Holden breathed a slow in and out and descended into the zone where the cold dissipated and the wind went silent, and his heartbeat swallowed him, steady and rhythmic, counting down to where all that mattered was the micrometer air buffer between metal and skin. Timing was everything.

Make a hit too soon and chaos would break loose before the plan got under way.

Wait a beat too long and the plan maker would be dead.

“They’ll find you,” he’d told them. “You’ll end up running hard.”

He’d been wrong about the running.

Not wrong about the finding, maybe not so wrong about the dying.

Jack stepped out of the restaurant, onto the patio.

The blonde at his side stole breath from Holden’s lungs.

Her name was Anna, that much he knew. She was a drummer in an alternative band and, with the makeup and costuming, was closer to any living, breathing copy of Jill he’d have thought possible.

A man seated at a table on the patio stood, shook both of their hands.

Down by the streetcar platform, the van moved forward.

Light in the fourth-story window across the cobblestone wedge shifted.

Holden’s index finger curled inward.

On the periphery of awareness, he heard the tires squeal.

The rifle stock recoiled into his shoulder.

Light in the fourth-story window changed color, and the world went silent, as if time had paused to catch its breath.

Pigeons scattered.

Pedestrians entering the escalators continued down.

And then came the chaos, van plowing toward the restaurant patio; armed men rushing the table, dropping hoods over heads, dragging off bodies; and a staccato of rapid fire, glass shattering, and metal zinging against metal.

He’d known the grab would happen, but it shocked the senses all the same.

Patrons screamed and pedestrians dashed for cover. The square center erupted in a chorus of battlefield crossfire, and Jill was up, running, following the van from the rooftop edge, firing, drawing attention.

Across the cobblestones, a shadow in body armor tracked a rifle in her direction.

Holden took aim. The shadow fell before he fired.

He had no time to see who’d made the hit, had no time for more.

He slung the rifle over his shoulder, cinched it tight, was up and moving, head down, skirting cover to cover until he crested the roof peak and picked up speed, chasing after Jill, who seemed to care not at all that she drew fire from two directions now.

The van careened around the corner.

She changed course.

Holden stopped short, cut left to outflank her, reached the rooftop edge, leapt.

She changed trajectory again.

He cornered in the opposite direction, chasing tiles foot to foot, collided into her, and took her down in a rolling heap.

She hooked around him, arms and legs tangling fast.