The hotel room, with its wall of facts and its bed and the promise of sleep, called to her, but Munroe diverted first to Bradford’s apartment to return the Mira and collect the bike with its easy to find and remove trackers.

She turned down into the garage to discover that trouble, in the form of four men, had already come for her. They were a mixture of young and middle-aged in buttoned-up dress shirts and loose slacks like the clothes worn by the men outside the bars in the drinking district.

They loitered by the Ninja, haloed in cigarette smoke, but with only a few butts at their feet, they couldn’t have been waiting long. Seeing them, Munroe’s pulse quickened, the inner war drum signaling impending battle.

The rawness of Dillman’s death burned beneath the surface. The desire for pain rolled through her, a craving to inflict and feel it, and to fight to win, because in seeking blood she had control.

They straightened when the car rolled in, all of them attuned to the Mira’s approach, and although they didn’t go so far as to form a line between her and the Ninja, the impression of a line was there.

Munroe backed the Mira into its space and they stood watching.

She left the engine running and the lights on, and they squinted to see beyond the glare. The oldest dropped a cigarette to the pavement and ground it with his foot. Beneath his rolled-up sleeves the bare edges of a tattoo crept out.

Strategy flowed into battle formation and instant assessment.

Logic, like a parent, soothed against what instinct, a toddler in full meltdown, screamed for: She was weaponless, and they wouldn’t have come unarmed. Not after what she’d done in the hotel room.

But the adrenaline uptick had already begun. The fight called to her, compelling her toward the rush where time separated from reality and hurt ceased to exist because all that mattered from one heartbeat to the next was whatever it took to stay alive.

Munroe gripped the wheel tight against the tingle in her hands.

Jiro’s men tracing her to an apartment in the middle of the city, waiting in the right place at the right time, spoke of deliberation and knowledge.

Two sets of players; two trackers.

These were Jiro’s men, but Jiro hadn’t installed the trackers.

Just like Jiro hadn’t invited Bradford to the hostess club.

The men in the headlights stepped away from the Ninja.

In slow motion she watched them, two heading for the garage exit to block her way out and block residents from entering. The others strode toward her.

She felt their bodies inside her head, the way they would rotate and heave and bend. The chemical flood coursed through her veins.

Munroe revved the engine.

The men in the headlights twitched, giving away strength and strategy in that instinctive reaction. This group of four had arrived with a single semiautomatic. Gun out and now exposed, the man holding it changed tactics.

He aimed at the Mira’s windshield and headed for the driver’s side. His unarmed partner took the left.

In a country where handguns were nearly impossible to obtain and police pursued violators so relentlessly that even criminals lived in fear of gun laws, firing the weapon would be enough for him to face life in prison.

The weapon was for threat, pulling the trigger a last resort.

By their footfalls she timed them, focus burned on the man with the gun and the finger that rested outside the guard, watching his eyes, not his hands, watching his posture and the tension that ran in the lines along his neck.

Footfall to footfall she waited, hand brake released, vehicle in gear, breathing out long with a predator’s patience, footfall to footfall, weapon coming ever closer and then.

Munroe lurched forward, gas and wheel and brake working in microbursts, speed and calculation, car spinning, tires screeching.

The Mira’s rear curved toward the man with the gun.

He fired in response, the weapon’s report a cavernous boom in the underground.

The back passenger window shattered.

Skin and bone thumped and thudded off the side of the hood.

Munroe reversed and hit soft flesh.

She yanked the emergency brake and was out the driver’s door, legs in motion before her feet hit the pavement.

Half seconds mattered. Quarter seconds mattered.

In the gap between shock and reality, the time it took for the brain to register what had just happened, she had already reached the front of the car.

The man without a weapon turned a fraction before she hit him.

She twisted midstride. Kicked his knees out beneath him and charged into him. He landed hard on the pavement with her on top, and she grabbed his hair and slammed his head against the concrete, again and again, while he struggled and then struggled less.

The gun was on the ground, three meters behind her, thrown when she’d reversed into its owner. Beneath the car she saw hands and knees crawling for it.

In the garage exit, the other two men were missing.

The handgun had discharged. They would run as far and as fast as possible to prevent being looped in as accomplices and spending equal time in prison.

Munroe pounded her knee hard into the man’s chest: leverage to get to her feet. She grabbed his collar and pulled him.

“Stand up,” she said. “If you want to escape this, stand up.”

Dazed, he blinked and struggled to his feet.

“The police are coming,” she said, and she pushed him toward the car. Without letting go she swung backward into the open driver’s door, scooted over the console, legs twisting and tangled, and dragged him in after her.

He didn’t fight; he understood.

She reached over him, yanked the door shut. “Drive,” she said.

He was aware now, not as alert as he should have been, but enough that he reached for the seat belt. She ignored hers; she needed her hands.

She released the hand brake. “Drive!” she said again, and in the vanity mirror the man behind the car got to his feet, weapon aimed toward her again.

What difference did another discharge make now?

The garage echoed loud with the clap of thunder.

The bullet punched through the rear door and spit-popped into the backseat. The driver hit the gas and the car fishtailed. Munroe leaned over and with both hands on the wheel she pulled.

The hood straightened in relation to the exit.

Then came another deafening roar and another shattered window.

The Mira careened up the ramp and Munroe leaned hard against the wheel in the opposite direction. The car wailed into the street, between a moss-covered stone wall and parked cars, then sped through an intersection.

“Slow down,” she yelled.