Heat in Marrakech

Chapter 2: Better Than You Lie

The riad had a basement. Of course it did. Vance men built bunkers, not wine cellars.

Sabastian flipped a switch and the carved cedar wall slid open. Cold air and gun oil hit Yvonne’s face. Racks of rifles. Cases of ammunition stamped with Vance Industries logos. A shooting lane that ended in ballistic gel scarred with hundreds of impacts.

“This is why the caretaker quit.” He didn’t look at her. Just pulled a matte-black pistol from the wall and checked the chamber. “He found the armory.”

Yvonne stayed at the top of the stairs. Her towel had been traded for black linen pants and a tank top Sabastian threw at her. They fit. That meant he’d sized her up. That meant he’d been planning.

“You said you needed to know if I can shoot.” Her voice echoed off the stone. “Or was that just to get me naked again?”

Now he looked. One eyebrow up. “You weren’t naked. You were wrapped in three hundred dollars of Egyptian cotton.” He set the pistol on a steel table and nodded at it. “VI-9. Vance Industries, nine millimeter. No serial. No trace. Can you load it or do you just have calluses for show?”

She came down the stairs. Every step calculated. The air got colder. The walls got closer. This was a test. Fail it, and she was a liability. Pass it, and she was a threat. She wasn’t sure which was worse.

She picked up the gun. Weight was familiar. Muscle memory from her father’s hunting trips, before Switzerland, before Derek. She ejected the mag, checked it — empty — slammed it back in, racked the slide. Clean. Fast.

“Where’s the ammo?”

Sabastian pushed a box toward her with one finger. “Targets are at fifteen meters. Three rounds center mass. Two to the head. You’ve got ten seconds.”

“How do you know I’m not going to put those two in you?”

“Because if you wanted me dead, you’d have done it upstairs with the tea.” He stepped back, arms crossed. “And because Derek’s the only man you want to shoot tonight.”

She loaded the mag. Seven rounds. Left three in the box. Message: I don’t waste ammo. I don’t waste time.

She took position. Exhaled. The first shot cracked. Center mass. Second. Third. The gel targets absorbed them with wet thumps. She shifted aim. Head shot. Head shot. Five rounds. Six seconds.

She safetied the gun and set it down. Didn’t look at him. Looked at the targets. One ragged hole in the chest, one in the forehead. Efficient.

Silence.

Then: “Four and a half years since Switzerland.” His voice was quieter. “Where’d you practice?”

“Roofs in Prague. Shipping containers in Naples. A farm in Chile where the pigs eat better than the guards.” She finally faced him. “You don’t stay alive five years by missing.”

He nodded once. Approval. A Vance didn’t give praise. They gave nods. Acquisitions.

He pulled his phone from his pocket, thumbed the screen, and turned it to her. Security feed. Grainy. Marrakech-Menara Airport. A private jet. Men in suits. One face she knew better than her own.

Derek Cross. Older. Harder. Same smile that lied to her for two years.

“He landed an hour ago.” Sabastian watched her reaction. “Forty-eight hours early. Victor must have gotten impatient.”

Her stomach dropped, then hardened. “The manifest said three days.”

“Manifests lie. Vance satellites don’t.” He locked the phone. “Victor doubled the bounty twenty minutes after my flight iced over. He knows someone’s in his city. He doesn’t know it’s you. Yet.”

Three rounds center mass. Two to the head. That was the plan for Derek. Had been for five years.

“We move tonight,” she said.

“We move when I say.” He stepped around the table, closing distance again. He smelled like gun oil now, not cardamom. “This is my city, Yvonne. My riad. My war. You’re the weapon. Weapons don’t set the timetable.”

She went very still. “I’m not your weapon. I’m your partner. Or I walk out that garbage door and Victor finds me first.”

His jaw ticked. He didn’t like the word partner. Vances didn’t have partners. They had subsidiaries.

“Prove it.” He nodded at another case on the wall. Bigger. Heavier. “SVD. Russian. Seven-six-two. Target at three hundred meters. Wind’s bad tonight. If you can hit it, you set the timetable. If you miss, I do.”

It was a kill shot. The kind that ended wars and started them. The kind her father taught her before Cross Holdings put him in a ravine.

She walked to the case. “Deal.”