Then the window across the room explodes inward.

Not with a loud bang, but with a sharp, crystalline punch of silenced ballistic glass. A single round embeds itself in the plaster wall exactly where your head had been resting against the chair back two seconds prior. The tea mug shatters on the floor.

You are not in the chair anymore. You are on the floor, behind the solid oak desk, your heart not even racing. It’s a cold, familiar stillness. The rain whispers through the new hole in your window.

A second shot. This one takes out the lamp, plunging the room into near-darkness, save for the streetlight glow from outside. They’re not using a rifle. The angle is wrong. They’re close. In the building opposite, or on the roof. Professional. Patient.

Your hand, moving of its own volition, has already retrieved the burn phone from its hiding place inside a hollowed-out book on the shelf. The one with a single number saved. A number you’ve never dialed.

You listen. No footsteps on the stair. No rustle on the fire escape. They’re waiting for you to move, to give away your position. You have approximately forty-five seconds before they reposition for a clean shot through the desk.

The phone’s screen casts a pale blue light on your face in the dark. The contact name is a single, stark letter: N.