Page 2 of Locked and Loaded

Her people had to find the proof Crowe had on the mastermind first, and then Lennox Crowe’s circle of life could be completed. And that had to happen before Fontaine’s people got a hold of Crowe and discovered all the false information the mastermind’s people had fed her about the Society. If Fontaine discovered that, it could be catastrophic.

CHAPTER ONE

Dragan Maric stood in the narrow strip of shade at the edge of the souk and let the chaos seethe around him.

The Moroccan heat was relentless, pressing in from every direction, carrying the aromas of cumin, saffron, and cured leather. And beneath all of it, the less pleasant reality of too many bodies in too little space. Vendors called out in Arabic and French. Tourists haggled badly. Somewhere deeper in the maze of the marketplace, metal struck metal in a steady rhythmic clang.

He'd worked in worse conditions. He'd also worked in better ones. Today wasn't about comfort. Today was about finding one specific woman in a city of a million people who, it seemed, were all at the souk.

There! She appeared at the far end of the lane, and something in him went quiet and focused the way it always did when the target became real.

Blonde hair pulled back. Jeans. Lightweight top. Nothing flamboyant to draw attention. On the surface, just another tourist. She moved with the crowd, not against it, slipping between bodies with an ease that had nothing to do with luck.

He watched her for thirty seconds while his gut tightened. This was not what he’d been told to expect.

Her pace was off. Not enough for a casual observer to catch, but he wasn't casual. She adjusted constantly, half a step here, slowing there, anticipating movement instead of reacting to it. Her gaze moved without lingering, touching reflective surfaces, corners, and exits.

She wasn't browsing. She was mapping.

And that was a problem.

That wasn't instinct. That was trained behavior, built over years, and shaped by necessity, and it meant that everything he'd been told about Lennox Crowe needed to be revised significantly.

He pushed away from the wall and moved into the current of the souk. No urgency, no direct line, nothing that would register as purposeful to anyone paying attention. He used the crowd the way he always used crowds; as cover, taking ground in small increments, letting the city do half the work.

The subject turned down a narrow passage.

He followed, giving it three beats before he turned as well. The noise of the main souk fell away behind him. Quieter here, smaller cafes pressed into the stone, the scrape of chairs, low voices. The walls closed in on both sides, and the heat intensified between them. The air changed, less spice, more damp stone, old coffee, and stale tobacco. A cat shot across the path in front of him.

He was close to her now, near enough to study properly, and what he saw ratcheted up his level of concern.

The tension in her posture was controlled and sitting low in her body, not the high, tight tension of someone frightened; this was the specific, calibrated readiness of someone who had been in difficult situations and come out the other side. She didn't look back. He noted that carefully. People who were afraid of being followed looked back. People who already knew they had a tail didn't need to check.

He started to adjust his angle to intercept before the end of the passage. Two men were arguing at the exit, blocking it, which would buy him a second or two. That was all he'd need.

She slowed.

It was fractional. Barely there. But he caught it, and his mind went very still because she wasn't slowing because of the men arguing at the exit. She was slowing because she'd already decided not to go that way.

Shit.

She angled left through a dense curtain of hanging textiles, colors muted in the low light, swaying in the warm air, and carrying the smell of dye, dust, and years of accumulated sun.

He followed without breaking stride. A woman materialized between them, bracelets clanking, hands raised toward a display of jewelry. He moved around her without looking and pushed through the fabric.

The curtain was still swaying from Crowe’s passing.

But she wasn't there.

A narrow gap opened ahead, disappearing into a secondary corridor barely wide enough for one person. He scanned it. Left, right, behind the stalls, extending his attention as far as it would reach.

Nothing.

He stood very still and felt something unfamiliar settle in his chest. She hadn't run. She hadn't panicked. She had simply vanished, cleanly and deliberately, and at a moment entirely of her own choosing. He replayed the previous minute in his mind and saw it clearly now, the shifts in pace, the angle of the turn, the moment of diversion. She had felt him early. Early enough to let him close the distance, let him believe he’d been setting the terms, and then she had stepped sideways into a gap he hadn't even clocked as an option.

His jaw tightened.

He didn't like that. He specifically didn't like the part where she had seen him before he'd decided to be seen. That was his move, and she'd used it on him. That knowledge sat in him like a splinter, small and sharp and impossible to ignore.