Welcome, dear reader, to my test story: A Part of Her. This was originally written as a short story for a runaway-themed contest under the name "A Mother's Love." It deserved to be a novel. I hope you enjoy it. I will be posting a chapter a week, but I thought you might enjoy a double bill this first time. Have fun!

  Warning: This novel deals with the subject of organized sexual violence. If this topic is difficult for you, I recommend avoiding it entirely. The subject is handled respectfully and with tact, but it is one that speaks for many women.

  Chapter One - Dark Times

  October 18th, 2007 - Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

  Alessandra De Luca had no idea what time it was. The room where she was being held cked windows, and there were no clocks to answer the question for her. That was by design, of course. Her captors did not need her to know what time it was. They told her when to sleep, when to wake, and when to entertain her clients. Her entire world was controlled for one purpose: to service the needs of others.

  The windowless room that comprised her world was, in theory, comfortable. She had stayed in worse hotels over the years. She had a bed and a bathroom, and any food, clothes, and cosmetics were provided. If she was hurt by a client, her wounds were cared for, and her general health was maintained. Naturally, this only sted only as long as she was of use to her captors.

  The clients made her skin crawl. Exclusively men, and almost all of them, wealthy Arabs. They all shared a taste in women, and she matched it exactly. To them, she was a fetish pything; a toy to beat, to fuck, and to abuse to their heart's content. It was a transaction made far above her head, and she never saw a penny. In truth, she was little more than a well-kept pet.

  She wasn’t here by choice, but then, none of the girls were. Like the others, she had been taken from Europe against her will. She had been drugged and smuggled over borders until she had arrived in the Middle East. As far as she knew, she was somewhere in Saudi Arabia’s capital city, Riyahd. Her existence was now a commodity to be used and expended.

  That existence alone was the most bitter falsehood of all: Alessandra De Luca was not even a real person. Her entire identity was a fiction and a fabrication; a cover created and inserted into the world to serve a purpose; to allow an intelligence operative to move freely into the criminal underworld without detection.

  Everything had gone wrong, and she was left to suffer the consequences. The pn had been to use her as bait to tempt the traffickers into the open. They would allow her to be taken and that would allow them to trace the group’s pipeline back to its source. Once they had enough information, they would sweep in and set her free, rolling up the operation in the same fell swoop. She was never supposed to end up here.

  It had been weeks since she had heard from her handlers. Somewhere deep inside, her heart still held the vain hope that they would be coming to free her. With each passing day, and each lecherous client she had to service, that hope faded even further into bckness.

  There had never been any pn for her to have to sleep with the clients in the execution of her mission. No matter how important the outcome, there was no way she would have signed on to the operation if that had been the case. Everything they knew about the organization told them that they would have time to intercept her before she would have to do anything with any clients.

  That had never happened.

  There was a knock at the door that roused her from her mencholic introspection. The knock meant only one thing: a client. They were the only ones who knocked. It wasn’t a respect for her privacy, but rather a call to task. It was time to perform.

  Standing slowly, she checked her appearance in the full-length mirror beside the bed. Her blonde hair and bold makeup were perfect, despite her terrible mood. The bck silk negligee was covering just enough of her body to entice attention rather than provide any real digntiy. The woman looking back at her smiled, but there was no light or life in her eyes anymore. It had been six weeks, and that had left her long ago. Closing her eyes, she exhaled and centered herself in the moment. Burying a little more of her soul, she fixed the false smile on her face and approached the door.

  Opening the door, she found her client was waiting, his expression brightening immediately when he saw her. The man was, like so very many of her clients, Arab. He was of medium build and wore smart Western suits despite the desert heat. Unlike some of them, however, he wasn’t quite as aggressive. It was a small but significant mercy in her line of work.

  The man smiled as the door opened, his eyes drifting up Alessandra’s body until his eyes met hers. Despite his intent to be charming, it made her skin crawl. “Somehow Habibti, you manage to look far more beautiful every time that I see you,” he smiled, his Saudi accent thick and husky.

  “It is only for you, Sayyid,” she purred back, her smile not slipping a fraction of an inch. “Would you like to come in? I was waiting for you.”

