Piet Hoffmann’s skin glistened with slippery, irritating sweat. The windows were down, but the air stood still while the sun beat down angrily onto the car’s metal shell. But he couldn’t tell if his racing heart and slight dizziness were related to the temperature inside the car or if they were a consequence of his uncertainty about what was about to happen.

If these men who were being used to threaten his family would react as he’d hoped and planned for.

Or if all of this had been in vain.

“What was that fucker’s name?”

“Peter Haraldsson, I think—sounds like something he made up during his elevator ride.”

“Contact information?”

“If he left any, it’s as fake as the name.”

“What . . . I don’t even remember what he looked like?”

“No clue. A little fat. Hasn’t been to the gym for a while, I thought. Too much alcohol or too much work. Or both.”

“The cameras.”

It was silent while they logged into the computer and checked the files from the hall camera.

“What the hell . . . it’s black? Something’s wrong. It . . .”

“I wanna see the others.”

The next camera was probably in the same room as them, and the third was in the kitchen.

“Black! Both of them! That fucker . . .”

One of them slammed a fist against the desk or the bookshelf or maybe even a wall, a muffled sound that was hard to place.

“. . . took them out!”

So simple. He just had to make sure the jamming transmitter was sending out a much more powerful signal on the same frequency, disrupting it. The result was exactly what those two security guards were looking at.

Black images. Nothingness. Or rather—everything.

As in the very last piece of the puzzle.

Because now after the family they were supposed to be watching had snuck out of their house. After a dressed-up grenade had been left behind on the sink of their office. After all of their surveillance cameras had been knocked out. Their opponent had proven he could reach them whenever and however he wanted to—and that gave them the final push.

And they reacted exactly as he hoped.

Piet Hoffmann could tell—he was sure of it even though the sound quality got worse after a moment—that after a heated discussion they decided to place the call he was waiting for—the whole point of this operation.

The desperate phone call that would reveal their secret client. The organization threatening Piet Hoffmann and his family.

“Hey, it’s . . .”

“What the fuck—have you forgotten? I call you. You never call me. Don’t you . . .”

“He was here!”

“Who?”

“Hoffmann!”

“Hoffmann? Where?”

“In our office. Not Hoffmann himself—but an intermediary.”

Albanian. According to the information on his phone screen.