Zale Radan finished the last set of one-armed push-ups just as his phone buzzed. He jumped to his feet and checked the message, a smile dawning as he read the words from the jeweler, Palarae. Zale’s team had taken care of the Becket relic without him, but this was exactly what he needed to get away. He glanced over at the security monitors, checking each screen with a practiced gaze.
Everything was calm and quiet. Nothing moved in the compound.
Nothing except the shadows around the citadel that he could only see out of the corner of his eye, that never appeared on recorded footage, that he tried to pretend were just his imagination.
The freezing rain should have obscured them today, but shifting winds still caught handfuls of raindrops and whipped them into shapes of hunched beasts with
