Page 54 of Honorable Sins

"Ethan clocked Kenneth talking to Lars Nyström."

Ethan is an assassin on Wraith's crew. He excels at surveillance because of his training in recon.

I sit back in my chair. "Yeah? Who's that then?"

"Hitter out of Stockholm. Works primarily with the Swedish mafia," Wraith says, surprising me. "Dagda says he's good."

Since when did we have dealings with the Swedish mafia?

"Did you have sound for the meeting?" I ask.

"No, but considering Kenneth's plans, it's not a coincidence."

No, it's not. Kenneth wants to be rid of me one way or another. Him hiring a hit on me as backup if ratting me out to the FBI doesn't work out is almost smart.

He would have been even smarter if he hadn't tried to take what is mine.

"Do you want me to take Nyström out?" Wraith asks.

"You've got enough on your plate right now, boyo. I'll take care of the Swedish assassin." Anticipation fizzes in my bloodstream. "I haven't been hunting in a while."

Lars is good. I know it within ten minutes of picking up his trail. Not because he spots me—he doesn't. Not because he loses me—he can't.

Everything he does tells me he has caution that rivals my own. Twice he studies reflections in car windows without appearing to. Three times he changes direction for no obvious reason. Once he enters a coffee shop through the front door and leaves through a side exit that dumps him onto a different street entirely.

Professional. The kind of man who survives because he assumes someone is always watching.

Right now? He's right.

I follow him through Queens, from one of our warehouses to an apartment building with access to the Bunker in its sub-basement. He gets coffee at a café across the street, sitting at a table with a view of the apartment building.

He won't see anything he shouldn't. Yes, our soldiers come and go from the Bunker via one of three apartment buildings and the warehouse. However, unless they live in one of the apartment buildings, or it's an emergency, they use the warehouse access point.

And it's in a location that no one can observe from the outside.

Lars doesn't overtly watch the apartment building though. Nothing about his movements gives away the real reason for his presence. Recon.

He stays at the café for ninety minutes, pretending to be engrossed in his phone.

Then he gets up and strolls toward the street on which another one of our apartment buildings is located.

For a while, I simply enjoy the hunt.

It's been too long.

Most men I collect make mistakes. They get lazy. Careless. Predictable. Lars isn't any of those things.

He pauses at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. Nothing unusual about it except the slight tilt of his head. The faint narrowing of his eyes.

The animal part of his brain is whispering that something is wrong.

Good instincts.

The light changes. He crosses. A block later, he turns down a narrow service alley between two commercial buildings.

I follow him.

Assuming he's going to have to kill someone in a city whose law enforcement his syndicate doesn't have in their pockets, he's choosing a setting for the upcoming confrontation that decreases the risk of him being caught.