She was at the point of weakness, hidden from Holden by a two-story building and invisible to Jack, who, no matter what he’d said about timing and urgency and places to be, was here just as certainly as she was. She could feel him, the way she always did when they worked in tandem, knew he was up on that convenience-store roof, waiting to put holes in any fool stupid enough to try to stake out the high ground.

The footsteps drew nearer.

A hundred times she’d been here, a hundred nights, a hundred strategies, Clare pushing her over and over. What were you thinking? You weren’t thinking. Dead again, Julia. Go. Do it better. Clare at her day after week after month after year until reaction was instinct and instinct was instant.

The objective had always been survival by any means necessary.

Tonight survival meant getting to that woman team leader, and that wasn’t going to happen if a barrage of bullets ripped through the silence before all the pieces were in place. She pulled the infrared torch from her kit and unsheathed the bowie, a full tang, ten-inch blade forged and custom tempered by her own two hands.

The thing weighed nearly a pound.

Swung correctly, it could lop clean through a forearm.

Jack had collected it from Houston with the X-Caliber and had brought it as a peace offering. She cradled the hilt, mentally placing footsteps, feeling time compress.

She saw shadow before body, a shift of shade against the fence, shooter stepping aside to clear the space in which she hid. She was coiled energy, counting seconds, waiting for death, and when death arrived, she flicked the infrared beam up into its face, arm high, light blinding, body low, rolling beneath the muzzle.

She dropped the light. Came up fast on the other side of him. Brought the blade down across his shooting wrist, cut into bone, yanked the rifle free, drove blade point up beneath his chin, and stopped with the tip resting inside his mouth, beneath his tongue. She tugged the earpiece from his ear, pulled the mic free, tossed both on the ground.

“This thing heads straight up,” she said. “One shove, one slip, and all the way into your brain it goes. Struggle, you die. Try and fight me, you die. Make any noise, and I have no reason to keep you alive.”

She left off the part about how fast he’d bleed out if that wrist wound wasn’t stanched. She said, “I’m going to walk backward, and you’re going to follow me. You don’t keep pace, and this thing will slice into your jaw.”

She took a step. He followed. She took another, and so did he.