The screech of the tow truck’s brakes shattered the silence. Ricky violently backed the rig into the center of the garage and dropped the Maybach onto the concrete with a heavy thud.

Pierce winced. “Hey! Watch the undercarriage, you animal!”

Allison ignored him. She grabbed a heavy black toolbox and walked to the front of the luxury car. She didn’t bother looking for the hood release inside. She shoved her fingers under the edge and forced it up.

A massive cloud of boiling white steam exploded from the engine bay.

Allison didn’t flinch. She didn’t step back. She let the scalding mist wash over her face, her expression completely dead.

Graham stood three yards away, arms crossed over his chest. His dark eyes locked onto her, tracking every tiny movement of her hands.

She pulled on a pair of thick rubber gloves and plunged her hands into the burning, complex maze of V12 engine wiring. Her fingers moved with terrifying speed, navigating the components like she was playing a piano.

Ten seconds later, she pulled her hands out.

“The ECU overloaded,” she said coldly. “It locked the fuel injection system.”

Pierce scoffed, throwing his hands in the air. “You didn’t even hook up an OBD scanner! You expect me to believe you diagnosed a computer failure by looking at it?”

Allison didn’t waste breath answering. She reached into her toolbox and pulled out a massive, solid steel hammer. She weighed it in her hand.

Pierce’s eyes bulged. He lunged forward. “Are you out of your mind? Put that down!”

Allison didn’t look at him. She swung her arm back. The heavy hammer sliced through the air, missing Pierce’s nose by an inch. He stumbled backward, heart hammering.

Without hesitating, she brought the hammer down with brutal force.

CRASH.

The steel head smashed into a pristine metal shielding plate deep inside the engine bay. The plate shattered, exposing a cluster of melted, blackened wires hidden underneath.

Pierce stared at the burnt wires, mouth hanging open. He was completely speechless.

Graham’s breath caught. A jolt of pure shock hit him. His top engineers in Washington needed hours and a million dollars in diagnostic equipment to find a fault like that. She found it in ten seconds. By instinct.

Allison dropped the hammer. It clattered against the concrete. She grabbed a pair of wire cutters and a spool of thick copper wire.

She started stripping the wires with her bare hands and twisted the copper together, bypassing the burnt circuits in a crude, violent hotwire. Sparks flew, biting into the skin of her wrists. She didn’t even blink.

Three minutes later, she ripped a piece of electrical tape with her teeth and wrapped it tight. She stepped back.

She looked at Ricky and jerked her chin toward the driver’s seat. “Start it.”

Ricky swallowed hard, opened the door, slid in, and pushed the ignition button.

The Maybach’s engine turned over instantly, settling into a smooth, powerful purr.

Pierce walked around the front of the car, eyes wide. He checked the dashboard. No warning lights. He stared at the smooth hum of the engine, his initial rage dissolving into dumbfounded awe. He had never seen anyone bypass a fried ECU with bare hands and a hammer. He looked back at the girl, a newfound reverence replacing his arrogance.

Allison peeled off the rubber gloves and threw them on the bench. She walked straight up to Graham and held out her hand, her palm stained with fresh motor oil.

“Double the price.”

Graham looked at her hand, then up to her face. The sheer audacity made the corner of his mouth twitch upward.

He reached into his jacket again and pulled out another stack of bills. Instead of dropping them into her hand, he pressed the money firmly into her palm.

His thumb deliberately brushed against her skin. He felt the thick, hard calluses at the base of her fingers. Calluses that didn’t come from turning wrenches. They came from holding weapons.

Allison jerked her hand back like she had been burned. Her eyes flashed with pure murder.

“Watch your hands,” she hissed.

Graham held his hands up in mock surrender, but his eyes were entirely serious. “Skills like that are wasted in a place like this.”

Allison shoved the money into her pocket. “None of your business. The car runs. Get out.”

Pierce stepped forward, his tone shifting into genuine, almost desperate respect. “Seriously, what’s your name? If this thing breaks down again, I’m calling you.”

Allison turned her back to them and waved a dismissive hand over her shoulder. She didn’t give them a name. She didn’t give them a look.

Graham got into the back seat of the Maybach and rolled down the tinted window, his eyes burning into her retreating back.

As the car pulled out of the dirt lot, Graham pulled a heavily encrypted satellite phone from his pocket and dialed a secure line.

“I want everything,” he ordered, voice cold and absolute. “Pull the background on the owner of the Pine Creek garage. Every breath she’s ever taken.”