  The man nodded, and Alessandra offered him her hand. She led him into the room and towards the bed that dominated the center of the space. She gnced at the drinks cabinet, “Can I get you a drink?”

  The cabinet was only to be touched when a client was in the room. While they were evidently located in an Ismic country, the usual rules did not seem to matter here. They existed in a world beyond rules and decorum, a pce where money mattered more than faith or w. Here, even the most outwardly devout client seemed to enjoy funting the tenets of their own faith, especially when given the opportunity for a little depravity.

  “Pour me a whiskey,” the man answered.

  Removing his jacket, he took a seat on the foot of the bed. His gaze followed Alessandra as she glided across to the cabinet and prepared his drink. “Would you mind if we just talk today?” he asked gently. “I am quite tired.”

  “Whatever you desire, Sayyid,” she replied, sitting back primly beside him as she handed him the tumbler. “Whatever you desire.”

  “My name is Hassan, you know this, my darling.”

  “Of course… Hassan,” she replied demurely, the smile slipping slightly.

  The man reached out and cupped her cheek with his hand. “You look so sad, my desert flower. Please smile for me, I will never hurt you.”

  Alessandra forced a smile to her lips. It was an affectation, but it appeared real enough after practice. It was easy to see that Hassan did not believe her, but he did not seem to want to break the fantasy. Some men simply wanted to use her, and some, to hurt her. Others, like this man, wanted something more akin to the girlfriend experience; a fantasy where they imagined, just for the moment, that she actually loved them.

  ”My day was truly a bore,” Hassan sighed, stippling the whiskey as he stroked the fingers of his other hand along her naked thigh. “I had two Iranian imbeciles try to sell me short on drilling equipment for a new field expansion. They think that Hassan is new to the business world!” He scoffed.

  ”I’m sure you didn’t let them get the better of you,” Alessandra crooned, her fingers dancing along the man’s forearm.

  Hassan Al Darhudi was an arms merchant, from what she had learned. He always presented himself to her as though he were a legitimate businessman, a facilitator in the oil industry. Somehow, it was as though he wanted her to think well of him, rather than know the darker truth. Ironic, for the client of a brothel.

  Al Darhrudi allowed his hand to slip between her thighs as he talked about his business. Alessandra forced her mind to drift as she felt the man’s fingers graze against the fabric of her panties. Even to this man, she was little more than a pything. A toy to be used as he saw fit. Any sign of resistance or reluctance was brutally punished by her masters.

  No matter how repulsive his touch felt, she had learned not to show it. She had learned to suffer many indignities with that same empty smile on her lips. She had even learned to pretend to enjoy it. They hurt her less when she acted as if she enjoyed it.

  The man had just started to compin about Iranian cuisine when there was a muffled bang followed by low staccato rattle out in the corridor beyond her room. Al Darhrudi paused, seemingly confused by what he had just heard. Alessandra, however, recognized the sound of suppressed gunfire almost immediately.

  Batting his hand away, Alessandra jumped up from the bed and grabbed her silk robe from the dresser. She kicked the stiletto pumps off of her feet. Someone was shooting their way in, and she wanted as much mobility as she could muster. Realizing that being barefoot in a gunfight was a poor decision, she stuffed her feet into a pair of slippers.

  “What is going on?” Hassan asked, furrowing his brow. “Come back here to me, my darling.”

  Alessandra felt her heart beating harder as the gunfire drew closer. She shot the man a dirty look, “Be quiet.”

  “You… what?” the man balked, his expression darkening as he tried to process her shift in tone.

  “Keep your head down and stay the hell over there,” she ordered, yanking the metal railing from her wardrobe to use as a makeshift weapon. Quickly, she darted across to the wall beside the door and waited, the improvised staff in hand.

  As the gunfire drew closer, Hassan finally seemed to realize what was happening just outside the door. While his money and status might have convinced him he was a powerful man, the threat of impending violence revealed a pin and ugly truth. Like a coward, he scrambled for cover behind the bed, leaving his sexual pything to stand between him and the oncoming gunmen.

