Page 71 of Hardline Torque
And the second he saw the tablet ripped from his hands, saw the flicker of recognition in the man’s eyes as Luca’s interface lit the screen, he understood what mistake they were making.
He hadn’t corrected them.
He’d waited.
He’d let them leave the van first.
That was the key.
No witnesses.No eyes.No thermal sweep.
Only then had he pressed the hidden strip sewn into his sleeve, the motion invisible beneath the sedative-induced slack of his wrist.
Delayed launch.
Forty seconds of nothing.
Then two silent micro-drones slipping free beneath the van, lifting into shadow and static like they were never there at all.
Luca had designed them that way.No emission spike.No signature worth noticing unless you were looking for absence instead of presence.
Follow,Niko had thought then.Show them where I went.
Now, strapped to a bed in the belly of a private jet, he wondered how long it would take for the truth to surface.
Minutes?Hours?
The moment someone compared biometrics.The moment someone asked him a question only Luca would answer without thinking.
And then—
Bang.
The image came unbidden.Quick.Efficient.A bullet behind the ear once his value evaporated.
Niko didn’t flinch.
He wasn’t afraid of dying.
What twisted in his chest instead was regret.
Ethan.
The last time he’d seen him, they’d been cold.Sharp words.Distance where warmth should have been.Two men too proud, too careful, pretending it didn’t matter.
God, he thought,I should have fixed that.
He imagined what might have been—something quiet, solid.A future that looked a little like Kael and Drew, a little like Tane and Victor.Chosen family.Partnership.Time.
He swallowed, the movement barely noticeable beneath the restraints.
I would have liked that,he admitted to himself.I would have liked us.
The plane banked slightly, engines adjusting as they levelled out.Somewhere, a voice murmured confirmation codes.
Niko kept his eyes closed.
Let them think he was Luca.
