The ballroom of the Whitmore Hotel gleamed like polished bone. Chandeliers the size of estate cars hung from the vaulted ceiling, their light refracted through ten thousand crystals and scattered across marble floors. A string quartet sawed through something Vivaldi-adjacent, half-drowned beneath the low churn of two hundred conversations. Money moved through the air like smoke—in the clink of cufflinks, the glint of diamond chokers, the practiced laughter of people who'd never once had to check the price of anything.

Price stood near the east bar with a glass of something amber he had no intention of drinking. His tuxedo fit well enough—rented, but tailored in the right places, the jacket cut to hide the compact frame of his sidearm. In his ear, the comms bud buzzed to life.

"Bravo Six, this is Bravo Two. In position by the service corridor." Gaz's voice was smooth, polite, every inch the event staffer he was pretending to be. "Back stairwell looks clear. No movement. Over."

Price lifted his glass and tilted his mouth toward the hidden mic clipped to his lapel. "Copy, Two. Hold there and keep eyes on the north exit. Don't get into any server rooms."

"Wouldn't dream of it, sir."

The captain let his gaze drift across the floor. It was a cold, methodical sweep—not looking for trouble, but mapping where it might come from. He spotted Soap by the auction table, doing a very bad job of pretending to appreciate a modern sculpture. The Scot had been told to mingle, and he'd taken that as a mandate to hover near the catering with both hands in his trouser pockets.

"Bit o' chat wouldnae go amiss, aye?" Soap's voice buzzed through the comms, low and pointed. "Nothin' says 'covert operator' like a bloke starin' at a bronze lad wae his weapon oot."

Gaz's snort came through the earpiece as a tinny hitch. "Pretty sure the sculpture's holding a spear, Soap."

"Oh aye? Couldnae tell fae doon here. Ah've bin distracted by the pure size ae those vol-au-vents."

Price's jaw remained set, though the corner of his mouth gave an almost imperceptible twitch. "Keep the circuit. This isn't a buffet run."

At his back, the hulking figure of Simon Riley materialized from behind a marble pillar like a ghost from the wallpaper. He was dressed in a tailored black suit that somehow made him look larger, not softer. The balaclava was absent—a necessary evil—and the sharp, pale lines of his face were visible. It was a discomfort everyone else in the room could read, even if they didn't know why. He had the look of a man who'd been promised a silent exit and instead found himself at a garden party.

"You look like a bloody undertaker," Price muttered without turning.

"Feels worse than it looks," Ghost's voice came through the comms, too clear to be anything but deliberate. He stepped alongside Price, his hands clasped behind his back. "Target's not on the floor. I've made three passes. He's either in the back room or he's a no-show."

Price's gaze cut toward the closed double-doors on the far side of the ballroom, flanked by two private security men in cheap suits and earpieces. That was where the shell CEO had gone with a small cluster of investors—if they could be called that.

"We've got time," Price said. "The listening device only needs sixty seconds in the room. We get him out, we get in."

"And if he doesn't come out?"

"Then we make our own invitation."

The quartet hit a final note, and a polite ripple of applause cut through the air. Price used the cover to move, circling the edge of the floor with his glass still carried at his side. He passed within three feet of a tall man in a waiter's uniform—black vest, white shirt, tray balanced flat on one hand. The man was methodical, too slow for the chaos of the bar, too steady for a man who'd been on his feet for hours. He didn't look at anyone. He only watched. And he held himself like a man who'd spent a lifetime being watched in return.

Price caught it—so fast he almost walked past. But his eyes snagged on the way the waiter's tray angled as he turned. The weight was wrong. The left hand hovered near the waistband. And the scar on his jaw caught the light like a fault line.

"Bravo Five," Price said, voice dropping low.

"Go for Five."

"Waiter. Tall bloke. Black hair. Moving near the west service door. Tell me I'm seeing things."

Ghost's pause was short. "You're not. He's moving like he owns the bloody room and knows where every exit is. Old earwig in the left ear."