  As she waited, Alessandra strained to hear what was going on outside in the corridor. Whoever it was, they were keeping their communication too low for her to hear any accent or nguage. It was possible that it was a rescue mission, but she almost daren’t not allow herself to hope. In equal measure, it was also possible that it was a rival organization come to take over or to wipe them all out.

  No matter who was about to come through the door, Alessandra was not far enough gone to lie down and accept her fate. There was every chance that they would kill her, but she knew that she would rather die fighting than allow her purgatory to continue.

  Without warning, the door to her bedroom burst open and a soldier burst into the room. The man’s weapon was raised as he jabbed left to clear the blind corner. Reacting on instinct, Alessandra dropped low and swept the man’s legs with the rod. Stumbling forward, the soldier’s rifle fired, sending a stream of bullets into the wall and shattering bottles in the drinks cabinet beside the bed.

  Without waiting for him to hit the floor, Alessandra was already moving, and she leapt on the man’s back, pinned his arms to his side with her knees. “Who the hell are you?” she growled, shoving his head into the carpeted floor.

  “Amerdfjfh,” the man mumbled into the carpet.

  ”What the hell did you say?”

  Before he could repeat himself, Alessandra was scooped off the man by a rge arm that wrapped around her torso and pulled her away in one swift motion.

  “Get off me!” she screamed, kicking out for anything in range, connecting with something hard behind her.

  “Hey, calm down ,kid, we’re friendlies. We got you.”

  “Get off me!” Alessandra screamed, writhing within the unrelenting grasp of the man who was holding her off the ground.

  “Hey,” the huge body yelled in her ear. “FRIENDLY… honey, you’re safe now, we got you.”

  Chapter Two - Operational Inconsistency

  May 28th, 2014 - Nice, France

  Ryan Knight was nervous, but then, he always was before an operation. It didn’t matter how many times he went out in the field; he always got the same pregame jitters right before kickoff. It reminded him of something one of his old instructors had once told him; nerves were often the best asset an Intelligence Officer could have. Nerves meant that you were taking the job seriously and took the time to prepare. It meant that you were aware of the danger and focused. Ryan had known more than enough Operations guys who had cut corners and let their guard down; they never seemed to st very long.

  At twenty-nine years old, he had been with the Central Intelligence Agency for the st eight years. Recruited directly from college, he had attended The Operations Directorate’s six-month course at Camp Peary, Virginia.

  Ryan Knight would be the first to tell you that he was no chiseled Adonis. Like most Intelligence Officers in the Agency, he was a pretty average guy in almost all respects. The truth was that it benefited him far more greatly than any Hollywood action movie would ever dare to portray. Supermodels and big buff action men tended to draw far more attention than the girl or guy next door. Standing at five feet seven inches tall with a little optimism, he was often seen as the kid brother of the Paris Field Office. He would never be James Bond, but it made him just right for James Bond’s job.

  The old town district of the city of Nice was heaving with tourists. All around, they were out enjoying the pleasant early summer weather on the French Riviera. They filled the shops, the cafés, and the sidewalks of the Mediterranean destination to capacity. At the moment they were filling the tiny square in front of Nice’s Cathedral of Saint Réparate.

  The Agency′s target today was Abbas Ahmad, a Lebanese terrorist responsible for a string of attacks throughout Southern Europe and North Africa. Ever the noble Jihadi warrior, Ahmad frequently sent others to do his dirty work for him. Choosing instead to spend his time throwing threats at the West from a position of retive obscurity. They were in Nice today because he had made a crucial mistake.

  “Target will be on you in sixty seconds.”

  Ryan clicked his tongue twice to acknowledge the radio transmission, the sound being picked up by the bone-conductive microphone located in his left ear. He smiled at the woman behind the counter in the little ice cream shop as he accepted his frozen dessert, “merci.”

  Exiting the shop, Ryan turned north along Rue du Pont Vieux and started walking north through the heaving foot traffic. He wasn’t entirely sold on the ethics of this part of their mission, but to date, it was the only chink in the armor of Ahmad’s terrorist network; his family.

