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Somebody smashes the car window. Glass rains down and a hand shoots out to grab me. I try to fight, try to twist away, but the hand is strong and sure, and it grips my arm with a pressure that makes me gasp.

Another man appears at the driver’s side. He smashes that window too and leans in to unlock the door. His face is close enough that I can smell his cologne, something expensive and cold.

“Ms. White.” His voice is low, accented in a way I can’t place. “Please don’t struggle. It will only make this more difficult.”

“Who are you?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he reaches past me and cuts the engine with a motion so quick I barely see it. The car goes silent, and suddenly I’m aware of how quiet the street is, how empty, how far away from everything I am.

“Out of the car,” he says.

I don’t move.

He sighs, a small sound that somehow makes this whole situation more terrifying. Then he reaches for my seat belt, unhooks it, and takes my arm with the same firm grip as the man behind me.

They pull me out of the car. My feet hit the pavement, and for a moment I consider running. But there are too many of them, and they’re too close, and I’m too aware of how easily they could overpower me if I tried.

The man who spoke leads me toward the SUV. The others fall into formation around us, blocking any sightlines, creating a wall of bodies that separates me from the rest of the world.

“Where are you taking me?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer.

“What do you want?”

Still no answer.

The SUV’s back door opens. The interior is dark, the windows tinted so heavily I can’t see through them. I hesitate at the threshold, every instinct screaming at me to fight, to run, to do something other than step inside.

There’s nothing else to do. I climb in.

Chapter Six - Maxim

“We have her.”

I look up from the documents on my desk. “Where?”

“East wing, in the holding room.”

I set down my pen. “She’s conscious?”

“Yes. Ms. White was surprisingly cooperative.”

I stand and straighten my jacket. “I’ll go now.”

Andrei falls into step beside me as I leave the study. The hallway is quiet, the estate settling into its evening rhythms of staff preparing for the night shift.

“Tell me about the extraction,” I say.

“Clean. No witnesses, no complications. She was driving home alone when we intercepted her.”

“Alone?”

“Yes. There was no indication she was expecting anything.”

That’s interesting. If she were a trained intelligence operative, she would have had protocols in place. She would have been watching for threats, avoiding predictable routes, taking precautions that would have made extraction more difficult. The fact that we took her so easily suggests either incompetence or innocence.

I don’t believe in incompetence. Not from someone who breached our systems.