Chapter 41
MIA
The lobby is quiet, just a bored concierge scrolling through her phone and a couple checking in with too much luggage, nobody paying attention to the woman with the bag over her shoulder and the wild look in her eyes.
I push through the revolving door and Manhattan hits me like a wall—cold air, wet pavement, fat drops of rain beginning to fall.
I make myself walk. A brisk walk. Running attracts attention.
The street is slick with rain and city grime, neon signs bleeding color across the pavement in streaks of red and gold, vibrant under the dark skies.
I pull up my hood from my jacket and scan the sidewalk, cataloging faces, checking reflections in shop windows, doing the math on every person within a hundred feet.
I spot two men in dark coats across the street.
They weren’t there when I came out.
They’re looking right at me.
I keep walking, a quick but steady pace. Casual. Just a woman heading home after a late night, nothing to see here, nothing worth following.
I can tell they fall into step behind me.
Fuck.
I duck into the alcove of a closed bakery and dig the earrings out of my pocket. My hands are shaking as I push them through my healing lobes, wincing at the sting, but they click into place and suddenly Bayo’s voice is in my head, mid-sentence, like he’s been talking to dead air this whole time.
“—copy? Mia, do you copy?”
“Bayo,” I say, my voice faint and ragged. “I’m here.”
“Jesus Christ, where have you been? Cal checked in an hour ago, said he was going back to bring you new comms, and then bring you back here for debriefing but he never showed. We’ve been trying to reach—”
“Cal’s dead,” I say blankly.
Silence on the line. Just for a second, but I feel every millisecond of that information hit.
“What?” Bayo whispers. In the background I can hear Kat asking the same thing, wondering what we’re talking about.
“Vanguard killed him,” I say, gulping down air as the memory comes back, as the awful realization, the truth, settles in. “In my hotel room. Twenty minutes ago. Snapped his neck. Oh my god, Bayo…he’s dead, Cal is dead.”
More silence as I try to quell the rising panic. Then Bayo’s voice comes back, harder now, all business. “Where are you?”
“Street level. Two blocks east of the hotel.” I risk a glance back. The men are still there, maintaining distance but not losing me. “And I’ve got a tail. Two hostiles, maybe more.”
“Description?”
“Dark coats. Professional. They’re not trying to hide.”
“Global Dynamix?”
“Probably, maybe Kozlov’s men, though they don’t look it. Too pretty.” I take in a deep breath. “Nate said Julia must know. Knows who I am, knows everything. She orchestrated this whole thing, Bayo. She sent him to find Cal. She wanted this to happen.”
I hear him swearing under his breath, a rapid-fire mix of Yoruba and English that means he’s thinking fast. “Alright. Okay. Head toward Hell’s Kitchen. There’s an extraction point on…” I hear him typing, “48th and 10th, alley behind the parking garage. Kat and I will meet you there.”
“Copy.”
“And, Mia?” His voice softens. “I’m sorry about Cal. We’ll mourn him later, together. Right now, you stay alive. You hear me?”
“I hear you.”
I start moving again, knowing that Bayo is still in my ear if I need him.
The rain is coming down harder now as dusk falls, turning the city into a blur of headlights and umbrellas. I weave through pedestrians, using bodies as cover, keeping my pace just fast enough to gain ground without breaking into a sprint. The men behind me match my speed.
There’s a subway entrance ahead. I take the stairs two at a time, shoving through the turnstile with my MetroCard, and the underground swallows me whole.
It’s rush hour now, so the platform is crowded with commuters. I push through them, heading for the far end, putting as many bodies between me and the stairs as possible.
A train is pulling in. Not my line, wrong direction, but it doesn’t matter.
I slip through the doors just as they’re closing.
The men don’t make it.
I exhale heavily, watching them through the scratched plexiglass as the train lurches forward, their faces tight with frustration, already reaching for phones to call it in.
They’ll have people at the next station.
They’ll have people everywhere. This whole train is filled with surveillance that Global Dynamix probably supplies to the city.
But I’ve bought myself a few minutes.
I ride two stops, then transfer, then transfer again, zigzagging through the system like a rat in a maze.
At 50th Street I surface, climbing back into the rain, and the cold hits me fresh all over again.
My jacket is soaked through. My boots squelch with every step.
The grief I’ve been holding at bay keeps trying to claw its way up my throat and I keep shoving it back down because I can’t, I can’t, not now, not yet.
Cal is dead.
I know.
Nate killed him.
I know.
And you’re next if you don’t keep moving.
I hail a cab.
The driver is an older guy with a Mets cap and a rosary hanging from the rearview mirror.
“Where to?” he asks tiredly.
“To 48th and 10th. Fast as you can, please.”
He pulls into traffic. The wipers beat a steady rhythm against the windshield, smearing the city lights into watercolor streaks. I twist in my seat to check the rear window.
Black SUV. Three cars back.
It could be nothing. Could be coincidence. New York is full of black SUVs and not all of them are hunting me.
But as I keep watching, it’s not changing lanes. Not passing. Just following behind us, block after block, still three cars back.
