The afternoon sun hung fat and golden over St. George's Harbor, throwing long shadows across the private balconies of the resort cottages. A salt-heavy breeze rolled in off the water, stirring the palm fronds and rattling the rigging of the sailboats moored at the distant marina. The kind of breeze that promised a cool evening. The kind of place that promised three weeks of nothing but sand, booze, and the sort of decompression only operators coming off back-to-back rotations could appreciate.

Phillip Graves stood on his cottage's balcony, forearms braced on the railing, a half-empty glass of Blanton's sweating in his right hand. He watched a pair of tourists wobble down the narrow street below on rented scooters and allowed himself a thin, private smile. Amateurs. Everything about this island felt soft—the pastel buildings, the polite little British accents of the shopkeepers, the way the humidity made everything move a half-beat slower. Soft was good. Soft meant no cell phones buzzing with encrypted alerts, no pre-mission briefings, no one trying to put a bullet in his skull.

He drained the bourbon and stepped back inside.

The cottage was all clean lines and neutral tones. Beach-house chic. His duffel sat unpacked on the king bed, his M17 pistol laid out across the nightstand on a microfiber cloth. He'd reassemble it later. Maybe. The island was safe. Supposed to be.

His phone buzzed. Group text from Horangi, characteristically terse:

Arrived. At the restaurant bar. Getting started early.

Graves snorted and thumbed a reply. Give me twenty.

---

The Achilles Bermuda restaurant perched at the edge of the resort property, an open-air structure of whitewashed wood and blue shutters that caught every gust off the harbor. By the time Graves arrived, the others had already staked out a long table near the railing, close enough to the water to hear the lap of waves against the seawall.

Horangi sat at the far end, spine straight, nursing a bottle of local lager with the grim focus of a man who hadn't decided yet whether he was allowed to enjoy himself. His black hair was immaculate, his polo shirt pressed despite having been pulled from a suitcase an hour ago. The tiger tattoo peeked above his collar, motionless.

Across from him, Roland "Swagger" Kaminski had already acquired a cigarette and an audience of exactly no one except the poor bartender, who clearly regretted making eye contact. He rolled the unlit cigarette between his fingers, gray eyes tracking Graves's approach with predatory amusement.

"Finally," Swagger said, his French accent sliding smooth over the word. "The American arrives. We were about to start a betting pool on whether you'd gotten lost."

"Five minute walk." Graves pulled out a chair, reversed it, and straddled the seat. "Had to finish my drink first."

Swagger's mouth twitched. "Priorities. I respect this."

At the center of the table, König sat with his shoulders hunched forward—an old, ingrained habit of trying to take up less space that absolutely did not work for a man his size. He'd traded his sniper hood for a plain black baseball cap pulled low, and his massive hands were wrapped around a glass of water like it was the only thing anchoring him to the chair. The perpetual dark circles under his eyes looked almost bruise-like in the amber afternoon light.

Nikto sat beside him, close enough to be within arm's reach but angled slightly away—body language that read less as companionship and more as mutual perimeter coverage. His mask was a plain black balaclava, civilian-appropriate, though the effect was no less unsettling. He hadn't ordered a drink. Just sat there, blue eyes tracking every patron who walked through the door, every waiter who passed too close.

Graves caught the waitress's attention and ordered another bourbon. Then he leaned back and surveyed his assembled colleagues—Shadow Company and KorTac, adversaries turned uneasy drinking partners for the sake of three weeks of federally mandated leave.

"So." He spread his hands. "Who's got a plan for this vacation, or are we all just gonna sit here staring at each other like a support group for the socially maladjusted?"

"Fuck off," Swagger said, but without heat.

"Constructive start," Horangi muttered into his beer.

Velikan wasn't here yet. Neither were their bags, presumably, still being hauled up the cobblestone streets from the taxi stand. That left a conspicuous gap at the table, an empty chair that Graves found himself glancing toward more than once.

Nikto noticed. "He will arrive when he arrives."

"I didn't say anything."

"You were thinking it."

Graves leveled a finger at him. "Don't do that mind-reader shit. It's creepy."

"I am not a mind reader." Nikto's voice was flat as stamped metal. "You are simply obvious."

A low sound came from König—not quite a laugh, more an exhale through the nose. He was watching the harbor, the way the light caught the whitecaps. "It is... quiet here."

"That's the point, big guy," Graves said. "Three weeks of quiet. You earned it."

König's fingers tightened fractionally around his glass. He didn't answer.

The sun continued its lazy descent toward the water. The first round of drinks arrived, then the second. Conversation stayed surface-level—operational gossip, complaints about the humidity, Swagger's running commentary on the inferiority of Caribbean rum compared to Polish vodka. It was almost comfortable.

The late afternoon sun hung low over St. George's, casting long amber streaks across the weathered limestone cottages of The St. George's Club. The resort sprawled across a hillside overlooking the harbor, its whitewashed buildings connected by winding cobblestone paths and dotted with bougainvillea that had begun to lose its vibrancy in the cooling October air. A salt-tinged breeze rolled in off the Atlantic, rattling the fronds of the palm trees that lined the property's edge.

Graves sat on the veranda of the main clubhouse, a glass of dark rum sweating condensation onto the arm of his wicker chair. His sunglasses hid eyes that tracked everything—the elderly couple checking in at reception, the maintenance worker hauling a ladder toward the pool house, the distant figures of his men scattered across the property. 0-4 and 0-5 flanked the clubhouse entrance, dressed down in polo shirts and khakis but still radiating that unmistakable contractor stiffness. Graves swirled the rum in his glass, watching the liquid cling to the sides.

