“Tell him she's secured.”
The warning cracks through my earpiece half a second before the first window explodes.
Glass screams. Alarms wail. Christmas lights snap and die, plunging the safehouse into a strobing nightmare of emergency red. I dive, shoulder slamming into the floor as bullets chew through the space where my head was a breath ago. Concrete dust fills my mouth. My heart detonates.
I roll, grab the pistol from under the couch, and fire back...controlled, brutal, no wasted motion. Two shapes drop in the doorway, bodies folding wrong. The smell of cordite and pine needles mixes....someone had strung a cheap wreath by the door. The irony almost makes me laugh.
“Zee...status!” I shout.
Static answers. Then her voice, strained, distant. “Multiple vans. Thermal masks. They’re bre
