Early the next morning.
A Hummer rolled slowly down the boulevard toward their target: the Continental Hotel.
They parked. The four of them stepped out. As they crossed the pavement, Simon's gaze moved like a scope—windows, rooftops, corners. Watchers in every direction.
Not the hotel's people.
Outside the hotel.
"This street's under Continental protection," Simon said quietly. "Even out here, nobody's stupid enough to try anything."
"Didn't expect the Continental to have this much reach," Christmas said, clocking the eyes he could feel on his skin.
The mercenary world and the killer world don't mix—one runs teams and objectives, the other hunts alone for a price. But money is a thin wall, and interests clash.
They climbed the steps. The pressure of surveillance fell away.
Inside the lobby, Cole checked them in and took a four-person suite—obscenely priced at a hundred grand a night. Worth it here. Rumour had it the presidential suite ran north of a million and still filled daily. In this underworld, protection sells; across its global branches, the Continental printed revenue like a mint.
In the suite, Cole left the curtains open. He didn't bother to hide.
"We sit tight," Simon said, watching him.
"We wait for IMF to collect," Cole replied. "Ethan handles his part. Ours comes later."
Through the window, four distinct sniper angles glinted from surrounding buildings. If Owen Davian's people were really that bold, they'd test the rules. And with John inside the CIA greasing intel, Davian should already know who they were looking at.
Across the street, in an office stack opposite, several spotters glassed the suite.
"What if the targets stay inside?" a white male asked, nerves tight on the binoculars.
"We wait," the squad leader—a stocky Black man—answered. "The boss decides."
"IMF's here," another watcher reported over comms.
They all looked down as four cars slid into the Continental's underground lot. They had orders. They had angles. None of them had the stones to pull triggers on Continental property.
⸻⸻
Ethan and Declan entered in clean businessman skins: neutral suits, neutral faces. The pair had checked in the day before; their room sat adjacent to the IMF handler's—details Theodore Brassel had provided.
Back turned to the corridor, Ethan lifted a compact fingerprint reader to the latch. The bolt whispered. Declan flowed in first and tapped the two resting occupants into sleep with fast, silent strikes.
Now they were those businessmen for real.
Ethan swept a metal detector across the wall.
"Got it," he breathed, tapping plaster.
Declan unrolled a compact tool kit. Once the detector gave dimensions, he scored and lifted a cut of drywall the exact size of the safe's back panel.
The steel itself was the problem. Cutting it would make noise—too much. And a hot tool on metal risked smoke and a fire response. The Continental's safes were purpose-built because clients booked rooms to store sensitive items; Brassel's handler would stash the Rabbit's Foot here, wait for the swap, then act. No one else on the IMF team had been told—the fewer who knew, the less chance John's network sniffed it and spooked.
Cole's text hit Ethan's phone: IMF just passed my side.
"Thermite," Ethan said. He laid out powders with methodical care, pressed a magnesium strip for a fuse, and mixed in potassium chlorate to kick the reaction. Declan readied a precision cutter to open a hole only after the steel softened—just wide enough to feed the canister through, no bigger, no louder.
The mixture began to burn—white-hot chemistry eating steel.
Another buzz: IMF left.
Not enough time.
"Jane, your turn. Stall them," Declan messaged.
⸻⸻
Jane strode through the lobby in a red miniskirt, a different kind of disguise. She found the handler and his partner at once and let her bag slip. She crouched; curves and poise did the rest.
"I've got that, miss," the handler said, already dropping to help gather scattered cosmetics, exactly as intended.
⸻⸻
Back in the adjoining room, the last of the backplate gave way. Ethan and Declan cut a clean circle in the softened metal.
Footfalls. Voices. Someone was at the handler's door.
Ethan eased the circular cut-out back into place, hands steady, breath controlled…
To be continued…