Teegan sat beside me in the SUV as we crossed the city. He glanced at me, then uncapped a water bottle. "You thirsty?"

"Yeah."

He tilted the bottle to my mouth, and I drank. Tasted fruity and strange.

"What is that?" I asked, as a drop trickled down my chin.

"Sports water," he said. "Strawberry."

Huh. Teegan didn’t look like the kind of guy who preferred berry flavoring. I took another gulp and the SUV pulled to the curb. A moment later, PJ’s SUV drove past. Maybe on recon--maybe just looking for a parking space.

Teegan opened his door. "Let’s go."

The two mercenaries in the front stepped outside and scanned the street. No cops, despite the heightened alert in the city under siege. No Shandra, either. At least noet yet.

Tegan dragged me onto the sidewalk, and clamped my arm when my injured leg buckled.

"You okay?" he asked, adjusting the trenchcoat to hide my cuffed hands.

"Yeah."

"Good." He tapped my cheek with a weird black club. "You see this? It's a military-grade stun-baton. Fifty thousand volts if you make a sound. Nod if you understand."

I nodded. Then I and took a breath--a little deeper than before, my body adjusting to the constriction. My blood was flowing freely, my aches were manageable. My fear and anger were a slow simmer.

I breathed again, smelling asphalt and hot dogs. I wsa handcuffed and vested and useless: but getting stronger.

The rangy mercenary from the front seat flanked me, and we headed toward the corner where Shandra was supposed to be waiting. A middle-aged woman in a pink tracksuit chatted into her phone. The stocky mercenary touched his earpiece and murmured. We stepped onto the northeastern corner. Traffic rolled past. Pedestrians clustered at the walkway then melted away when the light changed.

No Shandra. A minute passed. Still no Shandra.

"There," Teegan said, looking across the street.

Shandra stepped from a doorway down the block, wearing snowboots on a balmy September day, and a down jacket that fell to her calves. Trying to prevent contact. Even from forty feet away, I saw her face twitching and her shoulders hunched against a blow.

Everyone on the street ignored her: the unshaven guy in the wheelchair; the petite white woman in the jog bra; the two black guys holding a cardboard box, with high cheekbones and the wiry builds of laborers or--lobstermen.

Holy crap.

That was Arthur and Richard Bankhead carrying a box, and Big Molly in the jog bra. Shadra wasn't trying to give up. She was trying to save me. The flash of recognition stole what little of my breath remained. I stumbled in surprise, then caught myself. Lowered my head, mumbled an apology, and found the orbs.

Right there. I felt them inside my skin--and I felt a bone-deep certainty, too. If Shandra or the others were in danger, I’d blow the orbs through the front of the vest to protect them, even if it did smash my spine.

I can't say I was happy about it, but sometimes you don't have a choice.

Across the street, Shandra approached the corner. The guy in the wheelchair watched Big Molly's butt from ten feet behind her. On our side, the signal said DON’T WALK and the Bankhead brothers shifted the cardboard box.

The signal turned: WALK.

We stepped into the street and Big Molly jogged toward us, taking her hand from her sports bag. Halfway across the street, she pressed her little automatic to the stocky mercenary’s chest and pulled the trigger.

He fell in the crosswalk and two teenaged girls screamed and a truck’s airhorn blared.

The rangy soldier whirled and Richard Bankhead swung a crowbar from inside the cardboard box at his wrist while Arthur caught him behind the ear with a tire iron.

The guy in the wheelchair stared. He was just a guy in a wheelchair.

Before the cardboard box hit the ground, Teegan shifted into high gear. In a single motion, he kicked my wounded thigh and tased Richard. A red haze blinded me and the pavement sledged my face. Teegan drove his elbow into Arthur Bankhead’s stomach then slow down to human speeds when he ended up facing Big Molly, his knees bent and his breath steady. His expression utterly unafraid.

Big Molly raised her gun.

Teegan chopped the automatic from her grip and shouted, "I’m police! Clear the street, let that car through!"

The SUV with PJ and the other mercenaries turned the corner at the end of the block. Horns blared, Richard groaned, and Arthur crabbed on the pavement like a beetle caught in a glass jar.

Teegan drew a bowie knife. "There are rules," he told Big Molly. "If you kill one of mine, I kill one of yours."

"S-st-stop!" Shandra said, shuffling closer. "The subway, the businessman, a thousand killers in the streets tonight, a thousand hands and eyes and--"

When Teegan moved to stab Big Molly, Shandra lurched at him and he spun and grabbed her wrist.

At the moment of contact, they both shrieked.

Teegan's legs twitched like a man being electrocuted and he fell to his knees. He started clawing at his face, scraping bloody ribbons, screaming like a man losing his soul. I'd never heard anything like.

Shandra dropped to her knees and swayed, on the verge of passing out.

I snaked on my stomach toward her--my hands still cuffed behind me--and saw her empty staring eyes as Teegan screamed and screamed. She'd dumped all her terror and pain into him. He was trapped in a nightmare.

Clumps of hair shed from Shandra’s scalp and I heard her voice inside my mind: God forgive me. God forgive me for this. I called the Rock, Lark. I called, and they came for us. Now take me home.

Her lips didn’t synch with the words. Her eyes wept blood, and a shadow fell over us.

I lifted my head and saw Big Molly holding Richard up, his arm across her shoulders. Behind them, the black SUV weaved toward us through the stopped traffic. A half-block away--thirty seconds away--with PJ in the passenger seat and three armed mercenaries who'd just seen their buddy killed.

"We need to move," Richard told me.

Arthur lifted a limp Shandra into his arms. "Our car’s two blocks down."

Hands cuffed, I squirmed to my knees in the middle of the intersection, facing the SUV. The pain in my leg flared--the orbs throbbed--my skin itched beneath the vest. I wanted to cry, but there wasn't time.

"Take Shandra home," I said, my voice catching. "I’ve got this."

Arthur looked at me, then nodded once and turned away.

A moment later, Big Molly followed with Richard leaning on her.

Arthur's nod had told me everything. The Bankhead brothers didn’t get emotional and they didn’t waste words--they made their living on the sea, they tested themselves every day. Either you succeeded or you failed--no middle ground. They’d taught me how to work, they’d taught me the emptiness of excuses. They’d shown me the face of competence, the strength of men who knew exactly who they were. And they did all that without wasting any words--without much more than the occasional nod.

That nod told me that they trusted me to handle this. They knew that if I said I had this, I did.

I knelt with my hands cuffed behind me as they disappeared into the growing crowd. My breath sounded loud in my ears. The street noise softened to a murmur, and even Teegan's shrieking faded as he stood and staggered toward PJ.

The SUV wove closer through the stopped traffic. I focused on the orbs but didn’t move them, not a millimeter. Waiting until PJ rolled into range. Then I’d burst the orbs through the vest and reduce the SUV to a ruin of blood and steel.

They'd killed Dewitt. They'd slaughtered innocent people. They threatened the Rock. I reached inside for anger, but felt only determination. Fair enough. Dewitt hadn’t set much store in anger.

I felt a smile flicker, thinking of him. Of Little Big Brewing and the hammocks, knocking golf balls around and sneaking Fifty Shades into his CD player. Then I thought about his parents and the smile faded. I was going to stop PJ, right here. Right now.

Come a little closer, and we'll go out together. In one big blast.

Except when the SUV was still a few feet outside of my range, a mercenary leaned from the window and squeezed off a single shot.