  Little did Abbas Ahmad’s loyal zealots of know, but their devout leader had two children with his French mistress who resided in a cozy apartment on the French Rivera. It was a snippet that had cost them a valuable asset, but it had given them their first real opportunity to target the terrorist in months.

  Ryan pushed his shades back on top of his head as he walked, allowing them to hold his blonde hair out of his eyes as he scanned the crowd ahead of him. In a loose blue linen shirt and a pair of jeans, he was invisible to the passers by that flowed around him.

  “Red tank top, tan shorts, kid is on her left wearing a blue dress,” the disembodied voice intoned without emotion, “Watcher Two has them one two zero meters your twelve o’clock, Foxtrot. Snatch location four zero meters, white van.”

  “Foxtrot, Acknowledged,” Ryan muttered to himself as he licked the ice cream.

  Just ahead of him on the curb, he spotted the idling florist’s van and slowed his walking pace.

  “Target five zero meters, coming to you now, should be visual.”

  Ryan gnced ahead and spotted a brunette woman in a red tank top holding the hand of a little girl as she walked along the sidewalk. She matched the intel package for Ahmad’s girlfriend, Marianne Laurent, perfectly. “target sighted.”

  “All callsigns confirm status and standby to execute,” the voice in his ear intoned.

  “Bravo, good to go.”

  “Alpha, Confirm.”

  “Charlie, standing by.”

  “Gamma, 10-4.”

  “Echo, on target.”

  “Foxtrot, ready and waiting.”

  “Hotel, Roger.”

  Ryan nonchantly licked his ice cream as he closed the distance to Laurent. The woman was chatting casually to her child as she strolled south along the road. The van door cracked open just a few inches as they drew closer, in preparation for the snatch. Ryan adjusted his pace slightly to ensure that he intercepted the two as they arrived at the correct point.

  Like pnetary bodies in space, the van door, Laurent, and Ryan all aligned in a perfect moment. Turning, Ryan raised a hand as if to wave at the woman as he called out, “Ah, Ca va, Marianne!”

  Confused, the French woman faltered and looked his way at precisely the same moment that the van door slid open and Ryan’s other hand shoved her backward into the interior. Scooping up the child under his arm, he followed her into the vehicle, and the door slid smoothly closed behind them. Without a pause, the vehicle started and lurched away from the curbside to join the flow of traffic. The entire operation had taken three seconds to complete.

  Fighting the rocking vehicle, Ryan held the young girl out of harm's way as the other operative in the back bound Laurent’s hands and feet with zip ties.

  “One, this is Charlie, package secured.”

  “Excellent work, Charlie, RV as pnned for handoff.”

  “Charlie copies.”

  The young girl cried out and reached out for her writhing mother, but Ryan hushed her and held her close, keeping the struggle out of her view. The other operative reached down and stuffed a rag in the woman’s mouth before injecting her with a syringe.

  Nobody noticed the abduction on the narrow medieval street of Nice’s old town. It was over so quickly that few had time to process what they might have seen. Before anyone could put the pieces together, the florist’s van was lost in the busy traffic of the French Riviera city.

  *       *       *

  The warehouse by Nice Airport looked about as dipidated and run down as one might expect of a property that was sandwiched on the thin strip of nd between the mouth of the Var river and the airport’s refueling depot. At one point, it had been used to store fertilizer, and it still managed to smell vaguely of ammonia.

  The door opened as the van approached, and rolled smoothly closed behind it once they were safely inside. The Agency’s Operational Command Center had been set up here a few days earlier, having been driven down from the Paris Field Office in a series of nondescript vans. By nightfall, be on its way back north again with no sign that it had ever been there.

  Once they stopped, Ryan eased himself out of the van with the small girl in his arms. She was calmer now, but she was still clearly unsettled by what was happening. Behind him, two techs stepped forward to assist the other officer in unloading Marianne Laurent’s limp form.

  Setting the girl down on her feet, Ryan knelt down beside her and checked her over. She was unharmed, but seemed a little shaken by recent events. The child’s dark, wavy hair seemed to be the only thing she had inherited from her Lebanese father, and it stood in stark contrast to her pale, creamy skin and Gaelic features. She appeared to be no older than four, way before the point of comprehending what was happening to her. Unlike her father and potentially her mother, she was innocent in all the dark deeds, and Ryan intended to keep her that way. The little girl smiled back at him shyly.

