Chapter 7
Silas Vance Closes In
Syndicate enforcer Silas Vance tracks Anya's location. A tense near-miss in a crowded café forces her to rely on Thorne's field instincts.
The morning light filtered through the café windows, casting warm rectangles across the worn wooden tables. Anya sat in her usual corner, a half-empty cup of tea growing cold beside her laptop. She had chosen this spot three days ago for its clear sightlines to both entrances and its position near the kitchen exit—details she had learned from watching too many spy films, she admitted to herself, but habits born of caution had a way of becoming necessary.
The café buzzed with the comfortable murmur of morning conversations. A barista called out orders. Someone laughed at a nearby table. Normal sounds. Safe sounds.
Anya's fingers hovered over her keyboard, but she wasn't typing. She was watching. The puzzle she had been decrypting sat minimized on her screen—another layered grid that had arrived in a public forum at dawn. But she couldn't focus. Something prickled at the back of her neck, that same instinct she had learned to trust during her years of pattern recognition.
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