The inhibitor was in her pack, wrapped in foam, hidden under a layer of textbooks she'd bought for her cover. Jessie walked through the market, keeping to the shadows, her posture slumped again. Just another desperate person looking for a way out.

She was almost to the side exit when she heard a voice that made her blood run cold.

"-authentic, I swear, my grandmother brought it from Vienna-"

Jessie stopped. She knew that whine, the bluster that couldn't hide the desperation. She turned.

It wasn't Vince. It couldn't be. Not here.

But it was. Three stalls down, he was holding her mother's doll, waving it at a man in a silk shirt who looked bored. How? How had he gotten from a trailer in Ohio to a high-end black market in Vegas? The question was a block of ice in her stomach.

She had to get the doll. It was the only thing left. But she couldn't expose herself. She watched, her mind racing, as the man in the silk shirt reached for his wallet.

Jessie's hand shot out. Not at Vince. At a stack of crates beside his stall, piled high with cheap, counterfeit electronics. A single, calculated push. The top crate tipped, teetered, and then the whole stack went over with a deafening crash of plastic and shattering glass.

Chaos. People yelled. The stall owner screamed. Vince jumped back, dropping the doll to protect his face from flying debris.

It was all the opening she needed.

In the confusion, she moved like a ghost, a stoop-shouldered girl nobody would look at twice. She scooped the doll from the floor, tucked it into her canvas bag, and kept moving, melting back into the panicked crowd.

"Hey!" Vince's voice, shrill with fury. "My doll! That girl! She took my doll! Thief!"

He pointed, but he was pointing into a sea of moving bodies. A few people glanced her way, saw a scared student clutching her bag, and looked past her, searching for a more likely culprit.

But someone else was looking. Not at her, but at the scene.

From a catwalk above the market floor, a man in a tailored suit lowered a pair of binoculars. Julian Adler. He had been scanning the crowd for hours, looking for any anomaly. The sudden, precise toppling of the crates was exactly that. It wasn't random. It was a professional-level distraction.

His eyes swept the area, and he saw her. The girl from the alley. Jessie. The one with the anomalous thermal signature. She was moving away from the chaos with a purpose that contradicted her frightened-student disguise.

He keyed his radio, his voice calm. "Target acquired. Section Gamma, moving toward exit four. She's carrying a new item, a large canvas bag. Mr. Hogan, she's here."

Below, Jessie felt a prickle on the back of her neck. The feeling of being watched. She quickened her pace, heading for the service corridors, the places Mortimer had shown her on the way in.

Behind her, she heard the subtle shift in the market's noise. The tramp of disciplined feet. They were coming.

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.

The alley was a narrow gap between a closed laundromat and a boarded-up convenience store. The overhang offered shelter from a sudden drizzle. Jessie leaned against the wall, her ribs a bonfire of pain, letting herself become part of the shadows. She'd been walking for hours, circling, making sure she wasn't followed. The disguise was blown. The safe house was compromised. She was out of options.

The sound came from behind the dumpster. A rustle, a whimper, something small and hurt.

Jessie looked. A cat, black, soaked, its back leg bent at an angle that made her stomach clench. It saw her and hissed, flattening itself against the brick.

She reached into her bag. The jerky was there, the cheap kind from the gas station. She broke off a piece, held it out, waited.

The cat sniffed. It limped forward, three-legged, desperate, and took the meat from her fingers.

Jessie smiled, a genuine, tired smile. She stroked the cat's wet fur, feeling it tremble. She broke off more, fed it piece by piece.

The headlights hit her without warning. Three vehicles, black, blocking the alley entrance, their high beams turning the rain to silver needles. Doors opened. Men emerged, silent, efficient, taking positions.

Jessie didn't move. She kept her hand on the cat, her head down. She was out of tricks. Out of energy.

She heard footsteps, heavy, deliberate, coming closer. She smelled cologne, expensive, cold, underneath the rain.

"It's over," Bryce said.

Jessie felt her heart rate spike, felt her skin start to warm, and forced it down. She was someone else. She was no one. She was invisible. It was a lie, but it was all she had left.

She turned.

Slowly. Scared. Her shoulders hunched, her eyes wide behind the glasses, her mouth slightly open. She gave him the performance of his life.

Bryce Hogan stood three meters away, rain dripping from his hair, his coat unbuttoned, his left arm still in the sling. He looked at her face, at the choppy hair, the fake freckles, the cheap glasses.

He frowned. He took a step closer. She smelled his cologne stronger now, and underneath it, something else. Blood. Fresh. The wound on his forearm had reopened.

"What's your name?" he asked, his voice low, dangerous.

"J-Jessie," she stammered. "I go to school, I was just-my cat, I mean, not my cat, but-"

She let her voice trail off, let her eyes fill with tears she didn't feel. She watched his expression shift from suspicion to disgust. He didn't like tears. He didn't like weakness. He was looking for the predator he'd fought in the maze, not this pathetic girl.

"Have you seen anyone else?" he asked. "A woman. Dangerous. About your height."

Jessie shook her head. Fast. Too fast. She forced herself to slow down. "No, sir. Just me. Just the cat. I didn't see anyone."

He stared at her. His eyes were dissecting her, peeling back the layers. She felt naked under his gaze.

"Sir," a voice said softly. Julian. He stepped into the light, his own suit damp, his expression unreadable. "The thermal scan is active. There are no other signatures in the immediate area. It's just her."

"Wait." Bryce didn't look away from Jessie. He took another step closer, close enough that she could see the pulse in his throat. Close enough to touch.

He reached out. His hand moved toward her face, toward the glasses, toward the disguise she'd built so carefully.

Jessie held her breath.