  Pushing her hair out of her eyes, Ryan fixed what he hoped was a reassuring smile on his face. “You’re going to be ok, sweetie. Tout ira bien, ma chérie, oui?”

  The little girl looked uncertain but nodded slowly after a moment. Ryan gave her hand a squeeze and smiled. After a moment, the girl smiled back at him and seemed to calm slightly. A female tech approached and smiled down at the little girl before looking across at him, “I’ll watch her for you, Mister Knight.”

  “Thanks, Jen,” Ryan nodded, standing up and giving the little girl one st wave before walking over to the command area.

  They had Laurent strapped to a gurney in a curtained-off space by the command area. When Ryan arrived, a medical tech was injecting her with a cocktail of drugs that would counteract the sedative they had given her on the ride over. Beside her, Ryan’s boss, Greg Edwards, was tapping his foot impatiently as he watched on.

  “Wish this shit didn't take so damn long,” he muttered as Ryan approached. “By the time we get what we need, Ahmad might already be in the wind.”

  “We don’t want to kill her,” Ryan pointed out. “That would be unnecessary, given the stakes.”

  Edwards shrugged, “Not a huge loss, she has to know who he is.”

  “They often don’t,” Ryan pointed out, watching the woman as she started to stir. “The kid is being looked after.”

  Edwards scowled and crossed his arms impatiently, “Good, we put the fear of God in mom here and get her to fess up to Ahmad’s location, then we can call it a day.”

  Ryan held his tongue. He knew the man would never actually dare to harm innocents, but he was aware that he pnned to threaten it. While distasteful, it was the dark grey of their world that often called for bad things to be done in the name of the greater good. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was necessary.

  While their job mandated that they walk in the shade, Ryan Knight always insisted that he kept one foot in the light. In his eight years with the Agency, he had seen what happened to Operations Officers who strayed too far from the path. He had seen what happened even to the best pns.

  Laurent began to stir as the sedative’s grip faded. Slowly, her eyes began to flutter.

  Edwards stepped forward and started to lightly sp the woman’s cheek in an effort to get her attention, “Wakey wakey, Marianne, are you with us?”

  The French woman seemed to focus more as her eyes widened in shock. “My daughter? Where is she? What ‘ave you done with ‘er?” she croaked, struggling against her restraints.

  “She’s safe, for now,” Edwards answered, “Where’s Abbas Ahmad hanging out these days?”

  “I don’t know who…” she was cut off as Edwards spped her cheek again, this time significantly harder.

  “No, that’s the wrong answer,” he sighed and shook his head. “Let’s cut to the important bits, shall we? We know who he is. Obviously, to lie for him, you know who he is. We know that he’s hiding out somewhere in town when he visits you, so save us some time and tell us where, or very bad things are going to happen to people you care about.”

  Marianne Laurent’s face went through a transformation as Edwards' words began to permeate through her narcotic-fogged mind. “I will never betray Abbas, you will ‘ave to kill me,” she spat.

  Edwards shrugged and gnced over at the man standing beside him. “Then I guess it’s time for extreme measures, we’re gonna go pull some fingernails off the kid.”

  “You’re bluffing,” Marianne replied, a hint of nerves showing through her brave exterior.

  Edwards didn’t seem to notice the horrified look on Ryan’s face. “I’m afraid that I am not,” he crified casually. “Tell me what I want to know, or this will get real ugly real fast. Your daughter Béatrice is in that room with one of my people. She’s ok for now, but if you don’t py ball, she won’t stay that way for long.”

  “You ever heard a four-year-old scream in agony?” Edwards asked, looking over at Knight, a nasty sneer crossing his lips.

  Ryan fought to maintain a neutral mask despite his revulsion at the very idea. “I… have not.”

  Edwards looked back at Laurent and shrugged. “C’est vie, as you French say, eh?”

