But judging by the gash in her head, and the house on fire, and the husband’s swift departure, there was a chance her position had changed. And Perry wasn’t about to waste it.

Hoses sent jets of water into the flames, and Perry hacked and spat, but pulled away from an oxygen mask as two medics loaded Marcella onto a stretcher.

“She’s not breathing,” said a medic, cutting open her dress.

Perry jogged after the medics.

“No pulse,” said the other, beginning compressions.

“Then bring it back!” shouted Perry, hauling himself up into the ambulance. He couldn’t put a corpse on the stand.

“Ox-sat levels tanking,” said the first, strapping an oxygen mask over Marcella’s nose and mouth. Her temperature was too high, and the medic pulled out a stack of cold packs and began to break the seals, applying them to her temples, neck, wrists. He handed the last one to Perry, who grudgingly accepted.

Marcella’s heartbeat appeared on a small screen, a solid line, even and unmoving.

The van pulled away, the burning mansion quickly shrinking in the window. Three weeks Perry had spent outside that place. Three years he’d been trying to nail Tony Hutch’s crew. Fate had handed him the perfect witness, and he’d be damned if he was giving her back without a fight.

A third medic tried to tend to Perry’s burned hand, but he pulled away. “Focus on her,” he ordered.

The sirens cut through the night as the medics worked, trying to force her lungs to breathe, her heart to beat. Trying to coax life out of the ashes.

But it wasn’t working.

Marcella lay there, limp and lifeless, and Perry’s hope began to gutter, die.

And then, between one compression and the next, the horrible static line of her pulse gave a lurch, and a stutter, and finally began to beep.

I

RESURRECTION

I

FOUR WEEKS AGO

HALLOWAY

“I won’t ask you again,” said Victor Vale as the mechanic scrambled backward across the garage floor. Retreating—as if a few feet would make a difference. Victor followed slowly, steadily, watched as the man backed himself into a corner.

Jack Linden was forty-three, with a five-o’clock shadow, grease under his nails, and the ability to fix things.

“I already told you,” said Linden, jumping nervously as his back came up against a half-built engine. “I can’t do it—”

“Don’t lie to me,” warned Victor.

He flexed his fingers around the gun, and the air crackled with energy.

Linden shuddered, biting back a scream.

“I’m not!” yelped the mechanic. “I fix cars. I put engines back together. Not people. Cars are easy. Nuts and bolts and fuel lines.

People are too much more.”

Victor didn’t believe that. Had never believed that. People were more intricate perhaps, more nuanced, but fundamentally machines. Things that worked, or didn’t, that broke down, and were repaired. Could be repaired.