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super soldier, and they’re not going to listen to any crap about demons. I’d be drugged and experimented on to find out how I work. Wait till they find out I live a long time, too. They could pass me down from one generation of scientists to the next.”
    She pictured herself strapped to a table, a group of scientists clustered around, and sharp instruments gleaming within reach.
    My own death by a thousand cuts.
    “You think I don’t fear the same thing?” Yanmeng said. “China, Russia, and America have studied remote viewers as intelligence tools. My only advantage if I’m caught is that I’m already halfway into the grave.”
    “Hey, don’t talk like that,” Amaro said. “You’re gonna be around when I have great-grandkids.” The conversation veered into Amaro’s lack of a wife to get the whole great-grandkids thing going.
    “I’m going to go get cleaned up,” Maliha said. Her friends were back to being themselves.
    As she headed for her room, Maliha wondered why no one had asked about what seemed to be her most glaring failure of the night.
    Why didn’t I get rid of the camera as soon as I saw the headlights of the patrol car? Speed to the car, blast the camera, and speed away. The second mugger shouldn’t have caught me by surprise, either. Losing my edge?
    Maliha cringed at the thought of having been sent sprawling by such an unworthy opponent. It was so unsettling she hadn’t mentioned it.
    Mishandled that man’s wound, too. He was just bleeding, damn it. A loss of focus? Maybe I should go back to Master Liu’s for more training. Too ashamed to tell him the reason, though. Her cheeks burned at the thought of facing him.
    By the time she came back to join the conversation, Maliha had made a decision.
    “Hey, got some results,” Amaro said as soon as she entered the room.
    “Tell me the bad news.”
    “I found the digital upload on the department’s servers and squashed it. I wrote over it with some military-grade static. The segment was still on the hard drive in the squad car, so I deleted it and gave it the static treatment. No one’s going to recover anything from it.”
    “Great. Amaro to the rescue!”
    He frowned. “Not exactly. The video segment was viewed before I erased it. We could still be okay, unless the viewer made a copy on something like a flash drive I can’t reach.”
    “Oh.”
    There was silence that stretched out uncomfortably.
    “I think we should all get the hell out of here,” Hound said. “Scatter.”
    “I second that motion,” Amaro said.
    “Third,” Yanmeng said.
    “Let’s do it,” Maliha said. It was the decision she’d come to earlier, but she was pleased that they’d come up with it by themselves.

Chapter Five
     
    E lizabeth put her face close to the window of the Nine Lives Pub in Washington, D.C., looking in. It was a rainy Wednesday evening and only 8 P.M., a time more suited for dinner at one of the many restaurants in the Adams Morgan neighborhood rather than staking out territory in a bar. Pub crawls didn’t build up until later at night. There were a few customers at scattered cocktail tables, their heads close together, their eyes displaying the shine of alcohol and desire.
    Couples stopping for a drink or two before heading home to make love. They’re already paired and don’t need to join the flesh parade later on.
    She breathed on the window and drew a heart on the fogged area with a blood red fingernail filed to a point. Pulling open the heavy wooden door, she stepped inside. The air smelled of cheese dip and salsa. There were bowls on each small table, along with a basket of chips. The walls hadn’t been painted for years, and since the place was formerly a smoking establishment, they were coated with a smoke film that looked substantial enough to support the ceiling all on its own.
    She flipped back the hood of her raincoat, revealing blonde hair that fell in loose curls to her shoulders. Her skin, which she prized above all,