Page 63 of Break For Me
I find it. I lift.
It clicks.
One down. Three to go.
The container door scrapes open.
A man stands in the doorway. He is tall, built like a brick wall. He is wearing a leather apron stained with something dark. He is carrying a roll of heavy canvas.
He unrolls it on the floor.
Knives. Scalpels. Bone saws. A set of tools that have nothing to do with interrogation and everything to do with disassembly.
He looks at Dmitri on the floor. He looks at me. He smiles.
"The doctor," he says, in thickly accented English, "is a very precise man. He has requested a specific set of fingers. Let us begin."
He reaches for my hand.
My left hand. The one Adrian fixed.
The pick is still in the lock. The second pin is almost set.
I have no time.
I have no choice.
I look at the man in the apron. I look at the tools on the canvas.
And I keep working the lock.
Chapter Eighteen
ADRIAN
They searchme against the hood of a car.
Two men. Efficient. They have the practiced choreography of handlers who have processed enough bodies to have a system. One pins my wrists against the cold metal. The other runs his hands over me.
Shoulders. Ribs. Waist. Hips. The inside of my thighs. My ankles.
His fingers find the transmitter on my sternum before his palm leaves my chest. He rips open my shirt. Buttons scatter on the asphalt like hail. The disc comes free with a tearing sound—adhesive pulling hair and skin. He holds it in front of my face.
The red LED blinks.
He drops it. He crushes it under his heel. The plastic cracks. The circuit board grinds against the concrete.
In the command vehicle two blocks away, Rory’s audio feed goes dead.
They don't find the bone-conduction receiver behind my ear. It’s medical-grade, flesh-toned, seated against the mastoid process. It registers as cartilage under a cursory pat-down.
They don't find the GPS beacon in my shoe because they don't remove my shoes. The suit, the tie, the whole curatedpresentation reads as voluntary surrender. Men who surrender don't hide tracking devices in their footwear.
They button my shirt. One button is missing at the sternum. The gap exposes a strip of bare chest, the skin red where the adhesive was ripped away. They don't offer to fix it. They push me toward Building C.
The warehouse is cavernous. Steel-framed. Corrugated walls. A concrete floor stained with decades of industrial use—oil, chemical spill residue, the dark shadows of machinery removed long ago.
Fluorescent tubes hang from the ceiling in rows. Half of them are dead. The surviving ones cast a buzzing, institutional light that turns everything the color of old teeth.