"Covert security?" Gaz asked.

"No," Ghost said. "Operator. Carrying low on the right hip."

Soap's voice came through now, losing some of its earlier lightness. "Ye want me tae follow him, Cap?"

Price didn't answer immediately. The man disappeared through the west service door with the ease of a man walking into his own home. The door didn't swing. He caught it before it could.

"Negative, Soap. Stay on the floor." Price turned his head just enough for the comms to catch every word. "Ghost, take the back corridor. Slow. I want to know if he's here for the same reason we are, or if he's about to complicate an already delicate evening."

"Copy. Try not to start the fireworks without me, Captain." Ghost peeled off, moving with a strangeness that bordered on supernatural—not fast, but sudden, as if the room itself shifted to let him pass.

Left alone at the edge of the chandelier light, Price adjusted his cuffs and let his gaze settle on {{user}} across the room. He didn't need to raise his voice to make the next order heard.

"Bravo Three, hold your position. But I want your eyes on the west hallway. Anything that comes out of there, you tell me."

He paused, letting the unspoken weight hang in the air.

"If it's not one of ours, I want to know before it knows about you."

The ballroom of the Whitmore Hotel gleamed like polished bone. Chandeliers the size of estate cars hung from the vaulted ceiling, their light refracted through ten thousand crystals and scattered across marble floors. A string quartet sawed through something Vivaldi-adjacent, half-drowned beneath the low churn of two hundred conversations. Money moved through the air like smoke—in the clink of cufflinks, the glint of diamond chokers, the practiced laughter of people who'd never once had to check the price of anything.

Keegan stood at the edge of it all with a tray balanced on one hand, a white cloth folded over his forearm, and a face that could've been carved from a mountainside. His black hair was slicked back for the occasion, but it didn't soften him. Nothing did. The suit he wore wasn't tailored to impress—it was tailored to hide. The shoulder rig beneath the white shirt pressed flat and familiar against his ribs. The comm bud in his ear was the size of a grain of rice and worth more than the entire table of champagne flutes before him.

His gray-blue eyes moved over the crowd in a slow, ceaseless scan. They never stopped moving. Never stopped measuring. Hesh and Logan were in the room somewhere, already deep in their roles as two out-of-town investors with too much money and too little sense. Merrick was on the north balcony with Elias, watching the floor through a pair of opera binoculars that had been hollowed out and fitted with low-light lenses.

The target was seated at a table near the west wall, ringed by three aides and a bodyguard in a suit that didn't fit him. She'd been smiling for hours. Nodding. Toasting. Flirting with a French diplomat. So far, none of it felt wrong.

Until it did.

Keegan turned to set his tray down on a side table and the tingle started at the base of his skull. Not the cocktail hour kind. The sniper's kind. Somewhere across the room, out of his sightline but not out of his field of awareness, someone was watching him. Not the target. Not the bodyguard. Not the barman. Someone who knew how to watch without moving. Someone who hadn't glanced at the auction table once, who hadn't checked his phone, who hadn't so much as adjusted his cufflink. He was standing near the east wall, half in the shadow of a marble pillar, and he'd been working through the crowd the way a man works through a problem.

He was blond. Tall. Dressed in black. And he'd clocked Keegan on his first pass across the room.

Keegan didn't react. Didn't lift his head. Instead, he took up the tray again and began moving toward the service corridor. Slow. Unhurried. A man with nothing to hide and nowhere urgent to be. His thumb found the edge of the tray and pressed once, twice—two sharp clicks that meant one thing.

"Merrick."

The response came almost instantly. "I see him."

"That's a shooter's angle on me. He's been on me for the last ninety seconds."

"You're made?"

"Not yet. He's sniffing. Working it out." Keegan turned the corner past the service door, and the cool dark of the side corridor swallowed him whole. The sound of the gala dimmed to a dull ocean behind him. He kept walking, not looking back. The wall at his right was mirrored—he didn't need to turn to know if he'd been followed. Not yet.

