The mercenary dragged Rachel by her cuffed wrists toward the avenue. Behind her, the other three mercenaries grabbed my unconscious body. I was a couple hundred pounds heavier than I looked, but they managed.

They tossed Rachel into the back of a police van, then dumped me face-down beside her. The door closed, the van jerked forward. Coldeyes knelt on my back, his gun barrel touching the base of my skull.

Wincing from her bruises, Rachel pulled herself into a seated position against the wall. She was scared, but she looked at Coldeyes kneeling on me and said, "You’re afraid of a guy who's unarmed and unconscious?"

"Orders are orders."

"Who do you work for? Boone or PJ?"

He slapped her face with his gun barrel. A gash opened on her cheek and she felt the bite of pain. "Any more questions?" he asked.

She lifted a shoulder to blot the dripping blood. "Just one."

Other sirens sounded, and the van drove straight and fast. Rachel watched Coldeyes. She watched his gun at my neck. She watched my arm jostling with the motion of the van, limp and unconscious.

"What’s that?" the thug finally asked.

"You think you can take me?"

Coldeyes looked at her, then back to me.

"Both hands cuffed behind my back," she said. "Twenty-two year old woman. I’m waiting."

Despite the sirens and the thrum of the tires, the thug’s breathing sounded loud in the back of the van. Rachel watched the narrowing of his eyes, the pulse in his neck. She knew she couldn’t beat Coldeyes in a fair fight, but get him distracted, get him close, maybe she could tear his nose from his face with her teeth.

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And then? Then she’d see what happened. She had a two percent chance of getting her hands on his sidearm and a ninety-eight percent chance of getting his hands on her, but that’s what she did--she rolled the dice.

The thug’s shoulders tightened and violence rose in his eyes. She didn’t tense her legs, didn’t break the tension. She just waited, her cool gaze on his face.

Then the van jounced over a strip of retractable tire spikes and Coldeyes smiled thinly. "Maybe later."

Rachel flexed her numbing hands, trying not to let the frustration show. Once they dragged her into the open, her two percent chance shrank into nothing.

Voices sounded outside, official-sounding men exchanging official-sounding words. Then metal rattled and the van stopped. Rachel watched my pulse, watched the rhythm of my breath, waiting for any sign I’d woken. She didn’t see one, and the side door slid open.

"Your move, doctor," Coldeyes said, to someone outside.

A well-dressed brunette in her forties checked my retinas with a penlight. "He’s out," she said. "No problem."

Two guys dragged me from the van by my ankles. Rachel winced when my head bounced on the ground outside, but the impact didn’t make the crack she’d expected. And Coldeyes pushed her from the van and she saw why. We were inside a two-car garage decorated better than Rachel’s hotel room, with lights in sconces and a carpet on the floor that had cushioned the blow to my head.

Glass doors led into a foyer with a braided ficus and an elevator.

"A parking space with carpet?" Rachel said.

The lady doctor said, "The mayor likes cars. Bring her down."

Coldeyes shoved Rachel toward a side door that opened into a stairwell. He shoved her down two flights, while the other soldiers dragged my sorry ass behind them, then along an institutional-looking hallway with a hint of pine-scented floor wax beneath the reek of rotting seaweed.

At the end of another corridor, the mercs went into a big room with cinderblock walls and a square metal housing in the corner, sprouting ducts and fans. Some kind of a boiler or ventilation room.

Three civilians were gagged with duct tape and hanging by their bound hands from a low metal vent. A nerdy guy with thick glasses, a freckled man in a bedraggled business suit, and an old lady, dressed for church. Coldeyes cuffed Rachel beside the freckled man, and she took careful note of the other mercenaries lounging against the wall.

At the far end of the room, past a row of concrete columns, a big steel box sat on the floor, with a jumble of wires and blinking lights visible inside. Directly beside the box, Rachel caught a glimpse a girl with red-streaked blonde hair: Maddie, tied to a chair.

Rachel put her weight on the flexicuffs, testing the strength of the vent. It didn’t give an inch.