Page 2 of Prey

“He’s running,” I say, already moving faster.

“Of course he is.” Ezra sounds mildly inconvenienced, like a man whose coffee order came back wrong. “Try to keep up. Biologically speaking, he’s twelve years older than you and doesn’t exercise.”

I’m already at a full sprint, boots hitting wet concrete, the gap between us collapsing fast. Weiss hits the far end of the alley and bursts out onto Adams, head swiveling, looking for anywhere togo. He spots the parking structure entrance thirty meters ahead and runs for it.

“He’s heading into the garage,” I say into the earpiece.

“Oh, good.” Ezra’s voice carries what might pass for amusement. “Enclosed space, limited exits, no cameras on levels two through four. It’s almost like someone planned for this exact contingency.”

“Don’t.”

“I’m just saying the math works out.”

Weiss makes it to level two before his legs give out on the ramp.

I catch him by the collar before he hits the ground, spin him hard into the concrete pillar beside a rusted support beam, and pin him there with my forearm across his chest. The briefcase clatters away. He grabs at my arm with both hands and gets nowhere.

“Don’t.” One word makes him stop.

His face is a mess of sweat and terror, breath heaving in ragged pulls. Up close, Jay Weiss looks exactly like what he is—a soft man who spent his career at a desk, putting names of kids into spreadsheets, and told himself that made the distance between him and the work wide enough to sleep through. I was one of those names once. A line on a manifest like the ones he signed, delivered to a white room on a date someone like him chose. He doesn’t know that and never will. I’m not here to be remembered—I’m here to ensure he never does it again.

I reach into my coat and produce the zip ties.

“My wallet—” he starts.

“I don’t want your wallet.”

That lands worse than the collision with the pillar did. His eyes go wide and wet, and he starts to say something else, but I have his wrists behind him before he finds the words. One ziptie, then a second for security. Clean and fast. It’s a skill that at some point became muscle memory.

I haul him upright and press him forward, one hand on the back of his neck, steering him deeper into level two, past a row of dusty sedans toward the far corner where the ceiling leaks a thin brown stain down the wall.

Headlights sweep the entrance ramp.

A black SUV rolls in low and quiet, tires whispering on the oil-slicked concrete. It stops six feet from where I’m standing. The rear door opens, and Raphael steps out first, mask catching the dim yellow light from the single working overhead fixture, that black beak of his mask tilting toward Weiss the way a crow regards a carcass in the road.

Weiss makes a sound I don’t have a word for.

The driver’s window drops and Ezra’s ice-blue eyes move from Weiss to me with the clinical interest he applies to balance sheets.

“Eleven minutes,” he says. “You had ten to spare.”

The passenger door opens. Theon steps out, mask filters gleaming, a case in his left hand.

Theon sets the case on the hood of the nearest car and unlatches it. Two clicks. He doesn’t look at Weiss while he works, just selects a preloaded syringe from the foam cutout with the same detachment he’d use picking a pen from a drawer.

“Neck or arm?” he asks me.

“Arm. He’s already terrified.”

“Neck is faster.”

“Arm, Theon.”

He sighs through his filters like I’ve asked him to do something unreasonable, steps around me, and puts the needle into Weiss’s upper arm before the man draws his next breath. Weiss jerks, tries to pull away, gets nowhere. Twenty seconds later, his knees go soft, and we’re catching him between us.

We load him into the back of the SUV, fold him across the rear seat, and I climb in after. Theon takes the middle row. Ezra is already back in the passenger seat, laptop open on his knees, the blue light of the screen cutting across his face.

Marcus pulls us out of the garage without being told.