"Answer me, Meira! Did you lie to me from the very beginning?" Bisma demanded, his voice slicing through the static of the tactical radio frequency like an icy blade.
Meira sat frozen behind the steering wheel of her surveillance van, parked in the snow-dusted shadow of an abandoned rail yard overlooking the safehouse. Her phone was still warm against her ear, but the silence inside the vehicle felt deafening. Down in the valley, the residential windows of North Zurich glowed with warm, oblivious yellow light, contrasting sharply with the freezing abyss opening up inside her chest.
"Bisma, please," Meira whispered, her breath fogging the chilly interior windshield. "You have to listen to me. It wasn't like that. I didn't know everything at first, I swear to God I didn't."
"Then what
