Hoffmann recognized the man. He’d even worked with him a couple of times—hired him when he needed extra personnel. But they’d never really gelled. That this guy and his friends were his opponents, sent here on behalf of an anonymous organization, made this all the more difficult.

“Excuse me?”

“A light? The wife won’t let me smoke at home anymore.”

Hoffmann waved the pack of cigarettes he’d bought on his way here. The man in the car was competent. Trigger-happy and fearless. Employed by a security company known for not being picky about who was paying or why, as long as the money was good. Everything inside Piet Hoffmann was screaming now. He wanted to grab onto the motherfucker watching his house, drag him out of his car, force him to say who was paying him and whom he was reporting to. But he couldn’t. Not yet. Once Zofia and his kids were safe, then he could unleash himself.

“And, like an idiot, I left the house with no lighter.”

“Go away.”

“You got a light or . . . ?”

“Are you deaf? Get the fuck outta here.”

Now he’d tried his mask and voice on someone he’d met before. It worked. He’d gotten close. In a way Piet Hoffmann never could have.

Not far away there was another car with a lone man in the front seat, his eyes on the back of Piet’s house. And when Hoffmann checked the license plate, it was registered to the same security firm.

They were—just like him—guarding his family. While he was supposed to be somewhere else, preparing for the mission they’d given him.

Instead, he continued strolling through the neighborhood he knew so well.

Made a wide circle until he felt completely sure that the two men could no longer see him.

Then he turned back.

But he didn’t take one of the streets—there was an old path that snaked in between the backs of the houses, with the branches of fruit trees hanging above, and sprawling raspberry bushes lining either side. He crouched along until he reached the corner of his backyard, then climbed over the back fence and crept the last few meters to a small tool-shed. And when he opened the shed door and snuck in between lawn mowers and rakes, he thought about all those renovations, seen and unseen, which he’d done before they’d moved in.

•   •   •