ninety-seventh floor was bathed in the cold blue glow of the holographic display that hovered above the table, casting long shadows across the faces of the three people gathered around it. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city sprawled beneath a blanket of evening darkness, its lights flickering like a circuit board stretched to the horizon, and the distant hum of traffic filtered up through the glass like the sound of a sleeping beast.Saul sat at the head of the table, his bandaged wrists resting on the polished wood, his head still throbbing with every heartbeat from the blow he'd taken in the van. The paramedic had said something about monitoring for concussion symptoms, dizziness, nausea, blurred vision, but Saul had stopped listening after the words "you should go to the hospital." He wasn't going to the hospital. Hospitals meant paperwork, and paperwork meant questions, and questions meant people might start digging into who he really was,

Saul's stomach tightened. He could feel the defensive walls going up inside him, the instinct to protect himself from questions he didn't want to answer."It wasn't relevant to the mission," he said, and even as the words left his mouth, he knew they sounded weak, knew they sounded like an excuse, knew they wouldn't satisfy her."Six armed men broke into a Kinai facility, kidnapped a customer who happened to be there, and held you at gunpoint in the back of a van while they drove away," Kim said, her voice still quiet but sharper now, each word landing like a dart. "And you don't think that's relevant to the mission you were conducting inside that building?""The kidnapping happened after I'd completed my primary objectives," Saul said, keeping his voice as steady as he could manage even though his heart was pounding in his chest. "The device was already in place. The inspection was already done. The data had already been collected. What happened after that was an unpredictable situ