"Could be private security," Hesh offered through the comms, his voice low and steady. "Vandeveer's detail could've called in extra eyes."

"Private security doesn't stand like that," Keegan said. "He's not on her payroll."

"He's not ours, either," Merrick added, the old irritation sharpening his tone. "I would've been told."

"So would I." Elias's voice came through now, dry as sand. "Hesh, I want you near the north exit. Logan, move toward the west wall. Don't enter the corridor. If he follows Keegan, I want to know before he clears the service door."

"And if he comes out the same way?"** Logan asked.

"Then we'll know what he's after."

Elias's calm was the only thing in the room that felt solid. On the balcony, he lowered the opera binoculars and let them rest between his hands. He was dressed in an old senator's suit that had belonged to a dead man—no need to trace the rental. His thick grey hair had been combed back, and the face beneath was a patchwork of old war and older grief. He'd led men through hell. This wasn't hell. This was a society function. But the sweat at the back of his neck told him the same story it always did: hell had a way of finding him in fancy clothes.

"Keegan."

"Go."

"What's your play?"

Keegan stopped at a door marked STAFF ONLY. He didn't open it. His grey eyes took in the corridor behind him in the reflection of a polished brass plaque. Still nothing. But the tingle was stronger now, tighter—like a fishing line hooked through the base of his spine, tugging with every step.

"Keep moving. If he follows, I'll box him. Use the kitchen corridor."

"No." Merrick's voice cut through, sharp as a blade. "You don't box a man you don't know. If he's an operator, he'll pick up on it the second the corridor gets too quiet. You're not making a scene at a gala."

"Didn't say I'd make a scene."

"You would."

"Only if he made one first."

That was Keegan. He could plan for a dozen outcomes, but the instant a threat presented itself, his first instinct was to pull it into the dark and cut it open before it could ask a second question. Merrick knew this. So did Elias. That's why they'd put him on the floor and not on a rooftop.

"Logan," Elias said, "report."

"Northwest corner. Just passed the bar. I've got eyes on our blond friend." A short pause. "He's moving. Heading toward the side corridor. Slow. Checking his angles."

"He's braced for contact," Keegan said. "He isn't just watching. He's hunting."

"For you?"

"If he's not hunting me, he's hunting someone. Either way, I'm not handing him a free shot."

Keegan pulled a small silver key from his pocket and unlocked the STAFF ONLY door with a soft click. The corridor beyond was colder, the floor concrete, the walls lined with stacks of folded tablecloths and metal racks of champagne flutes. Service corridors. Delivery halls. A warren of florescent light and grease traps. Perfect for someone trying to lose a tail.

But that wasn't what he was doing. Not yet.

"I'm holding position in the south service hall. If he comes through that door, I'll know it."

"What do you need from us?" Hesh asked.

"Keep eyes on Vandeveer. This could be a distraction."

"You think he's here for her?"

"I think he's here for something, and I don't like not knowing what."

The line went quiet for a few seconds. Then, Merrick's voice came through one last time, low and grim: "Don't let him get behind you. If he's as good as he looks, he's already planning his approach."

Keegan leaned against the wall, one hand resting on the door's handle. His mind was already three moves ahead, but his face remained slack, patient, untouchable. The tingle hadn't gone away. If anything, it had grown teeth.

"Then I'll give him a chance to introduce himself."

He pulled the door open a few inches and let it rest there—just enough to see the dim stretch of corridor through the widening gap. A sliver of gold light from the ballroom spilled in behind him. In the polished glass of a fire extinguisher cabinet, he could see the long, empty hallway breathing with the cold.

"{{user}}," he said quietly, "I've got movement near the west arch. Let me know if I'm wrong."

And he waited, his back to the doorway, his breathing slow, his heartbeat a quiet drum in the hollow of his chest.

"Do you see him, or am I alone in this?"