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The satellite view had been accurate enough. The perch I’d chosen was exactly where I expected it to be. The other two were good, but this one would afford me a perfect shot.

It was the flat roof of a derelict office block across a drainage channel, three storeys of cracked concrete and rusted ventilation stacks. I had climbed the fire escape one rung at a time, testing each before I trusted it. The day's heat still rose from the concrete and through my coat. Mist beaded on everything. The air tasted of rust, creosote and standing water, with diesel laid over the top like a lid. There was something soothing about the industrial reek.

I lay flat behind a crumbling section of parapet and built the rifle out of its case, piece by piece, in the dark. The metal was cold and damp. My hands did not need light.

I closed one eye and looked through the scope. A faint halo of mist clung to the glass. I wiped it clear, breathed out, and looked again. Once again I confirmed the partially faded container number. I slowly moved the rifle to read the one beside it. The scope slid across rust and peeling paint, slow and sure.

Two containers, a street gang and a politician.

Calloway. That was my only target.

But something small niggled at me. A thin, cold finger at the back of my neck. I had felt it before, in other cities, on other rooftops. It had never once been wrong.

Zero wouldn’t set me up. The notorious gang held a decent amount of power along the main highways and at many of its stops. They were allowed to operate the same way the Bratva did in Chernograd. My lips twitched. Bribery at its finest.

Movement caught at the corner of my eye.

White male. Terrible taste in shirts. Tattoos on his hands. Armed. He was talking, or arguing, with another man, darker, also tattooed, in slightly better apparel and a leather jacket. Sodium light stained them both the colour of weak tea. I could almost smell the sweat-coated leather.

If the white one moved slightly to the left, I could take them both out with a single bullet. Swift and economical.

My pulse stayed slow and even. No hunger. No thirst. Just stillness, and the patient weight of the rifle against my shoulder.

Stillness did not stop me checking my watch.

An hour and two minutes left.

Chapter 5

Zuri

A gentle rocking motion made me desperate to sink back into unconsciousness. For a few seconds I almost did. Then the pain slammed into me, vicious and total, and dragged me up through the dark.

An engine growled beneath my head. The thrum travelled through the floor and into my teeth, and every vibration made me groan.

“She’s waking up?”

“Shh. Don’t speak to her.”

“Why not?”

“Did you see the state of her? Do you want to be beaten up?”

“Madre de Dios, gringas estúpidas. Shut your damn mouths. No matter what we do, we will end up like her.”

I opened my eyes to darkness. It was pitch black. The stench reached me a heartbeat later, thick and sour and layered: sweat, urine, old vomit, the copper tang of blood, and beneath it all something I had never known had a smell. Fear. It made me gag.

I hissed in pain and touched my mouth. My lips felt swollen and split, and something stiff had dried across the lower half of my face. Blood. My tongue slid across my teeth out of habit, counting them like a dentist. One chipped. One loose.

When I tried to sit up, more pain shot along my front and back, hot lines that stole the breath from my chest.

Around me, the dark moved. A scrape of fabric. The soft drag of a body across the floor, then another, then another. Careful and quiet, the way you step back from a fire.

They were backing away from me.

I had never been the one people moved away from. Imani would have had her arms around me by now. Brielle would have been shouting for ice. The hurt came first, sharp and childish. Then, underneath it, understanding.

Don’t speak to her. Do you want to be beaten up?