Chapter Two
The rain had a sharp, metallic taste in Tirana.
It fell in misty sheets over the cracked sidewalk, softening the hard outlines of crumbling facades and mixing with the bitter bite of espresso on Ezra Navarro’s tongue.
He sat alone beneath the sagging canvas awning outside a narrow café wedged between a pharmacy and a shuttered bookstore.
Hoodie up. Face in shadow. Boots dusted with roadside grime.
He stirred the coffee absently, eyes fixed on the folded paper beside his cup. The ink in the corner had already blurred from a stray raindrop. One line stared back at him like a taunt he had only partially deciphered.
The key is where it should be. The answer is yes. Now go find yours.
Van had always known how Ezra thought. The encrypted message had come wrapped in so many layers of misdirection it had taken Ezra a couple of months to untangle.
A cache in Bucharest. A safe deposit box in Shkoder.
And finally a corrupted flash drive hidden inside an NGO database that only existed on a dusty terminal in a forgotten clinic in northern Albania.
And all of that to get to—this.
A list.
Six hundred and twenty-seven girls. Names. Photos. Ages.
All trafficked through an orphanage network tied to cartel-backed “rescue” operations.
The kind of NGOs that looked squeaky clean on the surface—polished websites, staged photos, smiling foreign volunteers—but beneath it all, the funding trails led to narco accounts, arms shipments, and relocation programs that didn’t rescue anyone.
They disappeared them.
Buried deep in the manifest files—beneath pages of falsified intake forms, falsified birth records, and case worker logs likely written by someone with blood on their hands—was a string of genetic metadata. Encrypted, mislabeled, but traceable if you knew what to look for.
Ezra had known. And the DNA string flagged in red across his screen?
Donovan Knowles.
Ezra had stared at that match result for a full five minutes before he remembered how to breathe. The noise in his head had gone dead quiet. Not in shock. Not even fear. Just ... gravity. Like the weight of a hundred moments collapsing at once. Van had a daughter.
A daughter.
And he’d died before he had been able to find her.
Ezra didn’t know the mother. Didn’t know where the girl had been taken or what name she lived under now. Just that she was five years old. Missing. Maybe moved to another country. Maybe sold off.
And Van had been on the trail—alone.
Ezra hadn’t even known.
The rage that had followed had been slow-burning and cold. Not at Van. Never at Van. But at himself—for being too far away, for not reading the signs sooner, for every second he’d wasted chasing ghosts when there had been flesh and blood still out there. His flesh and blood. Still waiting.
His blood pressure spiked just thinking about it.
“Porositet?” the waiter asked gently, hand ghosting near the table’s edge.
Ezra blinked, pulled back from the spiral, and nodded. “Po, faleminderit.” Already ordered. Thanks.
A man at the next table, sharp suit, café-casual confidence, turned with a practiced smile. “Shqipja jote eshte e mire ... por nuk je vendas,” he said easily. Your Albanian is good, but you’re not local.
Ezra gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Jam vetem ne kalim.” Just passing through.
The man’s smile turned flirtatious, and he said, shifting effortlessly to English, the accent faint. “Men who are just passing through are often the most interesting.”
Ezra smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Whilst that is most definitely true, this one is very much taken.”
The man tilted his head, intrigued. “He lucky?”
Ezra paused.
Something bitter curled in the back of his throat. His hand tightened around the ceramic cup, the warmth of it grounding him. “I don’t think he knows and after the last time we were in the same place at the same time, I don’t think he would care.”
“Then, tell him.” The stranger said with a simple shrug.
Ezra looked away, eyes drifting out into the mist-shrouded street beyond the café.
Wish I had.
Ricky’s face rose unbidden—sharp lines, quiet mouth, those dark, wounded eyes that had tracked Ezra like he saw him in a way no one else ever had.
That night—unexpected, cautious, and terrifyingly real—had cracked something open in Ezra’s chest. He’d panicked.
Bolted. Told himself it was nothing. That he had to leave in order to get to the bottom of what Van had been searching for.
But he’d felt it. The shift. He hadn’t just left Ricky that morning. He’d abandoned something—something that might’ve been the first real connection he’d had since Van. And he regretted it every damn day since.
The man studied him for a moment longer, then reached into his coat and dropped a few bills on his table—enough to cover a drink he hadn’t ordered and a tip generous enough to make an impression.
