She looked like a quiet 34-year-old who wandered into the wrong gym, right up until she rolled up her sleeves and raised her hands.

"What is Directorate Seven?" Sal asked ten minutes later, his voice low as he helped Maya tie the four incapacitated contractors to heavy cast-iron radiator pipes in her living room using their own tactical zip-ties.

The power had been restored five minutes after the skirmish ended, illuminating the four bound men sitting on Maya’s floor.

The leader of the group—a burly man with a crew cut and a scar running through his left eyebrow—was awake, glaring up at Maya with bitter, bleeding hatred.

"Directorate Seven is a private military contractor," Maya explained, throwing their seized weapons and communication radios onto her kitchen table. "They handle off-the-books security contracts for defense intelligence firms. They operate outside federal oversight."

She walked over to the crew-cut leader, kneeling down until her face was six inches from his.

"Who paid for the contract, Miller?" Maya asked, reading the nametag stamped onto his tactical vest.

The operative spat blood onto the floorboards. "Screw you, Vance. You think you can stay hidden in a Chicago slum forever? You owe three million dollars in breach-of-contract penalties to the Apex Group for walking away from the Dubai contract."

Maya’s face remained completely stoic. "Apex Group doesn't use four-man snatch teams for debt collection. They use lawyers. Who really sent you?"

Miller sneered, refusing to speak.

Maya reached out, her thumb pressing firmly into a nerve node behind Miller's jawbone.

The man’s eyes bulged instantly, his entire body going rigid as a wave of excruciating pain flooded his nervous system. He gasped for air, his teeth grinding together so hard they creaked.

"I asked you a question, Miller," Maya said softly. "Who sent you?"

"Kovaks!" Miller screamed out, breaking down under the unbearable pressure. "Colonel Kovaks! He... he saw the video from the gym! Someone posted a twenty-second clip of you fighting Grant on an underground combat forum on Wednesday morning!"

Maya’s thumb released the nerve node.

Miller fell forward against his zip-ties, gasping for breath, sweat pouring down his forehead.

Maya stood up slowly, turning to look at Sal.

"Someone filmed the fight?" she asked quietly.

Sal looked horrified. "Kids in the gym... they always have their phones out, Maya. I tell them no filming, but... Jesus, I didn't think anyone uploaded it."

Maya walked over to her table, picking up one of the seized tactical radios.

"Colonel Kovaks was my commanding officer in Helmand," Maya said, her voice dropping into a chilling, hollow register. "He was the one who authorized the strike that killed my team. He sold the mission parameters to a private security firm to cover his own financial losses."