  The woman seemed conflicted for a moment as her eyes flicked between the doorway and the two men. Ryan knew the look; it was the same look that a cornered animal had when it was trying to decide which fate was better. Whether it was better to have a quick death or make a desperate bid for freedom and potentially die in the process.

  After a moment, Laurent’s shoulders sagged against the gurney, and she closed her eyes. “Don’t…please. I will tell you,” she whispered dejectedly. She gnced over at Ryan, her eyes almost desperate, “If I tell you, you must ensure that my son, he is safe.”

  “He’s with Ahmad?” Edwards interjected, “Where?”

  “Promise?” Marianne begged, “Please, or I tell you nothing.”

  “Sure,” Edwards shrugged, gncing across at Ryan. “We’ll make sure Martin’s safe, and little Béatrice too.”

  Marianne looked up at the rafters and seemed to utter a silent prayer. “They are at my apartment; 1883 Rue d’Italie, fifth floor, apartment twelve.”

  “You’re sure he’s there right now?”

  The woman nodded, tears in her eyes. “Forgive me, Abbas,” she murmured, “mes enfants…”

  Edwards strode over to the technician manning the drone control station. “Did you get that?”

  “Yeah,” The tech confirmed. “We’re heading there now.”

  Ryan walked up behind them as their small recon drone flew low over the red-tile rooftops of the city, with the neo-gothic towers of Basilique Notre-Dame de l’Assomption in the background. It was a beautiful view of the historic Rivera city, but one that few would ever witness.

  “Nice spot,” Ryan observed as the drone swept past a chimney and began to approach a building. “Is that the one, on the left?”

  “From what she said,” Edwards offered. “Fifth floor, apartment twelve,” he prompted the tech.

  “According to building pns, that is… this one,” the man indicated with his finger on one of the screens as the drone focused its attention on a tall balcony window. “I have movement inside.”

  “Shall I get the team ready to go?” Ryan asked.

  The camera zoomed into the living room of the apartment, and the picture began to adjust to the gloom. Inside, a bearded man was pying with a toddler while a TV pyed in the background.

  “We got a match?” Edwards asked, ignoring Ryan’s question as the camera highlighted the man’s face and a row of images began scrolling on another monitor. Within seconds, the screen fshed green as Abbas Ahmad’s profile fshed up.

  “Confirmed on target, Ahmad,” the tech agreed.

  “Ok,” Edwards grinned, spping the man on the back jovially. “We have an asset in the airspace?”

  “Sure do,” the man agreed. “Got one in transit from Naples. In range for the next seventeen minutes.”

  “Are we not going to mobilize…?”

  “Send it, authorization gamma twelve ultima.”

  Ryan balked as he watched the tech switch screens to a targeting reticle. “Are you kidding me, Greg? Who the hell authorized us to use an armed asset in French airspace? What about the colteral?”

  Edwards looked unapologetic. “If we send in ground assets, we risk him martyring himself and killing even more civilians. This way, it’s contained, and nobody gets hurt. I have command authority here.”

  “But we promised her…” Ryan insisted, looking back at Marianne Laurent, “He’s an innocent kid, Greg.”

  “Shit happens,” Edwards shrugged, turning back to the monitor. “I would rather some terrorist’s kid get caught in the crossfire than any of my guys, send it Steve.”

  “Roger, rifle one,” the tech responded impassionately.

  Ryan watched in horror as the camera view began to track down towards the apartment building as the missile unched by the orbiting Reaper drone screamed towards its target. The drone camera on the other monitor captured the moment the entire corner of the building was vaporized in a blinding fsh.

  Marianne Laurent could not see the computer monitors from her position on the gurney, but she watched the color drain from Ryan’s face as he watched the missile destroy her home. Somehow, she knew what had happened, and the woman wailed at the top of her lungs. Elbowing the medical technician, she lunged from the gurney, her hands still bound, and rushed the men with a look of pure hatred in her eyes.

  Without missing a beat, Edwards drew his pistol and shot the woman in the head. Her body snapped back as though yanked by a rope, and she crumpled to the floor like a boneless puppet.The gunshot echoed through the open warehouse, its sound leaving in its wake a deadly silence.

