Chapter 10 Aaron
Aaron
Location: Lisbon — Safehouse
Time: Late Morning
I’m already moving when her message comes in.
It’s a relay. They’re handing off observation.
That’s not casual surveillance.
That’s confirmation.
I don’t take the stairs. I take the service lift and come up silent, gun already in my hand, mind running through failure trees.
Door. Hall. No noise.
Good.
I open the apartment, and Lark is already at the door with her computer in her bag, shoes on, hair pulled back.
Prepared.
Of course she is. Does she even know how smart she is?
“How long?” she asks.
“Two minutes ago you were still theoretical,” I say. “Now you’re operational.”
Her eyes sharpen. “They’re not moving yet.”
“They will.”
I cross to the window and don’t look out.
I look at reflections.
Three people pass.
Then two.
Then—
“There,” she says quietly.
I see it.
The absence.
The street just… clears.
That’s when you die.
“Go,” I say.
We don’t take the front door.
We go through the neighboring unit Ronan prepped at dawn, out the service stairs, into the delivery corridor that smells like detergent and old cardboard.
My comm crackles. “They just lost the relay,” Ronan says. “You’ve got maybe ninety seconds before they switch to pressure.”
“Plenty,” I reply.
We exit into a side street and merge into foot traffic.
Too smoothly.
Too cleanly.
My gut tightens.
A van turns at the far end of the street.
Too slow.
Too deliberate.
“Change direction,” I murmur.
We do.
The van corrects.
“That’s not confidence,” Lark says under her breath. “That’s confirmation.”
“Yeah,” I say. “They found us.”
We duck into a narrow passage between buildings, cut through a bakery's back door, and out into a kitchen full of startled workers and flour dust.
No one screams.
Good.
We’re out the back and into a waiting car, Ronan staged for contingencies.
Engine already running.
We’re gone before the van reaches the corner.
Only then do I breathe.
Only then do I look at her.
“You okay?”
She nods.
Then, very quietly: “They weren’t trying to take me.”
“No,” I agree. “They were checking if they could.”