I had to move. Now.
I shoved the passport, the thumb drive, and the vial into my pockets. I didn’t dare try to put the cosmetics bag back together. I left the ruined, sliced-open leather on the counter—a glaring declaration that the mask was off.
I quietly unlocked the bathroom door and peeked into the bedroom. It was empty. She must have gone back down to the kitchen.
I crept down the stairs, keeping my weight on the outer edges of the steps to avoid making them creak. The front door was only twenty feet away. If I could just reach the Honda, grab my keys—
I reached into my pocket for the car keys. They weren’t there.
I always kept them in my right front pocket. Always.
I checked my left pocket. Nothing but the trooper’s note and the Russian passport.
The kitchen counter. I had left them next to the fruit bowl when we walked in.
I turned towards the kitchen. The lights were dimmed, the only illumination coming from the ambient glow of the open refrigerator door.
I stepped into the doorway, my breath catching in my throat.
Sarah was standing by the island, her back to me. She had changed out of her sweater. She was wearing a tank top now. In the dim light of the refrigerator, her left shoulder blade was completely bare.
The silver scar was gone. In its place was a smooth, unblemished patch of skin where a prosthetic had recently been peeled away.
She was holding my car keys in her left hand, casually spinning the keychain around her index finger. Clink. Clink. Clink.
In her right hand, she held a long, silver kitchen knife, scraping it methodically against the edge of a ceramic sharpening stone.
Shhhk. Shhhk. Shhhk.
She didn’t turn around, but she stopped sharpening the blade. The kitchen went deathly quiet, save for the low hum of the refrigerator.
“You’re an architect, David,” she said, her voice dropping into a flat, accentless cadence I had never heard before in my life. It was chillingly cold, completely stripped of the American inflection she had used for five years. “You should know better than anyone… when a structure is compromised, you don’t try to fix it.”
She slowly turned her head over her shoulder, looking at me with dead, unblinking eyes.
“You tear it down to the ground.”
Behind me, the front door of the house suddenly clicked open. Two heavy, muffled pairs of footsteps stepped into the foyer.
I was trapped in the hallway. Sarah was in front of me with a blade. Two unknown men were closing in from behind. And the only weapon I had was a dead trooper’s warning in my pocket.