  “What… the fuck!” Ryan spluttered, his eyes darting between Edwards and the crumpled body of Laurent. “What the hell did you do?!”

  The man reholstered his weapon and shrugged, “You saw her; she was going to pose an imminent risk to our safety.”

  “She was unarmed, Greg,” Ryan spat. “Unarmed and restrained.”

  “Reports are a funny thing, huh?” Edwards chuckled, gncing at the drone tech. “Right, Steve?”

  “Uh, yes, Mister Edwards, ah, sir,” The tech replied dutifully, pointedly refusing to look at the body not six feet away from his chair.

  “What about the kid?” Ryan asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer. “What are you suggesting we do with the little girl in the other room that you just orphaned?”

  Edwards’ expression was neutral and unmoving. He gnced casually over at the dead body before returning his attention to Ryan. The man seemed unaffected by the events that had just transpired. He shrugged and raised an eyebrow, “The way I see it, she died in the apartment with her father and brother.”

  Ryan blinked as he took in what the man had just told him. His eyes drifted towards the burning wreckage on the monitor before looking back at the senior officer. In his eight years with the agency, he had never heard anyone even suggest such a thing. “What?”

  “You heard me,” Edwards repeated evenly. “Are we going to have a problem, Knight?”

  “No, sir,” he replied carefully. “No problem.”

  “Go tell them to start packing up,” Edwards ordered, waving his hand dismissively at Ryan. Without waitin for a reply, he turning back to the control station and focused his attention on the screen as the technicians performed a damage assessment of the strike.

  Ryan stood frozen to the spot for a moment, his eyes watching as the pool of blood behind Marianne Laurent’s head expanded slowly on the concrete floor. After what felt like an eternity, he turned and walked away. He could barely process what he had just seen, the image of the strike and the sudden, violent death of the French woman had stunned his system.

  Once he was out of sight of the command area, he ran a hand through his hair and frowned. He had just witnessed murder, and nobody seemed to be remotely surprised by it. What was worse was that he was apparently expected to accept this chain of events and continue as though it were a normal day.

  Their mission had been to capture Ahmad, not to kill him. So many things about this outcome felt dangerously wrong. They were far beyond their parameters, and he was almost positive that the strike had been a criminal action. There was no possible world in which this had been authorised by their station chief.

  The girl.

  The little girl that Ryan had helped to deliver alongside her mother was sitting just a room away and had no idea that her entire family was now dead. As far as he could interpret, Edwards seemed to imply that he was going to have her removed to neaten things up. There was no way he could allow this to happen. Ryan turned and set off for the side office where the girl was being held. He had no pn, but he was certain that he was going to ensure the girl was safe. Suddenly, it seemed like the most important thing in the world.

  The technician that was watching the girl looked up as Ryan entered. She raised an eyebrow, “What was all the fuss outside?”

  “Nothing,” Ryan shrugged. “Look, we’re good here. Edwards told me to tell you that he wants a hand outside now that we’re breaking down command.”

  “You got it, Mister Knight.” The woman nodded, blissfully unaware of what had just taken pce in the main room. Ryan waited for her to leave before reaching into his pocket and pulling out his cellphone. Stopping the recording function, he stared at the phone in his hand. He hadn’t known what to expect when they had directed surveilnce onto the target house; he certainly hadn’t expected what had occurred.

  Working in intelligence had taught him to be skeptical of anything unusual or strange and to document anything that smelled funny. There was no doubt that this operation had been borderline from the very beginning; that wasn’t entirely unusual. It had, however, gotten worse as time went on.

  When Edwards had initially suggested grabbing Laurent to force her to divulge the location of Abbas Ahmad, Ryan had been suspicious enough to start recording. It was a habit instilled into him by their station chief back at the US Embassy in Paris, Tom Spencer. A veteran of the cold war, Spencer had taught Ryan one important fact of life in the Central Intelligence Agency: shit rolled down hill. In a game of political oversight, shifting bme, and questionable moral choices, Tom Spencer’s golden rule applied: Cover your ass. Whether it was a backup piece or a recording device, always come prepared. Emailing a copy of the file to himself, he swapped out the memory card before stuffing the phone back into his pocket.

