Chapter One Hundred and Forty
Cole
Matilda's call came too early in the night for it to mean nothing.
Cole was halfway through cleaning his gun when his phone vibrated against the metal table. He frowned before even looking at the screen. Matilda never called during dinner unless something was wrong. Something crawled under his ribs and refused to settle.
The kind that smelled like blood before you even saw it.
That was all it took.
Cole slipped out a minute later, careful not to draw attention. Asli was decisive, but she wasn't careless. If she noticed him, she would stop him. So he moved like a shadow, parked a distance away, and followed when her car rolled out of the gates.
She didn't look back.
That worried him more than if she had.
He trailed her quietly through the city, through traffic that thickened and thinned until she turned into an industrial stretch where the buildings grew uglier and the lights thinned into sickly yellow smears across cracked roads.
