THREE MILES WEST AS THE CROW FLEW, A TEN-MINUTE DRIVE FROM the downtown River Walk or, if one was inclined to travel on foot, a straight-line one-hour stroll, the city had another face, a poor and tired face that even few denizens ever saw. Here, chain-link-lined houses were old and small and proudly maintained, and the streets were cracked, and windows barred or boarded up, and favors in any flavor were cheap and easily found, and rooms could be had for thirty dollars a night instead of hundreds.

Here was where Jack would trip the radar.

The motel he’d chosen was more of a compound than a building, two old bright blue cinder-block structures set perpendicular to each other on a corner lot surrounded by a weed-strewn privacy fence with just a single entrance. Across the street a convenience-store rooftop offered a direct view into the compound and a clean line of sight on half the doors and windows.

It was a perfect setup for suicide by sniper. The kind of place anyone with a modicum of tactical sense would avoid, even if they didn’t have a target on their back. That they’d come here deliberately screamed trap so loudly that about the only thing they could have done to be more blatant was add an Acme arrow and a birdseed sign.

“Mental games upon mental games,” Jack had said.

By his reasoning, the kill team expected a trap regardless. Making it obvious would mess with their equilibrium, and the vulnerability worked both ways once the attackers got beyond the fence. So, here they were in the middle of a gallery, waiting for the shooting to start.

Jack had already gone.

Holden was on the bed, killing time by studying watermarks on the ceiling, and Jill sat in the corner chair, working something over on a notepad.

They had arrived together in Jill’s Fiesta, the three of them, and had unloaded the trunk onto the bed, adding to what Jack had retrieved from the sizable stash they’d left behind in Houston last month. The X-Caliber was what he’d gone for, a gauged and scoped CO2 projector used for tranquilizing large animals from a distance.

The rifle was part of the history that had brought them together, and it felt right having it here, more so given that this time it’d be in Holden’s own hands.

Jack had dosed the syringes for weight in twenty-pound increments and had labeled each accordingly. Too much and Holden would kill the killer, too low and the killer would feel nice and happy while trying to kill him.

Eyeballing for accuracy was the best he could do.