Kate let out a short, harsh laugh. “Protect me? You’re the reason I’m in this mess. Your world. Your fight. Your technology. I was fine. I was invisible. You, Alistair Finch, are a walking disaster. You’re a beacon that draws monsters, and I was just a waitress who got caught in your light.” Her words stung, sharp and true. He had no defense against them. He had brought this to her. “I know,” he said quietly. “But the monsters are here now. We can either face them separately, or we can face them together.”
She stared at him, her jaw set, her eyes filled with a turbulent mixture of anger and resignation. She had run for seven years. And it had all been for nothing. One single moment of action, one decision not to let innocent people get hurt, had unraveled it all. As she stood there, locked in a silent battle with her own fate, a tiny dot of red light appeared on the wall just behind her head. Finch’s eyes widened in horror. His mind, trained to process data at lightning speed, recognized it instantly. A laser sight. A sniper. He did not think. He reacted. “Get down!” he roared, lunging forward, shoving her with all his strength.
Kate, caught off guard by his sudden movement, stumbled backward. The red dot, which had been moving from the wall toward her chest, was momentarily on him. The window across the small room exploded inward in a shower of glass and splintered wood. The sound of the sniper rifle, a deafening crack, was simultaneous. Time seemed to slow down. Finch felt a searing, white-hot pain rip through his shoulder as the bullet meant for Kate’s heart tore through him instead. The force of the impact spun him around, and he crashed to the floor beside her. The last thing he saw before the darkness at the edge of his vision closed in was Kate’s face. The waitress was gone. The fear and anger were gone. In their place was the ghost of Operation Nightingale. Her eyes were chips of ice, her expression one of absolute, lethal fury. She was already moving, grabbing her duffel bag with one hand and his arm with the other, dragging him away from the exposed window, back into the world of shadow and violence he had dragged her from.
The hunt was on. The bullet that saves a life can also sign a death warrant. Catherine Pierce, the ghost from a forgotten war, was now firmly in the crosshairs of an enemy that never forgets. Her quiet life was shattered. And her fate was now chained to the very man she had saved.