Jack could see the men in his head, a school of cartoon fish stopping midstream, turning in unison, reconfiguring. And he saw his sister on the edge, predator in the shadows, slinking in unseen to grab those stupid enough to end up on the periphery. She’d always preferred knives over bullets, and preferred hands over knives, and tonight, when winning and walking out of this alive meant more than avoiding a trail of bodies, a lot of Hayes’s men would die by those hands. Jack had warned them, just as he’d warned the kill team in Frankfurt and in Berlin.

They never listened.

Jack dropped the phone and circled back for the cart.

In his ear Holden said, “Twenty-three friends.”

He retrieved the next phone, dialed again.

“I’m pulling up to the park now,” Hayes said.

There was no stress in his voice, nothing to betray that his team, aided by a war room of experts and analysts listening in real time, observing from the sky, and tapping into park cameras, had already spread out in their hunt for him.

Holden said, “Closing in.”

To Hayes, Jack said, “Head for the front gates. I’ll find you there.”

Jack killed the connection, dropped the phone, slipped onto the main thoroughfare, and broom and dustpan in hand, he swept the street at the edge of the crowd that had gathered outside the theater, waiting for the doors to open.

They’d come this way. The dot-to-dot he’d given had guided them to it.

In his ear Holden kept him apprised of position.

Jack moved slowly, sweeping, dumping, until the man came into view.

Crowd and cameras, location and lighting collided.

The map re-formed inside his head.

He caught sight of his sister, invisible to anyone who didn’t know her, walking slowly in his direction. Her hands spoke in quick bursts, telling him from the ground what no amount of distant observation or over-the-wire communication could.

She’d removed nine of the twenty-eight.

There were four following a hundred feet behind him.

There were three a hundred feet behind her.

He told her he needed a distraction.

She passed him by, and he continued sweeping.

To his left, Hayes’s men met in the middle.

There were six, instead of the seven Jill had counted.

They turned slow circles, aware that another had gone missing, and they fanned out to search through the crowd.

A commotion started up around the bend.

The spit pop of a suppressed weapon followed, and then a scream.