When they reached the room at the end of the hall, Margaret lowered Shen Li onto the bed and pressed a soft hand onto her shoulder. “Do you mind if Cher stays with you?”

The fear etched on Shen Li’s face eased, and she smiled at the dog who scampered close and kissed her cheek. She giggled softly and wrapped her arms around the dog’s neck. “Can she, Mama?”

Tan Lily looked up at Margaret and saw the older woman nod, then forced a smile for her daughter. “Of course, my precious.”

She leaned over and kissed her daughter gently on the forehead before turning for the door. She felt light-headed as she followed Margaret into the hall and closed the door behind them.

55

Rancho Bernardo, California

Punky winced when the medic removed the last piece of metal from her abdomen where the bullet had managed to penetrate her body armor. She knew she would have been dead without the vest, but it pained her to admit that Camron had been right in insisting she wear it. She looked up at her supervisor, who grimaced and put his cell phone away.

“Bad news?” she asked.

Camron pinched his eyes in thought, but he nodded. “That was Jax.”

She shoved the medic away and sat up. “Jax? What’s going on?”

“He said they’re increasing the threat level and…”

Punky jumped up from the gurney and gritted her teeth against the pain and sudden bout of vertigo. Camron held up a hand to stop her, but she shoved him aside. “Let’s go.”

He shook his head. “You need to go to—”

But she wasn’t listening to him. She jumped from the back of the ambulance, spotted his black government Chevrolet Tahoe with dark-tinted windows, and made a beeline for the driver’s door. His heavy footfalls chasing after her were all the evidence she needed to know he wasn’t about to let her run off on her own again.

“I’ll drive,” he said.

She opened the driver’s door and climbed in behind the wheel. “The hell you will. I’ve seen you drive, and we don’t have time for that.”

Camron looked like he was going to argue with her, but he relented and jogged around the nose of the SUV and climbed inside next to her. Punky had the Tahoe in gear and her foot to the floor before he had even buckled himself in. “Whoa, Punky! We want to get there alive.”

But she ignored him. She still felt light-headed and sluggish, but the idea of letting the Chinese assassin who had shot her get to Tan Lily and her daughter was all the motivation she needed. She had let her guard down once before and took three gunshots to the chest for it. It wouldn’t happen again.

She raced the Tahoe through the community center, then skidded around the corner at the intersection onto West Bernardo Drive. She held the SUV’s plastic steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip, longing for her Challenger’s Alcantara-wrapped steering wheel — and its almost endless supply of horsepower.

“You need a new car,” she muttered, guiding them across the overpass and onto the interstate headed north.

“I’d like to live long enough to drive one,” he said, clutching the grab bar on the A-pillar while flinching as she weaved them through traffic at over one hundred miles per hour.

Punky’s eyes darted across the freeway several car lengths ahead, projecting their path as they raced into danger. With one hand on the wheel, she fished her cell phone from her pocket to call Jax. She needed to find out what was waiting for them when they got there.

Valley Center, California

Jax opened his eyes and saw steam rising from his car’s crushed nose, but the ringing in his ears was the only thing he could hear. He leaned back into the seat and winced at the throbbing in his skull, then tentatively brought a hand up to his forehead to feel a large knot growing where it had impacted the steering wheel. Even cushioned by the air bag, he felt far worse than he had expected.

That was stupid, he thought, remembering with sudden clarity how he had turned his compact German sedan into a missile and aimed it at the assassin in Punky’s stolen car.

Assassin.

The thought was enough to erase the cobwebs that kept him fixed in place, and he scrambled to free himself from the seat belt keeping him immobile. He needed to get back to Tan Lily before it was too late.

It took some doing, but Jax managed to release the buckle and pry the door open. He pulled himself free from the wrecked car and stumbled out onto the driveway, scanning the carnage around him with an odd sense of detachment. The Dodge Challenger had damage to its driver’s-side rear quarter panel and was spun around with its nose pointed away from the safe house. The driver’s door was open, but the front seat was empty.

Filtered sunlight glinted off spent brass casings littering the ground, and he spun to look through the gate at where a Ford Raptor pickup truck sat idle with its doors open.

What the hell happened?