“We have thirty-six hours,” Vanessa said, tapping the screen of her tablet. “Once the funds hit the account in Grand Cayman, we route them to the Lisbon registry.”

“And then?” Grant asked.

“And then we disappear into the Mediterranean,” Vanessa said. “Your daughter will be our guest of honor.”

She spoke of Lily as if she were a pawn in a game of chess.

A piece to be sacrificed or traded when the time was right.

I squeezed the grip of my pistol, the textured steel pressing into my palm.

The urge to step out and pull the trigger was a physical ache in my chest.

But I forced myself to breathe through my nose, slow and steady, just as I had been trained at the academy.

An agent does not react to anger.

An agent acts on intelligence.

The bug I had placed under the desk was already transmitting, sending the audio directly back to the secure drive in my van.

Every word they spoke was being recorded, logged, and uploaded to a cloud server that Vanessa’s encryption couldn’t touch.