Page 118 of 10 Days to Surrender

He points one quivering finger down an adjacent hallway. I nod in grim thanks. Then I end his miserable life.

Leaving the dead lieutenant behind, I stride down the hall like the Grim Reaper, stepping over bodies and adding others to the piles.

My boots leave bloody prints on the concrete. Each shot I fire is precise, economical.

Another Serbian breaks cover, screaming as he charges me with a knife. Poor bastard must have run out of ammo. I sidestep hiswild swing and put him down with a double tap to the chest. Textbook.

In the warehouse beyond me, the gunfire is already starting to die down. It’s been less than fifteen minutes since we breached, but the warehouse floor is littered with Serbian corpses. A few survivors have thrown down their weapons, hands raised in surrender. They won’t last long.

I key my radio. “Building secure. Phase one complete.”

Feliks’s voice returns: “All the rest of the secondary targets all went down simultaneously. They never knew what hit them, Sasha. Clean fuckin’ sweep.”

I allow myself a small smile as I reload. Dragan’s empire is crumbling, and he doesn’t even know it yet.

But he will.

Very, very soon.

I kick open the door at the end of the hall down which the Serbian lieutenant pointed. It’s an empty office, unremarkable. But the leather of Dragan’s office chair still holds his body heat.

I run my fingers over the mahogany desk, imagining him sitting here not ten minutes ago, thinking he was untouchable. I wonder what he’s thinking now.

The wall safe hangs open, its contents scattered. I’m sure they’re nothing important—Dragan is an arrogant motherfucker, but not a stupid one. Sure enough, all I find are useless passports, ledgers, a Glock 19 with serial numbers acid-scorched.

I’m slamming the drawer shut when tires crunch outside.

I stride to the window and look out. Three stories below, a black Mercedes pulls up at the curb, its armored bulk gleaming under sodium lights.

And there he is.

Dragan emerges from a side door, flanked by what’s left of his security detail. Even from here, I can see the tension in his shoulders, the way his head whips back and forth as he surveys the street. He knows he’s fucked. The silence from his outposts must be deafening. As deafening as this C4 is about to be when it blows this warehouse to the fucking sky.

Just before he ducks into the car, some instinct makes him look up.

Our eyes lock through the glass.

His face goes slack with shock as recognition hits. The great Dragan Vukovic, seeing a ghost. Seeing the man he thought he’d killed, standing in his office like Death himself has come calling.

I bare my teeth in what might charitably be called a smile. I want him to see me. I hope he understands exactly what’s coming for him.

His bodyguard yanks the car door open, breaking the spell. Dragan practically dives inside.

I watch the Mercedes peel away, leaving rubber on asphalt.

“Run, run, little rabbit,” I murmur, tapping the tip of my gun on the window glass. “It won’t be much longer now.”

45

ARIEL

I’m hovering in that hazy space between sleep and waking, where everything feels soft and uncertain. The twins are tumbling and kicking like they sense my unease. I shift position for the hundredth time, trying to get comfortable. It doesn’t happen.

Four days since he left. Four very long days. Still, there’s cedar and mint clinging to the sheets if I look hard enough, the ghost of him haunting our bed. I press my face into his pillow and inhale deeply. I’m only torturing myself, but how can I stop?

Just as I’m finally starting to drift off again, something changes in the air.

A presence.

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