On the feed, Oliver sat exactly where Jonas had predicted, corner table, back to the wall, angled so he had a clean view of the front entrance and the side street beyond. Phone on the table. Left hand wrapped around the coffee cup, right arm loose but ready.
Jonas’s mouth ticked at the corner. Textbook situational awareness.
“Where are you?”Lotus’s voice crackled over the comm, warm and nosy.“You’re not in the ops room.”
Jonas kept his gaze on the feed. “Visiting my mum.”
There was a pause.“And visiting your mum involves… a drone?”
“Long story.”
“Uh-huh. You’re doing the Watchdog thing, aren’t you?”
He gave a low sound that wasn’t quite agreement. “Enjoy your day off, Lotus.”
“Not until you tell me what you’re doing.”
He cut the channel, the corner of his mouth twitching against a smile.
Then the café door opened, and she walked in.
Dark wool coat. Long hair pulled back in a loose twist that said she cared enough to look polished but didn’t waste effort on perfection. The walk was deliberate, measured. The kind that didn’t invite interruption. Clara Sutton.
Her file had said museum archivist. Twenty-five. Engaged to Oliver Grant. Clean record. On paper, ordinary.
In reality, she was a problem.
Because the second Jonas saw her in real life, something inside him shifted. Sharp, immediate, and entirely unwelcome. The sensation slid under his skin, quickening his pulse without permission.
Attraction wasn’t foreign to him. He’d noticed women before. But this… this was different. It wasn’t logical, wasn’t convenient, and it didn’t fit anywhere in the ordered grid of his mind.
He didn’t like variables he couldn’t predict. And Clara Sutton looked like she might upend every calculation he’d made.
Through the camera’s zoom, her eyes swept the café once before landing on Oliver. Not long enough to seem suspicious. Just enough for Jonas to note the detail and file it away.
Oliver laughed at something she said. The sound didn’t reach Jonas through the feed, but Oliver’s eyes gave him away as he scanned the street, rooftops, and angles Jonas had used on other nights.
That was new.
Jonas’s thumbs moved over the controls, sending the drone up another twenty feet. He switched to thermal.
Two heat signatures bloomed in the image. A black van, parked one block down. No one was moving. But they weren’t watching Oliver.
They were watching Clara.
A thread of cold slid down Jonas’s spine. He tapped commands into the drone’s interface, pulling the camera tight on the van’s windshield.
Then the GPS scrambled.
Not a glitch. Deliberate.
He flicked into manual override, bringing the drone into a tight arc over the van, snapping stills in rapid succession. His system began running them through facial recognition before the feed cleared.
The matches came back faster than he liked. Too fast.
One of the faces had been in South Africa.
At that place.
