Chapter 2 - The Photograph Under the Door
Freya did not scream.
Training returned before fear could.
She pivoted away from the door, raised the flashlight, and scanned the apartment.
Kitchen.
Empty.
Living room.
Empty.
Bathroom door.
Open.
Then the sound came again.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Not a door.
A pipe.
The old radiator.
Freya exhaled.
“Great.”
Her nerves were turning plumbing into assassins.
She locked the door and studied the photograph beneath the kitchen light.
Elias Ward had been thirty-eight when Freya knew him. Intelligence officer. Fluent Arabic speaker. Her superior for eleven months.
And the closest thing she had possessed to family during deployment.
He had taught her that translation was not replacing one word with another.
It was understanding what a person was afraid to say.
The explosion had happened seventeen minutes after Elias ordered Freya into the communications truck.
She remembered waking upside down.
Blood in her mouth.
Metal in her knee.
Elias running toward a second vehicle.
Then fire.
No body had been recovered.
The Army declared him dead.
Freya had attended the memorial.
So why would someone send his photograph now?
Her phone rang.
Unknown number.
She answered without speaking.
A man said, “You should have kept pretending you didn’t understand Arabic.”
Click.
Freya remained motionless.
Then headlights washed across her ceiling.
A black sedan stopped outside.
She went to the window.
Gabriel Mercer stepped onto the sidewalk.
Alone.
Freya’s anger arrived faster than fear.
She went downstairs.
Gabriel stood beneath the entrance light in the same black suit.
“You have thirty seconds.”
His gaze dropped to the photograph in her hand.
For the first time that evening, genuine surprise crossed his face.
“Where did you get that?”
“Twenty-five seconds.”
“Freya—”
Her eyes hardened.
“I never told you my first name.”
Gabriel looked toward the street.
“We shouldn’t talk here.”
“You got me fired.”
“I told Arthur not to touch you.”
“He threatened my manager.”
“That wasn’t my order.”
“Men like him don’t need orders when they spend enough years learning what you reward.”
The accusation landed.
Gabriel did not deny it.
Instead he pointed toward the photograph.
“The man beside you was Elias Ward.”
Freya’s stomach tightened.
“You knew him.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Gabriel hesitated.
“That answer could get you killed.”
“I’m already getting midnight phone calls.”
Gabriel stared at her.
Then he said something she did not expect.
“Get your coat.”
“No.”
“I can explain the photograph.”
“Here.”
“I won’t.”
“Then leave.”
Gabriel almost looked amused.
“You really don’t scare easily.”
“I scare very easily.”
That stopped him.
Freya stepped closer.
“I’m scared of losing my apartment. I’m scared my knee will get worse because I can’t afford treatment. I’m scared every time a truck backfires. I’m scared when I smell burning plastic.”
Her voice stayed level.
“But you?”
She shook her head.
“You’re just a man with expensive clothes who trained everyone around him to confuse fear with respect.”
Gabriel said nothing.
For perhaps the first time in years, somebody had spoken to him without wanting money, favor, protection, or mercy.
He reached inside his coat.
Freya tensed.
Gabriel slowly removed a business card.
He wrote an address.
“Elias gave me the code you wrote on my check.”
Freya looked up sharply.
“I didn’t write anything.”
Now Gabriel became still.
“What?”
“The check?”
“Seventeen-six-eleven.”
Freya shook her head.
“I never wrote that.”
A silence opened between them.
Someone else had placed the code on Gabriel’s table.
Someone who knew Freya.
Someone who knew Elias.
Gabriel looked toward the parked cars.
“Go upstairs.”
“Why?”
“Because whoever sent that photograph knew I would come here.”
A red dot appeared on Gabriel’s chest.
Freya saw it first.
“DOWN!”
She grabbed his coat.
Glass exploded behind them.
Gabriel pulled her behind a stone column as another shot struck the doorway.
A black SUV roared around the corner.
Then it disappeared.
Gabriel took out his phone.
Freya stared at him.
“You were followed.”
“No.”
“Then how—”
“They weren’t following me.”
His eyes moved toward her apartment.
“They were waiting for you.”
Minutes later, Gabriel’s men arrived.
Arthur climbed from the first vehicle.
He saw Freya.
His expression hardened.
“She’s coming with us?”
Gabriel answered without looking at him.
“Yes.”
Arthur stepped closer.
“She could be the reason—”
Gabriel turned.
“One more word.”
Arthur stopped.
Freya noticed it.
Not the obedience.
The resentment beneath it.
They drove to a private townhouse near the river.
Gabriel led her into an office and opened a safe.
Inside were photographs.
Military reports.
A satellite map.
And an old encrypted radio.
Freya stared at it.
She knew the model.
Gabriel placed a file on the desk.
“Elias Ward contacted me six years ago.”
“Why?”
“He believed somebody was selling American convoy routes to a private network operating through Chicago.”
Freya felt cold.
“What network?”
Gabriel looked directly at her.
“Mine.”
She stepped backward.
Gabriel continued.
“I wasn’t selling routes. Somebody was using my logistics companies without my knowledge.”
“And you expect me to believe that?”
“No.”
He pushed the file toward her.
“I expect you to read.”
Freya opened it.
Her hands stopped.
There was a transcript from the day of the explosion.
She recognized her own radio call sign.
LARK.
Below it was another.
WRAITH.
Elias.
And beneath those names was a third identifier.
AK-1.
Freya looked at Gabriel.
“What does AK mean?”
Before he could answer, the office door opened.
Arthur stood there.
His face had gone pale.
Gabriel slowly rose.
Arthur looked at the file in Freya’s hands.
May you like
Then at Gabriel.
“You weren’t supposed to find that.”
