Chapter 7 7

Jessie didn't run. Running was for prey. She moved with purpose, with angles, using the panicked crowd as cover, sliding between stalls, ducking under hanging tarps.

The main doors at the far end of the cavern burst open. Not exploded. Worse. Opened with absolute control, absolute authority. Men in black poured through, weapons up. Behind them, a man in a coat that cost more than Vince's entire life.

Bryce Hogan. His left arm was in a sling, but his eyes were sharp, scanning the crowd.

Jessie felt her heart stutter. She felt her skin go cold, then hot, the inhibitor fighting a losing battle against adrenaline.

She turned a corner, found a corridor, narrow, lined with storage containers. Dead end. Or-

There. A ladder, bolted to the wall, leading up to a catwalk. She climbed, fast, silent, her boots finding the rungs without looking.

She reached the top and moved along the catwalk, crouching, staying low. Below, she saw Bryce enter the corridor. He wasn't looking around randomly. He was following precise instructions from the man on the catwalk opposite her, the one with the binoculars. Julian.

She didn't wait. She found the stairs at the end of the catwalk, took them down, emerged into a different section of the market. Quieter. Industrial. Shipping containers stacked like building blocks, creating a maze of shadows and dead ends.

She moved into it. She needed to get out. She needed to-

"Stop."

The voice was behind her. Close. Ten meters, maybe less.

Jessie turned.

Bryce Hogan stood at the entrance to the container maze, his coat open, his good hand resting on a gun at his waist. His face was pale in the fluorescent light, his eyes dark holes. "I know it's you," he said. "The girl in the alley. The one who creates chaos."

Jessie said nothing. She was a scared student. She let her hand drift toward her bag, as if to clutch it for comfort. Inside, her fingers found the hilt of her knife.

"You're a very good actress," he continued, walking forward, slow, deliberate. "But the thermal scans don't lie. And neither does a perfectly executed distraction. Now, you're going to tell me what you did to me in those woods."

He was ten meters away. Eight. Six.

Jessie was boxed in.

Bryce stopped five meters away. He drew his gun. "Take off the glasses," he said. "Let me see your face."

Jessie smiled. A small, sad, terrified smile.

Then she moved.

She went up, not forward. Her foot found the edge of a container, pushed off, her body unfolding into the air. Bryce's gun came up, tracking, but she was already above his line of fire, dropping down behind him, her knife in her hand.

He turned. Fast. Faster than she expected for a man with one arm in a sling. His good arm came up, blocking her strike, the blade skimming along his forearm, cutting fabric, finding flesh. He didn't flinch. He grabbed her wrist, his fingers like iron, and pulled her into him.

Close. Too close. The moment his skin touched hers, a jolt went through him. He had braced for the wave of revulsion that always came with touching someone unclean, someone from the street. It didn't come. Her skin was hot, shockingly so, but... clean. The thought was a flicker of lightning in the storm of the fight, a baffling detail that his mind filed away even as his body reacted. He could smell his own blood, copper on the air. He could feel her breath on his cheek.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

Jessie answered with her knee, driving up into his stomach. He twisted, taking the blow on his hip, his grip never loosening. She felt her arm bend, her shoulder strain, and she moved with it, letting him pull her off-balance, using the momentum to spin behind him.

Her free hand found his neck. Her fingers pressed into the carotid, feeling for the pressure point that would drop him.

He elbowed her. Hard. With his injured arm. The pain must have been immense, but he drove it back into her ribs, right side. She felt something give, a sharp crack, pain like lightning. She gasped, her grip loosening, and he threw her off.

She hit a container, back first, the air leaving her lungs. She slid down, her vision sparking.

Bryce was advancing, gun raised. "Don't move."

Jessie moved.

She threw her knife. Not at him-past him, into the shadows, where it clanged against metal. He flinched, instinct, his eyes tracking the sound for half a second.

Half a second was enough.

She was on him, inside his guard, her palm striking his nose, her knee finding his thigh. He grunted, stumbled, and she was past him, running, her ribs screaming with every step.

"Stop!" he shouted.

She didn't stop. She found the corridor she'd seen earlier, the one that led to the maintenance tunnels. She ran. Behind her, she heard his men closing in. She needed distance.

Her hand found her belt. The last smoke grenade. She pulled the pin and dropped it behind her.

White smoke exploded, filling the corridor. She heard coughing, cursing, Bryce's voice rising above the rest: "Find her! I want her found!"

She kept running, up a ladder, through a hatch, into the night air of Las Vegas.