Novels by Mila

ZaraThe explosion did three things in the first half-second.It erased the ridge line noise. It compressed the air in a way that felt personal, like a hand flat against the chest and it told me exactly where Elena and Rourke were not."Move," I said.Ryan was already moving, because Ryan's body also knew things his brain hadn't caught up to yet, which was one of the qualities that had kept him alive long enough for me to develop opinions about his survival. I followed his line and then corrected it, because his line went toward the blast, and the blast was information, not a destination."South," I said. "Not back.""Elena...""Elena ran. You told her to run and Elena is not a person who makes promises she doesn't keep." I believed this because I needed to believe it and because I had watched Elena Voss absorb a cascade of impossible information in a forest and not fracture, which meant she was the kind of person who ran when she was supposed to run. "South. Now."The man on the ridg

RyanI had approximately one second to process the fact that Simon had been in the scrubbed file and zero seconds to do anything about it because the shot came from the direction we were walking and my body moved before my brain caught up, which was fine, the body usually knew better than the brain anyway.I hit Elena first, which was tactical and not unkind, and she went down with minimal resistance which told me she'd been military adjacent at some point, and then I was moving toward Zara because Zara was the thing in the scene that would get us all killed if it went uncorrected, and Zara was already moving, which meant she'd heard what I'd heard, that the shot was a message, not a kill, because if someone wanted us dead we would be dead and instead someone wanted us aware.The trees became useful then. Rourke herded Elena further back and down. Simon, to his considerable credit, didn't panic or posture, he just folded himself behind a broad trunk and his hand was on what I would ha

ZaraThe photo was small on the screen and I wished it were smaller.I'd met the woman once. A Tuesday, unremarkable, the kind of day that doesn't announce itself as the day you file something you'll need later. A corridor at Vauxhall, a turned face, seven seconds at most. I hadn't known the name then. I knew it now because Ryan had said it, quietly, in the farmhouse, in the specific register he used for things he was not going to say twice.I didn't ask him how long. I could read the how long in the set of his shoulders, in the way he'd looked at the photo for exactly three seconds before his face had finished doing what it needed to do and stopped doing anything at all.Some information arrived and you absorbed it. Some arrived and absorbed you. I could see which kind this was and I gave him the four seconds it took without filling them."Northern track," I said, when the four seconds were done. "Is it viable."Rourke shook his head. "B road's a minute out. They'll have it.""So we

RyanThe window had been intact three seconds ago.His body processed this before his mind did, which was probably why he was already moving, already low, already putting the table between himself and the source before he'd consciously registered the direction. Glass across the flagstones, and cold air through the gap. A sound outside that he classified instantly and without pleasure as a suppressed rifle, subsonic, close, which meant someone had been set up, had been waiting for an angle, and had found one.Daniel Rourke had dropped.That was the first thing he saw when he came up from behind the table, hand on the Glock, eyes on the window. Rourke was on the floor with the particular economy of someone trained by the same people who'd trained him, the kind of drop that said *I know what this is* rather than *something is happening to me*, and that small distinction, that reflex, produced something in his chest that was complicated and unwelcome and would have to wait."You hit," he

Zara"Keep moving," Simon said. "Don't look back.""I'm not looking back.""You're thinking about looking back.""I'm thinking about a lot of things," Zara said. "Looking back is the least of them."He didn't argue with that, which meant he agreed with it, which was not reassuring.The east field was exactly what it sounded like... cold, open, and completely without sympathy for the person crossing it at a run with a shoulder that had filed a formal complaint somewhere around the second hundred metres. She ignored the shoulder. The shoulder could take a number.Simon was ahead of her by three paces, moving with the particular efficiency of someone who'd done this kind their whole life and had stopped finding it remarkable, not fast exactly, but purposeful in a way that ate ground without appearing to. Elena was between them, keeping pace without being told to, and Zara noted that too, filed it in the part of her brain that was always filing things even when the rest of her was occupie

RyanThe knock was three times. Patient and unhurried, the kind of knock that wasn't asking permission.I'd heard it from the treeline, carried flat across the cold morning air, and I was already moving before the third one landed because I knew the farmhouse and I knew the track and I knew that three knocks at that hour from someone who wasn't expected meant the geometry of the morning had just changed shape and I was already behind it.I came off the ridge low, using the old stone wall along the eastern edge the way it wanted to be used, staying below the sightline of the windows, and I checked the car on the track without stopping, one glance, nothing in the back, keys in the ignition like whoever had driven it here hadn't planned on needing a fast exit, or had planned on a very permanent one. Either way the car was a question I didn't have time for yet.The side window gave without argument, the latch old enough to have stopped caring, and I was through it and into a utility room