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A gunshot rips through the air, the bullet hitting the handler in the head. He crumples to the ground.

Shit. I was fucking right. “Drive, Kieran!”

Kieran doesn’t waste another moment. He speeds out of the parking lot. But we’re too late. Bullets spray the car coming from every direction.

“You guys get out of here!” Tiernan shouts through the comms unit. “We’ve been compromised. There are two shooters on your ass. I’m trying to take them out.”

Fuck. I see them now, two bikers with machine guns right behind us.

Kieran speeds up, driving so fast the car shakes.

Through the side mirror, I see one of the bikers go down. He takes a bullet to the neck, topples from the bike, and tumbles into the Hudson River.

One to go, but by the looks of things, we’re out of Tiernan’s range. We need to take control.

“Kieran, steady the wheel,” I order. “Aleksandr, cover me.”

“What the hell are you doing, lad?” Kieran barks.

I have no time to answer. I grab my gun, lower the window, and ease my upper body out.

I fire two shots at the biker. He swerves, taking cover behind a pillar. When the fucker emerges again, he shoots at me. I shove my body back inside, and Aleksandr lowers the rear window, ready to fire back. He doesn’t get the biker, but his shots force him back in my line of fire.

I push my upper body through the window again, and it takes one more shot to bring the motherfucker down.

The biker slumps and the bike slides off the road, crashing into the concrete parapet.

Kieran brings the car to a stop and I jump out. I need to see who the biker is.

I rush up to him. He’s dead. His body is crumpled next to his bike, eyes wide open in his helmet.

Kieran and Aleksandr join me while I search him.

He’s got no ID, but there’s a mark on the inside of his wrist. A tattoo of a swallow taking flight.

I know the mark.

“Fuck,” I rasp.

“What is it?” Kieran asks.

Aleksandr sees the tattoo and glances at me with lowered brows. “He’s one of Moretti’s men.”

“Which means he definitely knows we’re onto him,” I say, pushing to my feet.

I look around. There’s nothing to see. No surprise there. Either Moretti hoped to take us down or that was a message.

I’m guessing it’s the latter. Moretti wouldn’t send two bikers to take down two powerful mafia leaders.

And the message is…

You can’t catch me.

It’s after midnight when I get home.

We spent the day trying to come up with another lead and ended up with nothing. I got Cassian to check our system, and he found that Petr outsmarted us because of the extra surveillance he puts on his clients. It turns out he knew what we were up to from the moment Aleksandr made contact with the Armenians.

As it stands now, we’re not just back to square one, we’re flying blind.