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"She went that way maybe five minutes ago." She points south down the cross street. "Honey, she looked freezing. No jacket in this weather. Find your girl and get her safe."

“I intend to. Thank you.”

She went south. Away from her bakery, which tells me she's thinking with her father's training instead of her heart. Smart.

The bakery is the first place Vivienne's people will look. Neve knows that. She's doubling back on herself, cutting through narrow streets, putting distance between the safehouse and wherever she plans to go next.

The problem is she doesn't have a next. She has no safe house, no allies, no security, no connections. The Castellano network her father built would protect her in a heartbeat, but she walked away from that world and she'll die before she walks back.

That stubborn, brave, infuriating woman.

I check the cross streets and calculate her trajectory. If she keeps heading south and cutting east through the alleys behind the commercial strip on Halsted, she'll hit a stretch of narrow corridors between old brick warehouses where foot traffic drops to zero.

Quiet blocks. No witnesses. She’s heading into hunting grounds.

I break into a run.

Six blocks south, I catch the first sign of trouble. A dark sedan idling at the curb with the engine running and the driver's window cracked two inches despite the rain. Virginia plates. Rental. The driver has both hands on the wheel and his eyes are locked on the alley entrance twenty yards ahead.

He’s a spotter.

The second one is harder to clock. He's on foot, crossing from the opposite sidewalk with his jacket unzipped and his right hand buried in the pocket. Average height, average build, a forgettable face designed for this exact kind of work. His stride is too even, too measured for a man walking in the rain. He's on a clock and he knows exactly where he's going.

I adjust my angle and close the gap.

The alley is narrow, hemmed in by old brick on both sides. Dumpsters line the left wall. A fire escape ladder hangs rusted and low enough to grab if you look up. Puddles of rainwater collect in the cracked asphalt, catching the dull gray light of the early morning.

Neve is halfway down the alley with her back to the entrance, walking fast, arms wrapped around her middle. My shirt clings to her small frame, soaked through, and her dark hair hangs in wet ropes over her shoulders. She's shivering hard enough for me to register the tremor from forty feet away.

Two men step from behind the dumpsters at the far end of the alley.

My blood turns to ice and fire in the same instant.

The first man is big, broad, carrying a suppressed Beretta low against his thigh. The second is leaner, has flat, dead eyes and is quicker with a knife.

Neve freezes. Her shoulders go rigid. She takes one step back and her heel catches in a crack. She stumbles but doesn't fall. Her chin lifts and even from behind, I can read the Castellano steel locking into her spine.

"Neve Castellano?" The man with the Beretta raises the weapon. Calm. Professional. "We're here on behalf of a mutual acquaintance."

I cover the remaining distance in silence. Twenty years of training compress into a handful of seconds. I come up behind the foot soldier from the street, the one with his hand in his pocket, and drive the heel of my palm into the base of his skull. He drops face-first into a puddle without making a sound. I take his gun from his pocket. A Sig Sauer P365. Compact. Clean. It joins my left hand while my Glock fills my right.

The two men at the far end of the alley register the sound of their partner's body hitting wet asphalt. The bigger one swings the Beretta toward me, but Neve is between us and even a hired killer hesitates when the backdrop is a ten-point-five-million-dollar target.

I don't.

My trigger finger is fast and the recoil feels good when it travels up my forearm. I fire off two bullets. The first round takes the knife man in the chest and spins him into the brick wall. He bounces off the rough surface and goes down in a heap of limbs and expanding red.

The second round catches the big man's shooting arm above the elbow. The Beretta clatters to wet asphalt. He reaches for it with his good hand and I close the distance in four strides, driving my boot into his jaw. The crack of bone echoes off the brick walls. He folds backward and doesn't get up.

Silence drops over the alley. Rain taps against the dumpster lids. My pulse beats heavy in my ears and the smell of gun smoke mixes with garbage and the falling rain.

I lower both weapons and turn to face the woman standing ten feet away with her hands pressed over her mouth and her green eyes wide with the kind of terror no one should carry.

"Are you hurt?"

She stares at me. Rain plasters her dark hair to her cheeks. Her chest heaves. Her hands drop from her mouth and ball into fists at her sides. The fear gives way to fury so fast I can track the exact second her eyes shift from scared to pissed-off cobra mode.

"What are you doing here?" Her voice shakes but her words come out precise, sharp, edged with her father's training. "Following me? Finishing the job? Don’t want these fuckers to collect your bounty, huh?"