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  Wright staggered back a few feet, and then leaned forward breathing deeply, his hands on his thighs.

  “On the ground!” Deuce shouted.

  Wright didn’t move.

  Deuce took a step closer. “I said, on the ground!”

  Wright reached out and swatted at the air, in what was probably meant as a warning. Unfortunately for Deuce, Wright’s arm was as long as he was large, and the back of the big man’s palm glanced off Deuce’s chin.

  Deuce stumbled back a few steps, the blow momentarily stunning him.

  Wright took a tentative step forward, as if he were going to take advantage of the situation and run again.

  But Alex shouted, “Not another move!”

  Wright jerked in surprise and looked back. She was ten feet behind him, her inoperable Taser once more in her hand.

  “On the ground,” she said.

  He hesitated for a moment, then, with a sigh, lowered himself onto his knees.

  As Alex moved behind him and secured his wrists, she glanced at Deuce. “You all right?”

  He turned his chin toward her. “You think it’s gonna bruise?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Cool.”

  Deuce wasn’t like other people.

  But then neither was Alex.

  * * *

  Baltimore, Maryland

  THE RIDE HOME was uneventful. By the time they got to the station, it was nearly nine p.m.

  Artie Cashman, aka Max Cash of Max Cash Bail Bond, was waiting in the lobby when Alex and Deuce escorted Wright inside.

  “Well, well, well,” he said. “The giant takes a fall. What did I tell you about trying something stupid?”

  Wright, not meeting his eyes, shrugged.

  “Come on, Charlie, what did I tell you?”

  Alex nudged her prisoner. “You’d better speak up.”

  The big man frowned, and mumbled, “That you’d always find me.”

  “That’s right.” Max beamed. “And guess what? I did.”

  Alex could have argued the point, since the only thing Max had provided was an address that turned out to be bogus, but in the grand scheme he was close enough. Charlie had gone rabbit and gotten his tail clipped. And Max was just lucky that Alex and Deuce had been available to do the clipping.

  “Let’s get you checked in,” Alex said.

  Max seemed to notice her for the first time. “I see he put up a fight, huh?”

  Alex glanced down at her muddied shirt and pants. “No, I always dress this way. Helps me blend in with the losers.”

  “I think it’s working,” Max said.

  He had already briefed the police before Alex and Deuce arrived, so the transfer of the prisoner went smooth as silk.

  Once Wright was off their hands, Max told them, “Come by the office tomorrow and I’ll write you a check.”

  Deuce chuckled, but Alex narrowed her eyes.

  “Don’t even try,” she said.

  Max spread his hands. “What? You can come first thing in the morning.” He looked at his watch. “That’s less than twelve hours from now.”

  “Max.”

  “Come on, Alex. You think I carry my checkbook everywhere I go?”

  “You know the rule.”

  It was simple: payment on delivery. No exceptions.

  He huffed as he pushed a hand into his pocket. “Fine, here.” He pulled out a check, and handed it to her. “Buy yourself a garden hose, spray off some of that crud.”

  She wasn’t surprised to see it was already filled out. Max was a notorious skinflint, and more times than not Alex had to play this little game with him.

  She nodded at Deuce, and they turned to leave.

  “Hey,” Max said, “I still want you to come by tomorrow. There’s a hearing in the morning and I have a feeling my guy isn’t gonna show. If that happens, I want to jump on it right—”

  “We’re busy tomorrow.” A lie, but Alex wasn’t in the mood to pick up Max’s trash twice in a row. “Come on, Deuce.”

  Deuce clapped Max on the back. “See ya, dude.”

  “I’m serious,” Max said as they walked away. “Tomorrow, okay?”

  Without looking back, she said, “Not gonna happen.”

  “Come on, Alex, is that any way to treat one of your best—”

  “Alexandra Poe?”

  She had reached the door and started to push it open, but that stopped her. She turned toward the voice.

  Smiling at her from a dozen feet away was a well-groomed man in a dark gray Armani suit. Mid to late thirties, possibly forty, but not much more, and in decent shape. She wouldn’t have called him attractive, but he was passable.

  A lawyer, she thought, or something along those lines.

  She smirked, then went outside, Deuce trailing behind. She was tired and just wanted to take a hot shower and crawl into bed.

  She heard the door open behind them as they walked toward the parking lot.

  “You are Alexandra Poe, correct?”

  Growing annoyed, she quickened her pace.

  “I just need a moment of your time.”

  “Set it up with my secretary,” she said as she pulled out her key fob, and aimed it at her Jeep. With a push of a button, the locks popped open.

  Deuce circled around to the passenger side, while Alex pulled open the driver’s door and climbed in. When she tried to pull it closed, the man in the Armani suit grabbed hold of it, stopping her.

  “You’re about to lose that hand,” she said.

  He didn’t budge. “I know it’s probably not a good time.”

  “You figured that out on your own? Let go of the fucking door.”

  With his free hand, he removed a business card from his pocket, and held it out. “When you get a moment, I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a call.”

  Alex wrenched the door free from his grasp, but just before she could close it, he tossed the card inside. The locks clunked down as she hit the dash button, then she started the engine, punched the gas, and left him standing in the parking lot.