  Moving across the room, Ryan checked the tch on the window. The warehouse was a single-storey structure, and the office was located on the western side, facing towards the river. The old window frame had been painted shut years ago, but with a generous application of force, he was eventually able to get it to move.

  “Can I see Mama? I want my Mama,” the little girl asked innocently.

  Ryan grunted with effort as he forced the stubborn window open wider. “Soon, honey, soon. We gotta go take a little trip first, ok?”

  “Ok,” the girl beamed happily. “Can we get ice cream? My mama was going to take me to get ice cream today.”

  Ryan’s heart clenched at the child’s youthful ignorance. She had no idea that her mother was lying dead not a hundred feet away in the next room. She had no way of knowing that she was the st survivor of her entire family, and it broke his heart into pieces.

  “Chérie, we’ll get you all the ice cream you can eat,” Ryan agreed, gncing cautiously out of the window. The drop was only the height of the wall, he could make it out of there just fine. “Come to me, honey,” he called, beckoning the child over. “We’re going to go get you that ice cream, but first we need to py a little game, ok?”

  The girl got down from her chair and walked over slowly before allowing Ryan to lift her up. “Steady, little one, ok?”

  He carefully lowered the girl out of the office window until her feet were touching the floor. “Be a good girl and hide here for me, ok?” he asked. “Stay quiet till I come to get you. Can you do that for me?”

  The child nodded, “I’m really good at hide and seek,” she beamed.

  “If you win, I’ll get you any ice cream you want, ok?”

  The girl grinned back at him, and Ryan closed the window and tched it. He didn’t know how long he would have, but he needed to get the hell out of this pce as soon as possible. There was something badly wrong about the way Edwards had acted, and he knew they were miles off the mission parameters as set in their briefing.

  All that mattered now was that a child was going to be murdered in cold blood to cover up the death of potentially dozens of innocent civilians, and on the soil of a sovereign allied nation to boot. He wasn’t going to let them do it.

  Fixing a neutral expression on his face, Ryan stepped back out into the main warehouse and closed the door behind him. The operations center was a hive of activity as technicians were busy breaking down equipment and packing crates. The body of Marianne Laurent had been removed; the only remnant of her death was a blood stain on the concrete floor.

  Edwards himself was nowhere to be seen; he was likely on the phone with Langley, accepting praise for his successful kill of a wanted terrorist. Ryan wasn’t sure how he pnned to spin what had happened, but the truth was clearly not going to be pying a central role in the retelling of events. Turning, he set off towards the front door of the building, keeping his walk unhurried and casual.

  “Hey, uh, sir?”

  Ryan turned and spotted one of the technicians, “Chris?”

  “Are you flying out or driving back with the vans? Steve wanted numbers for the jet.”

  “Flying,” he shrugged, trying to sound casual. “I’m not spending ten hours in an enclosed space with Gary. I’m just going to grab something in town before we head back. Tell him that I’ll be at the hangar by four, ok?”

  The man grinned and walked away. As he did so, Ryan released his grip on the pistol in the back of his waistband and rexed; it was nothing. A dozen more steps, and he was outside. Closing the door behind him, he jogged around the exterior of the warehouse until he was outside the office window. The child was nowhere in sight, and his heart lurched violently.

  “Béatrice, où es-tu ,chérie? Where are you, honey?”

  “I’m here!” the girl giggled, crawling out from behind a barrel. “Did I win?”

  Ryan sighed in relief, “Yeah, you sure did, cherie. Come on, let’s go get that ice cream, huh?”

  Taking the child by the hand, he walked quickly back out to the main road and away from the warehouse. No matter what happened from this point on, he was not going to let anyone hurt this girl. No matter the crimes of her father, she was an innocent; she deserved to live. There was no way he was going to stand idle when every arm bell in his head was screaming that this entire mess was wrong.

  He had no idea what he was going to do next. There was no protocol for what had just happened. No training scenario or guideline to help him. His gut was telling him to run, and he followed it. They would run, they would run far, and he would sort this mess out, somehow.

  Well, they would sort it out after ice cream, probably.

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