The bell above the clinic door let out a pathetic, rusty jingle.

Allison pushed through the entrance, the heavy scent of bleach and rubbing alcohol hitting her lungs. She walked straight down the narrow hallway, her boots silent on the linoleum floor.

Dr. Alistair Cromwell looked up from his microscope. His white hair was a mess. When he saw her, the deep wrinkles on his forehead pulled into a harsh frown.

Allison didn’t wait for him to speak. She shrugged off her heavy jacket, tossed it onto a plastic chair, and rolled up the sleeve of her black t-shirt, exposing her pale left wrist.

The black band secured to her skin was pulsing with a faint, steady red light.

Alistair grabbed a specialized digital thermometer from his desk and pressed the metal tip hard against her carotid artery. He stared at the digital readout. The blood drained from his face.

“You’re abusing the suppressants again,” he snapped, his voice shaking with anger. “Your core temp is lethal. You keep this up, your heart will stop before you hit twenty.”

Allison’s eyes were completely empty. “I’m going back to Aethelgard. I don’t have time to sleep it off.”

Alistair let out a heavy, defeated sigh and walked to a locked filing cabinet. “Speaking of Aethelgard... one of your old contacts from Langley sent a ghost signal. He intercepted chatter on the dark web. Partial coordinates for an abandoned lab tied to the 319 Project.”

The air in the room instantly dropped ten degrees.

Allison’s eyes darkened. A suffocating, violent energy rolled off her body. Her chest tightened so hard she couldn’t breathe.

She snatched the slip of paper from Alistair’s hand before he could even offer it and shoved it deep into her pocket.

“Stop digging, Alistair,” she warned, her voice a low, terrifying rasp. “If they trace you, you’re dead.”

Alistair didn’t argue. He opened a small refrigerated lockbox and pulled out a glass vial filled with a glowing blue liquid. There was no label. He handed it to her.

“Only if you are dying,” he said strictly.

Allison took the vial, slid it into the hidden pocket inside her jacket, and turned and walked out without another word.

She pushed the front door open, stepping out into the bright afternoon sun.

Her peripheral vision caught a flash of black metal.

She stopped and slowly turned her head. Parked at the end of the street, half-hidden in the shadow of an old oak tree, was a black SUV. It looked ordinary, but Allison’s eyes locked onto the license plate.

A cold smirk pulled at the corner of her mouth. He came back.

She didn’t run. She didn’t hide. She walked with slow, deliberate steps straight across the street, heading directly for the driver’s side window.

Inside the SUV, Pierce saw her coming. Panic flared in his chest. His hand instinctively dropped to his waist, fingers brushing the grip of his concealed Glock.

“Don’t move,” Graham commanded from the back seat, his voice sharp.

Allison reached the SUV and slammed her palm flat against the roof. She leaned down, putting her face inches from the tinted glass. The window slowly rolled down.

She stared right past Pierce and locked eyes with Graham in the back.

“Federal Government internal sequence,” Allison said, her voice dripping with boredom. “That plate prefix belongs to the D.C. motor pool.”

Pierce’s jaw dropped. His hand froze on his gun. That was classified information.

Allison didn’t stop. She shifted her gaze to Graham’s chest. “And that slight bulge under your left lapel? Secret Service standard-issue tactical holster. You’re printing.”

Graham’s eyes widened a fraction. His heart gave a hard, sudden thump.

“And the red clay on the bottom of your shoes,” Allison continued, her tone mocking. “You only find that specific soil composition near Quantico. So unless you went hiking in a restricted military zone for fun...”

She stood up straight and slapped the roof of the car twice.

“Stop playing spy games in my town,” she sneered. “You suck at it.”

She turned around and walked away, posture relaxed, completely unbothered by the fact that she had just humiliated two highly trained operatives.

Pierce swallowed hard, his throat dry. “Who the hell is she? Is she an enemy asset?”

Graham stared at her retreating back. His blood was rushing in his ears. A dark, obsessive heat spread through his chest. “Spies don’t blow their cover to prove a point. She’s something else.”

Graham’s encrypted phone buzzed in his hand. He looked down at the screen.

It was the report from his intelligence division.

SUBJECT: PINE CREEK GARAGE OWNER.

STATUS: S-CLASS ENCRYPTION. ACCESS DENIED.

Graham stared at the flashing red warning. He slowly twisted the black ring on his pinky finger. A slow, dangerous smile spread across his face.

“Cancel the flight to Washington,” he ordered. “We’re staying.”