  Deuce said, “Looks like the wolves are circling again.”

  Alex looked over and saw that he’d somehow gotten hold of the business card. He turned it so she could see it.

  Taking up the entire left side of the card was an all-too-familiar logo: STONEWELL ASSOCIATES.

  The man’s name, however, was new to her.

  Jason McElroy.

  She grabbed the card out of Deuce’s hand, crumpled it, and tossed it into the back.

  Deuce snickered. “I take it you won’t be calling him?”

  “Not without a gun pointed at my head.”

  Chapter Three

  She didn’t get the alarm to stop shrieking until the second try. Clipping a hand against the clock radio, she hit the snooze button, groaned, and rolled onto her back.

  She should have turned the thing off last night, when it was clear she couldn’t sleep, but she’d been too preoccupied with the thought of that asshole from Stonewell to do anything sensible.

  This wasn’t the first time Alex had been approached by the organization. Stonewell was a top-tier defense contractor, and for whatever reason, they seemed to think she should be working for them. She suspected it had less to do with her skills than with the way she looked, being half Iranian and all. Her dark hair and mixed-race features would make it easy for her to pass for a number of different nationalities, which could be quite useful to an international operation like Stonewell.

  Alex pushed the covers to the side, sat up, and made sure the alarm was off for good.

  To hell with them. She was fine with the way things were, thank you. She was her own boss, could pass on assignments she wasn’t interested in, could even take off and do nothing for a month or more if she wanted to. Not that she ever did, but knowing she could was all that mattered.

  She stood up, still angry, thinking that if Mr. Jason McElroy hadn’t grabbed her door like an overaggressive lunatic, she could have
brushed it off. That’s what had really set her teeth on edge. Her personal space was very important to her.

  More than one person had learned that the hard way.

  She thought about taking a shower, but what she really needed was to work this crap out of her system, so she pulled some clothes on, grabbed her gym bag, and headed for the door.

  * * *

  ACKERMAN’S GYM WAS located in a middle-class Baltimore neighborhood that was once good, had gone bad, and was now transitioning back the other way.

  Through it all the gym had remained a constant.

  The original owner had been an old fighter named Marty “Ace” Ackerman. Marty had never gotten close to a title fight, but had seen plenty of champions either on their way up or their spiral back down—much like the neighborhood, Alex had often thought—and had died at the ripe old age of eighty-six, right there in the gym.

  He’d left the place to its longtime manager, Hans Emerick. Emerick himself was getting up there in age, but he still showed up every day, and was more than willing to train Alex whenever she asked.

  “Speed bag,” he said the moment she walked in. “Fifteen minutes. Then crunches. Five hundred.”

  His German accent was still thick after all these years in the States. He was a refugee of the Cold War, a promising East German weightlifter who’d escaped through one of the tunnels under the Berlin Wall, something he almost never talked about.

  “Ancient history,” he’d say, if anyone brought it up.

  Alex was the only exception. In her he seemed to see some sort of kindred spirit, and had given her a glimpse of what his life had once been and how terrified he was the night he snuck into the West.

  “You have not known fear,” he told her, “until you’ve been alone in the dark and either freedom or death is only a few footsteps away.”

  Alex had never argued the point.

  Just hearing about it was frightening enough.

  Changing into her workout clothes, she wrapped her hands in tape, and headed out to the bag. Within the first few seconds, she could feel her tension begin to drain away. This was exactly what she needed, something to get her blood moving again. Push out the toxins and soak in the fresh oxygen.

  Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. The rhythm slow at first, then speeding up to her normal pace. Sweat beaded along her hairline and down her jaw as the knot in her stomach started to loosen.

  This was good. Really good.

  Emerick let her know when the fifteen minutes were up by clapping his hands twice and saying, “Crunches.”

  She hit the bag one last time, then moved over to the floor and began torturing her abdomen. She had counted to two hundred twenty-one, grunting with each crunch, when the buzzer at the far end of the room went off.

  Someone had entered the lobby.

  Emerick, who had been sweeping the area around the boxing ring as Alex worked, leaned his broom against the ropes and went to see who it was.

  Alex passed crunch number three sixteen when Emerick came back inside, accompanied by two other men. She assumed they were clients, and didn’t pay them any attention.

  Three thirty-five. Three thirty-six. Three thirty-seven. Three thirty-eight.

  “Alex?”

  Three thirty-nine.

  She slowed slightly on three forty, and looked over.

  “Someone here to see you,” Emerick said.

  She shifted her gaze to the man standing next to him.

  Jason McElroy.

  Son of a bitch.

  The suit was dark blue today and he was carrying a briefcase, but he wasn’t wearing a tie, maybe in deference to his surroundings. He took a few steps toward her, his buddy remaining back by the door to the lobby.

  “Good morning, Ms. Poe.”

  Ignoring him, Alex picked up her pace again. Three forty-one. Three forty-two. Three forty-three.

  She kept going, right through four hundred and all the way up to five, before she finally stopped. Lying back on the mat, she allowed herself to catch her breath, then hopped to her feet.

