My fingers curl against the table edge.
"I'm sure."
Kade nods once.
"Call Damian when it's done."
"Understood."
"Cole." He pauses. "Make it clean."
"I wasn't planning on making it anything else."
Jax pushes off the wall. "Hey, so—" He stops. Starts again. "You need a wheelman? Because I can have the car ready in like two minutes, and I know a route that avoids every camera between here and the Fairmont—"
"No."
"Right. Yeah, okay, cool." He jams his hands into his pockets. "Just putting it out there. I'm ready when you are."
Kade swipes his tablet. Adrian's hotel information populates the screen: address, room number, security details, diplomatic status.
Everything I need.
"He's at the Fairmont. Suite 1847. Diplomatic security detail rotates shifts at 1400 and 2200."
I memorize it. The numbers burn into my brain alongside every photograph of him standing near my daughter's school.
"Copy."
The elevator opens on B3.
The common area is warmer than B4 with softer lighting and the kind of comfortable furniture that makes you forget you're underground..
Chesca sits cross-legged on the floor with a controller in her hands, Aaron Bear forgotten beside her hip.
"—and then the blue shell, and Xander SCREAMED—"
Vanessa laughs from the couch, her monitors arranged on the coffee table, fingers tapping queries without looking at the keyboard.
Chesca sees me. Her face lights up. "Cole! Xander is TERRIBLE at video games."
"I know. It's embarrassing."
She giggles. The sound hits somewhere behind my ribs, innocent and uncomplicated and exactly why I'm about to destroy someone.
Angelina stands near the kitchenette with a coffee cup in both hands. Her eyes find mine across the room.
I cross to her, weaving between the couch and the coffee table where Vanessa's monitors glow. Angelina sets down her cup as I approach, reading something in my face that makes her own go still.
"You're leaving." She's stating a fact, not asking a question.
"I have to."
Her hand finds my elbow with gentle pressure, pulling me aside and away from Chesca's hearing range.
"Just come back."
"I will."