“Shit.”
The driver glances at me in the mirror. “You okay back there?”
“Fine. Just—can you speed up?”
“Lady, I get that you’re from England, or something, but this is Midtown. Nobody speeds up in Midtown.”
He’s right. The traffic has thickened into something approaching gridlock, brake lights stretching ahead like a river of red, and we’re barely crawling. I check the mirror again. The SUV is closer now. Two cars back.
“Pull over.”
“What? We’re not even—”
I tap my mobile against the screen behind his seat to pay and wrench open the door before he’s fully stopped, stumbling out into the rain, into the honking chaos of stalled traffic, my shins brushing against a car’s bumper. Horns blare. Someone shouts. I don’t look back, just run.
The sidewalk is packed but I shoulder through, using elbows when I have to, not caring anymore about attracting attention because they already know where I am, they’re already coming, and the only thing that matters now is putting distance between me and that SUV.
I cut down a side street. Then an alley.
The rain is relentless, streaming down my face, plastering my hair to my skull, and every breath burns in my lungs but I keep going, keep pushing, because stopping means I would have to fight and I’m not sure what the people working for Global Dynamix have up their sleeve, but it’s going to be bad.
It would be a fight I can’t win and I’m not ready to die. Not tonight. Not like this.
Hell’s Kitchen opens up around me, narrow streets, walk-up apartments, fire escapes zigzagging down brick facades.
Thanks to my mapping and old habits, I know this neighborhood well by now.
I know which alleys connect, which doors are usually unlocked, which rooftops you can access… if you’re desperate enough.
I’m desperate enough.
“Bayo,” I gasp into the comms. “I’m close. Two blocks out. Where are you?”
“Almost there. One minute.”
One minute. I can survive one minute.
I round a corner and see it—the parking garage, the alley behind it, the extraction point. Sixty feet away. Fifty. Forty.
A van screeches around the corner ahead of me.
It blocks the alley entrance, headlights cutting through the rain, and before I can reverse course there are footsteps behind me, heavy and fast, and I spin to find three men closing in from the way I came.
Trapped.
The van doors slam open. More men pour out. Four, five, six of them, all in tactical black, all moving with the synchronized efficiency of a unit that’s done this before.
I pull my knife.
It’s a stupid move. A knife against six trained operatives is a joke, a gesture, a way of saying I’m going to make this hurt even if I can’t win. But I’m not going down without a fight. That’s not who I am. That’s not what Cal helped train me to be.
The first one reaches me and I slash low, catching him across the thigh. He stumbles with a grunt and I’m already moving, driving my elbow into the second one’s throat, feeling cartilage crunch under the impact. He goes down choking and I spin, blade up, ready for the third—
Something slams into my back.
I hit the wet pavement hard, the knife skittering out of my grip, and then there are hands everywhere—grabbing my arms, my legs, pinning me down while I thrash and kick and scream into the rain.
“Get off me! Get the fuck—Help!”
A bag comes down over my head. The world goes dark. I can’t see, can barely breathe through the heavy fabric, and they’re hauling me up now, dragging me toward the van while I fight with everything I have left, kicking everywhere I can, relishing every point of contact, every groan I draw out.
But it’s not enough.
They throw me inside and the floor is cold metal against my bare skin. I hear the doors slam. Feel the engine rumble to life. Smell exhaust and leather and something chemical, like cleaning solution.
“Bayo,” I try to say, but the word comes out muffled, useless. “Bayo, I’ve been lifted…Bayo? They have me.”
Nothing.
There is no response.
My heart goes cold.
The van starts moving.
And then I hear it—a voice cutting through the chaos, calm and cold and terrifyingly familiar. Not from the comms but from inside the van.
“Hello, Ms. Baxter.” A pause, weighted with satisfaction. “Or should I say…the Moth.”
Julia.
I stop struggling. There’s no point anymore. She’s won this round and we both know it.
“You’ve caused quite a bit of trouble,” she continues.
The van takes a sharp turn and I slide across the floor, unable to brace myself.
“Compromising my asset. Gathering intelligence you had no business gathering. And now poor Callum, dead on a hotel room floor because you couldn’t keep your legs closed. ”
Rage flares hot in my chest. “Fuck you.”
“Such language.” I can hear the smile in her voice. “We’ll have to work on that. We’ll have plenty of time, you and I. So much to discuss. So many questions I need answered.”
“I won’t tell you anything,” I grind out, the bag feeling hot and claustrophobic with my breath, with my rage.
“Oh, Ms. Baxter.” A hand touches my shoulder, light, almost gentle. I flinch. “How do you think I got to be where I am? Everyone tells me everything. Eventually.”
The van accelerates.
The rain drums against the roof.
And somewhere in the darkness of that hood, with Julia’s hand on my shoulder and Cal’s death still echoing through my bones, I make myself a promise.
I’m going to kill you for this.
I don’t know how. I don’t know when.
But I’m going to kill you.
I hold onto those thoughts as the van carries me away into the night.