Three hundred wealthy guests watched a maid stop Vanessa’s attack with one hand, never realizing the woman in the gray uniform had once been trained to dismantle dangerous threats.

Beneath the dreadnought’s stern, seventy feet above the roiling ocean, the primary seawater intake vent groaned as its hydraulic security bolts were sheared from the inside.

Naomi pulled herself up through the grate, water cascading off her soaked gray uniform.

Her combat knife was between her teeth; her boots made no sound as they touched the grated deck of the secondary engine compartment. She retrieved the sidearm of an unconscious maintenance tech she had neutralized at the waterline and checked the magazine. Twelve rounds. Sub-sonic.

She moved through the shadows like vapor.

Two Iron Guard sentries were patrolling the narrow catwalk above the turbine shafts. Naomi scaled the support strut with terrifying speed, hooked her boots around the guardrail, and dropped behind them.

The first sentry felt a hand clamp over his mouth before his neck was snapped with a clean, surgical twist. The second sentry turned, his rifle coming up, but Naomi’s hand caught the barrel—recreating the exact, impossible grip that had shattered Vanessa Sterling's heel in the grand ballroom weeks ago.

With a flick of her wrist, she ripped the carbine from his grasp, struck him in the temple with the heavy butt of the weapon, and caught his limp body before it could hit the metal floor.

She laid both men down silently in the shadow of the intake pipes.

From the second guard's vest, she retrieved an encrypted tactical earpiece. Plugging it into her ear, she tapped the side, broadcasting on the short-range frequency she had burned into Ethan’s watch during their escape from the mansion.