Inside the clubhouse's small fitness center, Velikan worked through a punishing set of weighted pull-ups. He'd swapped his full kit for a black compression shirt and cargo shorts. The few other guests who'd wandered in to use the treadmill had quickly found reasons to exercise elsewhere. The rhythmic clank of the weight plates and his controlled breathing were the only sounds in the mirrored room, his reflection multiplied endlessly across the walls. Between sets, he checked his phone. Nothing. Good.

Down by the waterfront, König had commandeered a bench overlooking the harbor. Sailboats bobbed at their moorings, and somewhere a halyard clanked against a metal mast in a rhythm that almost soothed him. He'd removed his boots, digging his bare feet into the cool grass, but the sniper hood remained pulled low. A pair of local teenagers had walked past twenty minutes ago, taken one look at the massive hooded figure hunched on the bench, and promptly turned around. He hadn't noticed. He was too busy running his thumb over a small chip in his phone screen, the device dark in his palm, thinking about nothing and everything simultaneously.

Swagger had found the resort's tiny bar tucked beneath the clubhouse stairs and had been steadily working his way through their Polish vodka selection for the past hour. Or rather, he'd been lecturing the bewildered bartender about the inferiority of their Polish vodka selection while settling for a brand he'd deemed "barely acceptable." The cigarette tucked behind his ear was unlit—the bartender had cited fire codes with the nervous energy of a man who'd already been told, at length, about the superiority of Polish tobacco.

Nikto had chosen the most isolated corner of the property—a small gazebo hidden behind an overgrown hedge near the resort's eastern boundary. He sat motionless on the wooden bench, back to a support column, sightlines clear to all approaches. A cup of black coffee beside him. He'd been watching a gecko on the gazebo railing for the past forty-seven minutes, tracking its movements with the same flat intensity he'd once used to track targets through a scope. The gecko had no idea it was being observed. Most things didn't, until it was too late.

Horangi moved through the property like a ghost, his footsteps silent on the cobblestone paths. He'd completed three perimeter walks since morning, mentally cataloging exits, blind spots, and the routines of the resort staff. The scar bisecting his eyebrow pulled slightly as he squinted against the sun. He'd paused near the pool, watching the reflection of clouds drift across the turquoise water, when something snagged his attention.

A door. The maintenance shed near the tennis courts. It hung slightly ajar, and that was wrong because he'd noted it closed and padlocked on his previous pass forty minutes ago.

His hand drifted toward his hip out of habit, finding nothing but the waistband of his swim trunks. No sidearm. No knife. Just three weeks of mandatory leave and the promise of relaxation he'd never learned how to accept.

He approached the shed with the fluid, economical movement of someone who'd cleared a hundred rooms in a hundred hostile environments. The door's padlock lay in the grass, still closed, the hasp apparently unscrewed from the doorframe with methodical precision. Someone had wanted in without leaving obvious signs of entry.

Horangi pushed the door open with two fingers.

The interior was dim, cluttered with pool chemicals, gardening equipment, and stacks of folded lounge chair cushions. It took his eyes a moment to adjust, and another moment to process what he was seeing in the narrow gap between a water heater and a shelf of chlorine tablets.

A foot. Bare. Female. The toenails painted coral pink.

The woman, one of the housekeeping staff, he recognized her from that morning when she'd knocked on his door asking if he needed fresh towels, lay contorted in the tight space. Her uniform was rumpled but intact. No obvious blood, no signs of struggle on her hands or arms. But her neck.

Her neck was wrong. The angle of her head was wrong.

Horangi's dark eyes traced the faint ligature marks barely visible above her collar. Something thin. Wire, perhaps. Garrote. The kind of kill that required proximity, patience, and a certain cold detachment.

He rose, stepped back outside, and pulled out his phone.

---

The group assembled in the clubhouse's private dining room within fifteen minutes. 0-4 and 0-5 had secured the perimeter around the maintenance shed with the quiet efficiency of men who'd done this work before. The resort manager had been corralled into a corner and instructed not to call the police until Graves gave the word.

Graves stood at the head of the long mahogany table, all trace of the relaxed vacationer gone. His jaw was set, the old bullet graze scar pale against his tanned skin.

"Housekeeping staff," he said, voice flat. "Name was Alicia Simmons. Thirty-four years old. Been working here six years. Horangi found her in the maintenance shed about an hour ago, but judging by the body, she's been dead since mid-morning."

He let that sit for a moment, blue eyes moving from face to face.

"The local PD would trip over their own dicks on a jaywalking call, let alone something like this. We are, by a significant margin, the most qualified people on this island to handle a homicide investigation." His tone brooked no argument. "Until we know what we're dealing with, nobody leaves the property. Nobody talks to the press. Nobody calls home."

König shifted his weight, the chair creaking alarmingly beneath him. "You are suggesting... one of the staff?"

"I'm not suggesting anything yet." Graves pulled out a chair and sat, steepling his fingers. "What I know is that a woman is dead, and the manner of her death suggests someone who knew what they were doing. Could be a guest. Could be an employee. Could be a local who saw an opportunity."

"Or could be one of us," Nikto said. The words dropped into the room like a stone into still water. His masked face gave nothing away, but his voice was pitched low, almost contemplative. "We are strangers here. We have no alibis. No one watching us."

Swagger let out a sharp, humorless laugh. "You always this cheerful, towarzyszu? Woman gets killed and your first thought is we did it?"

"My first thought is that we are all trained to do exactly this." Nikto didn't blink. "To kill quietly. Efficiently. Without leaving evidence. It is not an accusation. It is an observation."

Velikan said nothing. He stood near the door, arms crossed, the oni faceplate of his helmet reflecting the room's warm lighting in fragmented orange and gold. His silence was, as always, a statement in itself.

Graves held up a hand. "Enough. We're not going to solve this by tearing each other apart." He turned his attention to {{user}}, the motion deliberate, expectant. "You've been quiet. What's your read on this?"