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F AIRFAX C OUNTY , V IRGINIA

J ust as the Norwegian security agents rushed into the kitchen, the Ambassador had ordered them to stand down. Harvath wasn’t the threat. Harvath had taken out the threat.

Hot on the security team’s heels was S?lvi, who made sure to loudly announce herself so as not to be accidentally fired upon. It took her a fraction of a second to assess the situation and she fell right in with Harvath administering lifesaving aid to the chef.

They were able to keep him alive until an ambulance arrived, stabilized him, and transported him to the Center for Trauma and Critical Care at George Washington University Hospital.

As the EMTs carried off the chef, Scot quickly brought S?lvi up to speed on what he needed her to do. “Don’t speak with D.C. police, the FBI, the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service, none of them,” he had said. “Speak only with the Ambassador. This is for your protection. Do you understand?”

S?lvi had nodded.

“Do you still have my pistol?”

“Of course I do,” she had replied, handing it over to him.

Scot had checked to make sure a round was chambered and then began opening refrigerator doors until he found what he was looking for.

Pulling out a gallon jug of milk, Scot had asked her to bring one of the security agents back into the kitchen.

As soon as she was gone, he had unscrewed the cap, picked the safest direction to aim, and had fired one round through it.

The bullet lodged in a wall adjacent to the dead attacker.

It’s location, however, hadn’t been the point.

Firing through the jug had suppressed the crack of the round breaking the sound barrier and had prevented setting off a panic inside the residence as well as out.

The last thing he needed was for people to think that more gunmen were afoot.

Ejecting the magazine, Harvath had then cleared the chamber, left the slide locked back, and placed everything on the island. His pistol and his PDW were now both pieces of evidence in a criminal investigation on the sovereign soil of Norway.

Harvath had unending respect for D.C. Metro Police.

The people he couldn’t stand were D.C. politicians.

Regardless of the untold lives he and S?lvi had saved today, the D.C.

City Council would demand that they be prosecuted for “illegal” firearm possession.

He had no intention of serving himself, much less his wife, up on a silver platter like that.

When S?lvi entered with the security agent, he gave a quick explanation and pointed the man to the SIG Sauer pistol and the Flux Defense Raider that he had rendered safe and placed right next to each other.

An active Norwegian law enforcement officer, the man had instantly understood what was going on. With a nod toward Harvath, he had said, “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”

Harvath spent the next several hours firmly planted at the Ambassador’s residence.

During that time, he learned that the Ambassador had been planning a smaller reception for later in the evening and had popped back over to check in with the chef.

That was why the two of them had been in the kitchen.

With that mystery solved, he then sat for a series of interviews and gave a flurry of statements—DSS, USSS, FBI, it seemed that all of the alphabets in the soup had descended upon the residence. No matter how many questions he was asked, he answered all of them to the best of his ability.

The only people he had refused to speak with were the D.C. cops, which didn’t seem to matter as they had quickly been booted from the scene once the feds showed up and asserted jurisdiction.

By the time he and S?lvi had made it home, it was almost midnight. And, because his Tahoe had been totaled, they had needed one of the Norwegian Embassy personnel to give them a lift.

The next morning, despite how late they had both gone to bed, they were up early and had gone for a run. After, while S?lvi showered, Scot cooked breakfast. The TV in his kitchen updated him on all the latest news surrounding the shooting.

So far, authorities had no idea as to motive, nor if a larger organization of some sort had been behind the attack.

Seven protesters had been killed and eighteen wounded.

Twelve police officers had also been killed and seven wounded, three of whom were in critical condition. It was an incredible tragedy.

Scot had lost his appetite.

Carrying a mug of coffee to the kitchen table, he muted the TV and tried to put last night out of his mind. That wasn’t his world anymore. He had fifty million reasons not to look back. Fifty million and one if you counted S?lvi.

His years of kicking in doors and shooting bad guys in the face were over. And, as much as he loved his country, America was on its own.

He had more than earned his release. Whatever the United States had asked of him, no matter how dangerous, no matter how deadly, he had always answered the call.

But when the CIA had attempted to blackmail him into spying against S?lvi, that had been the end of the line.

Of course, they didn’t like taking no for an answer and had attempted to bring him to heel by freezing his assets.

Chief among those assets was an account with $50 million.

It was half of a $100 million bounty he had agreed to split with the wife of a nutcase Russian oligarch who had tried to kill him.

Threading the needle, and almost losing his life in the process, Harvath had found a way to get the CIA what they wanted without betraying S?lvi. The bridge between him and Langley, however, had been completely burned. He was never going to work with them again.

As they were the source of over 80 percent of the Carlton Group’s business, it made no sense for him to remain.

Besides, with all that money and a beautiful new wife, what idiot suits up in the morning and heads into an office?

He had hit the jackpot. And in so doing, he planned to live it up and bounce his final check to the funeral home.

That said, if he was being completely honest, there were times when he missed it; missed the action, the intensity. There was nothing else in the world that provided that kind of rush.

And while loathe to admit it, last night had felt like returning to who he really was. He had both loved it and hated it all at the same time.

He hadn’t minded the danger for himself. He had been in the zone. What he couldn’t stand was S?lvi having been in harm’s way. After all the people he had lost in his life, he couldn’t bear the thought of losing her as well. It would be too much.

Before he could get any darker, his phone chimed. There was motion down the road from the house.

Picking it up, he checked the camera feed.

A silver Chevy Bolt was approaching. Zooming in on the red and blue State Department license plates, he saw the letters PK and wondered why a vehicle from the Norwegian Embassy was paying them a visit.

He doubted it was because someone was already bringing his guns back.

As the vehicle approached the call box, he switched to a different camera. There were two people inside—a driver and the Norwegian ambassador herself, Kari Hansen.

He was about to alert S?lvi when he looked up and there she was. She had entered the kitchen so quietly, he hadn’t even heard her. It was this crazy gift she had and it was why he jokingly referred to her as the Norwegian ninja .

“Ambassador Hansen is here,” she said, checking out the same camera feed on her phone.

“Maybe she found my sunglasses.”

In addition to his weapons and his Tahoe being held for evidence, he had lost a new pair of Ray-Bans last night.

S?lvi rolled her eyes. “Nobody cares about your sunglasses.”

He shook his head in response. “That’s not what the FBI told me. They’re going to keep a lookout for them.”

Before she could reply, the front gate chime sounded. Answering in Norwegian, she buzzed the Ambassador in and told her driver to proceed up to the house.

Scot and S?lvi went outside to greet them.