  “Okay, what next?” she asked Emerick.

  He thought for a moment. “Medicine ball.”

  With a nod, she moved over to where they kept the heavy, oversized ball, picked it up, and acknowledged McElroy’s presence for the first time. “You catch.”

  He blinked at her. “What?”

  “I throw. You catch.”

  “Uh, okay.”

  As McElroy turned to set his briefcase down, Alex tossed the ball. Sensing the movement, he swung his arms around and up just in time to catch it before it slammed into his hip.

  Alex motioned with her fingers. “Come on. Throw it back.”

  McElroy tested the heft of the ball, and heaved it in her direction. In a single, continuous motion, Alex caught it and sent it back.

  “I was hoping we might have that chat now,” he said.

  She nodded at the ball. “Keep it going.”

  As he threw it back, he said, “I realize you’ve been contacted by others from my organization in the past.”

  Alex made another smooth catch and return. Catching it again, McElroy grunted under his breath. “I know that whatever it was they were asking of you, you turned it down.”

  “The ball.”

  “Can’t we just talk first?”

  She stared at him for a second, then looked at Emerick. “Next?”

  Before Emerick could reply, the man who’d been standing by the door said, “I’ll toss with you.”

  Alex had ignored him earlier, assuming he was simply there to make McElroy look more important. But as he walked toward them, she realized he was more than that.

  She knew him.

  At one time, she had known him well.

  Shane Cooper.

  “How you doing, Alex?”

  She shot a look at McElroy. “Are you kidding me? Is bringing him along supposed to give you an edge? Is that what you think?”

  “I tried to tell him it wouldn’t work,” Cooper said as he picked up the ball. “But you know suits. They never listen.”

  He threw it at Alex with more force than McElroy had even come close to achieving. She caught it and returned it equally hard. They continued the back and forth, neither holding the ball for more than a few seconds before sending it off again.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Cooper said.

  “What question was that?”

  “How you’re doing?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  He smiled. “I know.” He tossed the ball back to her. “You’re looking pretty good. Maybe a little angrier than before.”

  “My mood depends on the company.”

  “Ouch.”

  They silently tossed for a couple of minutes.

  Cooper finally said, “It is good to see you.”

  This time when she caught the ball, she dropped it to the ground and looked at Emerick. “Next.”

  “I have an idea,” Cooper said.

  As she started to scowl, he glanced at the boxing ring then back at her. “How about it?”

  She stared at him, then shrugged as a short, disdainful laugh escaped her lips. “Your funeral.”

  While Alex was more than willing to get into the ring with only gloves on, Emerick insisted they both wear headgear and mouth guards. He also loaned Cooper some shorts, shoes, and a T-shirt.

  “This is a waste of time,” McElroy said as Alex and Cooper climbed into the ring.

  “No one said you needed to stay,” Cooper told him.

  Alex stifled a smile. She couldn’t help liking the fact that Cooper had talked back to McElroy. His willingness to speak his mind even in front of superiors was one of the traits she’d always appreciated. It was good to see he hadn’t lost that.

  “Four rounds. One minute each,” Emerick said.

  “Two minutes,” Alex told him.

  Emerick frowned. “Ninety seconds. R
emember, liebchen, this is my gym.”

  Alex pounded her gloved fists together and nodded. Ninety seconds it was.

  They went through the ritual of a quick glove tap in the center of the ring, then separated. Once they were ready, Emerick rang the bell.

  Typically, the first several seconds would be spent circling and jabbing, testing each other’s defenses. But Alex wasn’t in the mood for that. She moved to the middle, making it look like she was going to do the expected, then as soon as Cooper was in range, she let loose a surprise left hook.

  He saw it at the last second, and pivoted his right arm to block it, but he was too late. Her blow landed solidly against the head pad that lay across his cheek.

  As he staggered sideways, she knew she should move in for the kill, but she held back, not wanting to end it so quickly.

  He laughed. “So that’s how you want it, huh?” He raised his gloves again. “All right. Let’s go.”

  Through the rest of the first round and all of the second, neither was able to land anything more than glancing blows.

  In the third, however, Cooper snuck in a shot to her ribs that nearly knocked the air out of her. But Alex refused to show any weakness, and came at him with a flurry of punches that forced him back against the ropes. If the bell hadn’t rung, she was sure she would have had him.

  Both fighters were breathing deeply as the final round started. Clothes drenched in sweat, they met in the middle again, their fists held at the ready.

  Jabs one way, and the other, all harmlessly knocked away.

  As Alex searched for an opening that would allow her to make solid contact, she could sense the seconds ticking off the clock. She didn’t want the fight to end this way, not dancing around like this.

  She feinted a punch to his stomach, then pulled back, ready to swing at his head, but he’d anticipated the move and left no clear shot. She tried it again, and had the same results.

  On her third attempt, she didn’t fake a stomach punch, but instead jabbed straight at Cooper’s face with her right, and swung another left hook at the side of his head.

  Right before her blow landed, he shot a fist up at her now unprotected torso. She hit him a split second before he hit her. Cooper’s blow sent Alex backpedaling several feet, while hers knocked him to the mat.