“No one ever really just passes through, Mr. Navarro,” he said softly in Albanian.
Ezra’s gaze flicked upward sharply.
He hadn’t given his name.
But the man was already walking away, polished shoes silent on the rain-slick cobblestone, his dark silhouette folding into the mist like he’d never been there at all.
And Ezra, heart suddenly thudding, knew with grim certainty—
He’d just been made.
Ezra didn’t move right away.
The man’s departure left a void at the café, the kind that made instincts prickle. The way he’d known Ezra’s name and just slid it into the conversation matter-of-fact like. The way he hadn’t pushed, hadn’t waited for a response, just—stood and walked away.
No one ever really just passes through.
Ezra’s pulse kicked up. He pushed away from the table, eyes scanning the street. Nothing overt. A few pedestrians under umbrellas. A kid kicking a flattened soda can. Two men standing near the corner stall, talking low and fast—but not watching him.
Still, he took the long way back to the hotel. Five left turns, two crossbacks. Standard counter-surveillance walk. No shadows. No tails.
But his stomach wouldn’t unclench.
His hotel was a three-story crumbling thing on the edge of the district. Cheap, anonymous, the kind of place where the clerk never asked for ID as long as you paid in cash. Room 203. Second floor, corner window. He kept his go-bag under the bed and his pistol in the hollowed-out drawer lining.
He was a step from the entrance when everything went sideways.
Footsteps behind him—too close.
Ezra pivoted. Saw the first guy too late. Fist connected with his ribs, hard and practiced. Another from the left—maybe the same man from the café. It felt like it.
He dropped low, twisted, brought his elbow up into the nearest attacker’s chin. Felt the crunch. Someone grunted. A blow glanced off his temple—sparks danced across his vision. He staggered into the alley between the hotel and the butcher’s shop next door.
Another hit—blunt force, something metal. A knee drove up into his stomach, and—fuck—a knife into his side. The warmth of his blood spilling down his side a clear sign that things had gone from bad to fucked, and the world tilted.
Ezra yanked his Glock from under his jacket. Fired once—missed.
But it spooked them.
He heard retreating steps, one of them limping. Ezra pushed off the wall, breath ragged, and forced himself down the alley. There was a metal stairwell at the back. He dragged himself up it, one step at a time, to the second floor.
Not to his room. To the utility closet beside it.
He jammed the door shut behind him and collapsed against the wall, breath stuttering. Blood ran hot down his side—he didn’t know if it was from his ribs, his head, or both.
He fumbled the burner phone from his jacket. Opened the secure app. Only one contact mattered.
To: R. Bowen
Subject: “I’m sorry”
Didn’t know how to say it before. Should’ve stayed. Should’ve told you. There’s something I need you to see. If this gets to you, I didn’t make it. The list attached—Van’s list—one of them is his. Please find her. Please keep her safe. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. Love E.
He hit SEND.
Watched the icon spin once. Twice. Delivered.
His fingers slipped. The phone hit the floor.
Ezra slumped sideways, head thudding softly against the concrete wall, vision tunneling. The rain was still falling outside, steady as a heartbeat. Somewhere below, someone laughed, a muffled voice echoing up the stairwell.
He thought of Van.
Then Ricky.
Then—nothing.
Nothing.
****
The job was simple.
Corporate security for a lobbying firm based out of Arlington.
A rotation of private meetings, donor events, and motorcade routes so tightly controlled they might as well have been scripted.
Ricky spent his days perched on rooftops or parked in black SUVs, earpiece in, eyes scanning for movement that never came.
The men around him were ex-military, too, clean-cut, quiet, obsessed with time and protocol and who was sitting next to who at the next benefit gala.
They didn't ask questions. Didn’t care about the shadows under Ricky’s eyes or the way he scanned exits out of habit. As long as he made his check-ins and didn’t fuck up the perimeter, no one gave a shit.
Which suited him fine.
Nothing exciting. Nothing personal.
Just structure. Routine. White noise to drown out the ache he hadn’t figured out how to name.
His trailer was parked behind a gas station convenience store on the edge of town.
It was thirty minutes from the firm’s office, backed up against a wooded lot with no neighbors and no expectations.
Small. Cheap. Clean enough. A twin mattress on the floor.
A folding table with one chair. A tiny bathroom with a flickering light that he never bothered to fix.
He didn’t need more than that.