Below, Itzal left the patio, crossed the street, and placed himself in Holden’s direct line of site. He was a horrible body double. The hairpiece and jacket looked ridiculous on him, embarrassing really, but the imitation didn’t need to be good, just good enough to be seen. Cigarette in one hand, miniature phone in the other, Itzal dialed.

The line answered, and the conversation grew animated and agitated, dragging on longer than Holden expected, but whoever Itzal had called and whatever was said produced a reaction that time, on its own, hadn’t, and Holden, intent on protecting the old man from threat on the ground, nearly missed the threat on the rooftop at his right.

Shadow alerted him.

Instinct rolled him left.

Adrenaline slowed time to the metronome beat inside his chest.

A sound-suppressed rifle crack dissipated with the city noise.

A bullet struck where he’d been lying.

Instinct kept him rolling.

Another crack, another near miss.

The human psyche, primed for survival, urged him to evade, and the human psyche under attack screamed for retaliation. Instinct stopped him on his back. Rifle stock to shoulder, he searched for the source of fire. Experience, logic, and the four-pound fleece vest with its stitched Kevlar plates held him fast.

He had nowhere to shelter, couldn’t afford to miss.

He waited, exposed, daring a bullet to find him.

A shadow and hint of out-of-place color tripped his focus to a gable peak.

The color shifted and time stretched out into a long warp between life and death, filling the space between heartbeats, and hair became forehead, and forehead became eyebrows, and Holden’s finger reacted.

The rifle report thundered through the quiet.

Red mist filled the crosshairs.

He rolled back to face the street and a world on pause, suspended in the half-second uncertainty that lay between vehicle backfire and reason to run. But someone down there had known that sound. He hunted for that anomaly.

He found it on a bicycle. The woman with the black hair was a redhead now, twenty years older, twenty pounds heavier, grocery bags in the basket, peddling forward with the weariness of a long day on her feet. He hesitated, mistrusting judgment, unsure of recognition, unwilling to risk civilian casualties.

She continued in Itzal’s direction because Itzal was along her path.

Nothing about her indicated interest in him, nothing indicated threat.

Holden followed her with the scope, waiting.

She reached into the basket.

He found black in her hand.

He controlled his breathing, controlled his heart rate, and waited longer to ensure this thing she had reached for wasn’t a phone or wallet, waited, knowing that waiting too long meant Itzal would be dead, waited until her gaze rose and focused on Itzal’s jacket.

Holden shifted crosshairs from head to thigh and pulled.

For the second time, the rifle crack ripped through silence.