The heavy bass of the metal music vibrated through the soles of Allison’s boots.

The abandoned quarry was lit up like a warzone. Blinding halogen spotlights cut through thick clouds of exhaust fumes and dust. Hundreds of people screamed and shoved against the chain-link fences, desperate for a view of the track.

Allison rode her black motorcycle through the crowd and hit the brakes hard, throwing the bike into a vicious tailwhip. The rear tire screamed against the dirt and stopped perfectly on the starting line.

High above the track, standing in the shadows of a rusted crane, Graham held a pair of military-grade binoculars to his eyes. He locked the lenses onto the girl in the black helmet.

Down on the track, Nash Corrigan pushed his way through the crowd. He was a massive wall of muscle, chewing on a lit cigar. His crew flanked him, glaring at Allison.

He stopped inches from her front tire and blew a cloud of toxic smoke right at her visor.

“You got a death wish, little girl?” Nash laughed, his voice booming over the engine noise. “A hick trying to take on the Azure Syndicate? You’re gonna die on this dirt.”

Allison didn’t take off her helmet. She kept her hands on the handlebars, then slowly lifted her left hand and flipped him the middle finger.

The crowd went wild.

Nash’s face turned purple with rage. He reached into his leather vest and slammed a piece of paper onto her fuel tank.

“Two million dollars,” he roared. “And a turf bet. Whoever loses, their crew is banned from this track for three years.”

Allison looked down at the check. Her heart rate remained perfectly steady. She needed that money. She gave a single, sharp nod.

Nash sneered and stomped over to his car—a heavily modified supercar rigged with a massive nitrous oxide system. The engine revved, sounding like a screaming demon. Allison’s bike looked like a toy next to it.

A girl in a torn tank top walked to the center of the track and raised a red flag high above her head. She held it for three agonizing seconds, then dropped the flag.

Nash’s supercar exploded off the line. The tires dug into the dirt, launching the heavy vehicle forward like a missile. He was fifty yards ahead in the blink of an eye.

Allison didn’t move. She waited half a second, then smoothly rolled the throttle. The bike launched forward, but she wasn’t pushing it. She was trailing behind.

Up in the shadows, Pierce gripped the railing. “She choked. She’s terrified.”

Graham didn’t blink. He adjusted the focus on the binoculars. “She’s not choking. She’s testing the grip of the dirt. She’s reading the track.”

They hit the halfway mark. The track narrowed violently, leading into the ‘Reaper’s Scythe’—a brutal hairpin turn with a solid rock wall on the inside and a sheer cliff drop on the outside.

Nash slammed his brakes and cut hard into the inside lane, blocking her path. He left her no room to pass.

Allison didn’t brake.

She twisted the throttle until it locked. The motorcycle let out a high-pitched, terrifying shriek.

The crowd screamed. People covered their eyes. She was going too fast. She was going to fly off the cliff.

Allison threw her body weight entirely to the right. The motorcycle dropped horizontally, footpegs sparking violently against the asphalt. She was inches from the ground, riding the absolute edge of the tire’s grip.

She swept to the outside lane, right on the edge of the cliff. Her rear exhaust pipe scraped against the metal guardrail. A massive shower of orange sparks exploded into the night sky, illuminating her black helmet.

Nash looked in his rearview mirror. He saw the sparks. He saw the bike practically defying gravity. Panic seized his chest. He jerked the steering wheel, his car fishtailing wildly as he lost his nerve.

Allison flew past him, a dark streak in the night.

She crossed the finish line three seconds ahead of him. The digital timer on the overhead screen flashed a new track record.

The quarry went dead silent. Then the crowd erupted into a deafening roar.

Up on the crane, Graham dropped the binoculars. His breathing stopped. His hands gripped the metal railing so hard his knuckles turned white.

That leaning angle. That suicidal outer-lane overtake. He had seen it before. Four years ago, on an F1 circuit in Monaco.

It was ‘S’. The legend. The ghost he had been hunting for years.

Down on the track, Allison kicked her kickstand down and ripped off her helmet. Dark hair fell over her shoulders. She walked straight over to Nash, who was slumped against his steering wheel, pale and shaking.

She reached through his open window and snatched the two-million-dollar check from his dashboard.

“This track is mine now. The Azure Syndicate is done here,” she said coldly.

She walked back to her bike, shoved the check into her jacket, and rode off into the darkness.

Graham stared at the empty track. His chest heaved. He twisted his pinky ring, a dark, predatory fire burning in his eyes.

“I found you,” he whispered.