A hand slipped behind her neck to support her head, and she drank, and with each swallow, awareness built and memories returned—Jack down in the square, the van, the gunfire, the blur of madness and motion—and everything she knew was wrong collided in panic, and she lunged to swing off the bed.

Liquid splashed down her chin.

Her torso caught, and she heaved, struggling to move, until understanding dawned and the desperate need to find her brother morphed into rage. Her hands and feet—her fucking chest and thighs—were all strapped to a fucking bed.

The voice with the face came in closer.

She hated that voice and that lying, lying rat-bastard face, with its assurances and promises that no matter how big the contracts got, he had no interest in the money, and all that talk about wanting to be friends and keeping them alive.

She should have killed him when she had the chance.

He put his hands up, placating, soothing, like he was caught somewhere between trying to shush a baby and being terrified it’d breathe fire and burn him alive. “John’s okay,” he said. “He’s okay. You’re okay. You’re not hurt. Everything’s good.”

Memory shoved her back on that rooftop, and she was there again, legs scrambling, adrenaline coursing, anger rising, the whole of her racing toward that van, and then a tackle out of the blur and she was rolling, fighting, and a rifle stock swung toward her face, and the world went black.

That had been nine in the morning.

Ambient light in the room said this was late afternoon.

The dry mouth, the discombobulation said she was coming to after sedation.

Inside her head a megaton bomb rained fire down into a debris field of revenge, but she needed out of these restraints, and so her body lay passive, and her brows furrowed in innocent confusion.

Befuddled, perplexed, she said, “I don’t understand.”

No, that was wrong. The tone was too gentle.

Gentle was unbelievable.

She added an edge. “What are you doing here, Chris? I mean, not just here”—she raised her wrists as far as the binding would allow and tugged for emphasis—“but here in Prague, and what have you done to my fucking brother?”

“That wasn’t me,” he said. “Had absolutely nothing to do with me.”

The words made no sense.

And then they made too much sense.