The streets were mostly empty and that saved them, but still they plunged on, through another intersection, the driver’s foot solid on the gas while the blank look of shock filled his face.

Munroe took one hand off the wheel, shoved it beneath his thigh, and tugged hard. The lead foot slipped off the pedal and the car slowed.

His eyes widened as if in the sixty seconds that had passed between her pulling him into the car and the third intersection, he was only just now starting to make sense of things.

She hadn’t realized she’d hit him that hard.

She slapped his cheek—not enough to hurt, but enough to get his attention. “Focus,” she said.

He nodded and she let go of the wheel and the drive smoothed out.

He glanced at her once, the same way he would have had he discovered himself in an enclosed space with a wild boar. He was a tough guy, tattooed and scarred, but weaponless, alone with the enemy, and still shell-shocked and dazed.

“Just drive,” she said.

Putting him behind the wheel had been the lesser of evils. With his hands busy, his eyes busy, he’d find it harder to attack her. Exactly the opposite of what would have happened if she’d put him unrestrained in the backseat and attempted to take him with her.

He stopped at the light, waiting for the turn signal, his coordination seemingly impaired to the equivalent of three beers.

“Turn left,” she said.

He’d been the oldest of the four and that was to her advantage. Life experience would have already taught him that he wasn’t invincible; made him less likely to see fighting as the only way out; would make him more prone to listen to reason.

Munroe glanced back.

Two shattered windows were going to draw a lot of unwanted attention and having the police discover bullet holes in the car would be as bad as if she’d simply stayed in the garage and gotten shot.

The car was registered to ALTEQ. She’d not been in the driver’s seat for any part of this, which would help when law enforcement analyzed traffic camera data. She’d report it stolen in the morning.

They drove in silence, Munroe scanning the streets for police while Mr. Mafia kept a death grip on the wheel, his eyes never leaving the windshield. He followed her turn-by-turn directions and the car wound outside the city along the same route she’d followed the night Bradford had vanished and Okada had led her to a place where they could talk.

Population density thinned and the road signs pointed to smaller cities. In the passing signage Munroe recognized the kanji and said, “Is that for a train station?”

Mr. Mafia nodded.

“Find parking at the station.”

He did as she instructed, and when at last he’d pulled to a stop, Munroe reached over and removed the key from the ignition.

Eyes still fixed ahead, hands still gripping the wheel, he breathed irregular and jagged.

“I only want to talk,” she said. “Give me your wallet and phone.”

His eyes flickered toward the door handle.

“If you try to run, I’ll be forced to stop you,” she said.

He went back to staring out the windshield.

“I can take your things by force if I have to,” she said.

Still staring forward, he reached a hand for his pocket.

—

His name was Hideki Kimura and Munroe knew this, not from his license, which she couldn’t read, or from his phone, which would take time to learn to navigate, but because, still disoriented from the blows to his head, he wasn’t sober enough to engage in mental battle.

She emptied his wallet and he watched wordlessly as she searched through each piece of paper, business card, and bank card, looking for something to connect him to the person at the facility who had sent him.

“Do you know who I am?” she said.

He nodded.

“Tell me.”

“You’re the man who stole women from the club to ruin business.”

“One woman,” Munroe corrected. “She was there illegally and against her will. Do you know my day job? The company I work for?”

“I don’t know anything,” he said.

“You do this often? Go out hunting and hurting people?”

Kimura didn’t answer, didn’t shrug.

“I kill people for a living,” she said.

He glanced at her then, he couldn’t help it, and she flashed him a predator’s taunting hungry smile. “Have you ever been to America?”

He shook his head.

That was good. It meant he’d have no way to disprove her lies.

“You like American movies?”

A subtle nod.

“Then you know how it is,” she said. “You’ve seen our assassins and our gunfights and our car chases. I don’t carry a gun because I don’t need one to kill you.” That part, at least, was true. “Will Jiro kill you?”

Kimura offered no reaction to her naming his boss—he had to have still been too addled to catch the significance because he didn’t deny the connection, either.

“Why were you waiting for me tonight?”

“Jiro sent us to take you to him,” he said.

“How did Jiro know I would be there?”

“I don’t know.”

Without a hint toward a change in demeanor, she took the car key and stabbed it into Kimura’s thigh. Not nearly as good as a knife, the key barely broke skin, but Kimura yelped and swung at her.

She blocked his arm and drove fingers into his throat.

He choked for air.

“You’re wasting my time,” she said. “How did Jiro know I’d be there?”

“I don’t know,” he said. There was a plea behind the words.

“You do know,” she said. “You hadn’t been waiting long. You knew where to go and when and what to look for. How?”

“A phone call,” he said, “a phone call.”

“Jiro got a phone call?”

Kimura nodded.

Munroe opened her door and stepped out into the night.

Kimura was a flunky, he had nothing more to give; she read it in his body and smelled it in the fear on his breath. She grabbed her backpack from the rear seat, and with his wallet and his phone, she left him with the car and its bullet holes.