Page 59 of Prey

She emerges twelve minutes later, hair damp with sweat, gym bag slung over one shoulder. She’s changed into street clothes—dark jeans, black hoodie, boots that look military-issue. Everything chosen for function over form, for disappearing rather than attracting attention.

I let her get half a block ahead before I start following. Not the careful distance I maintained during her original surveillance—she’s dangerous now, trained to notice pursuit. But I know this district, know every alley and escape route better than she does.

She takes a circuitous path, doubling back twice, using reflective surfaces to check for tails. Professional-grade countersurveillance that would lose most pursuers. But most pursuers aren’t me.

Her destination is a run-down apartment building wedged between a check-cashing place and a liquor store. She uses three different keys to get through the security doors and checks the stairwell for threats before ascending to the third floor.

I memorize the address, the apartment number, the timing of her security routine. Then I fade back into the shadows and make my way to where I left my car six blocks away.

The drive back to the warehouse gives me time to process what I’ve seen. Jenna has transformed herself from a victim into a hunter, systematically eliminating human traffickers. She’s turned her captivity into a weapon, her trauma into a tool for justice.

It’s magnificent.

It’s also incredibly dangerous. To the networks she’s dismantling, to the balance of power in the underground, and most importantly, to herself. Because predators like the ones she’s hunting are dangerous, and one wrong move and they’ll catch her. And some of those hunters are going to be much worse than me.

My phone buzzes with a message from Darius.

How’s the Walsh surveillance going?

Right. Jennifer Walsh, the Treasury investigator who’s gotten too close to our operations. I was supposed to be planning her elimination tonight, not watching my escaped acquisition beat a woman unconscious for the entertainment of degenerates.

Making progress. Will update tomorrow.

Another lie to add to the growing collection. But Walsh can wait another day. Right now, I have more pressing concerns.

Such as figuring out how to approach a woman who’s spent three months learning to kill people like me. And deciding whether I want to drag her back to my bed or simply eliminate the threat she’s become to operational security.

In the privacy of my own thoughts, I can admit that watching her move like liquid death in that cage was the most aroused I’ve been since she disappeared.

The Nexus appears ahead, all concrete and industrial lighting. Home. Sanctuary. The place where eight other broken weapons gather to plan violence against the people who made us.

But tonight, for the first time since she escaped, it doesn’t feel like enough.

Tonight, I know exactly where she sleeps.

21

JENNA

The unease crawls up my spine, making the hair on my arms stand up despite the autumn warmth. I shift the grocery bags to one arm and check my phone—6:15 PM. Rush hour means crowds, witnesses, and safety that comes from being surrounded by people too busy with their own lives to notice one woman walking home.

But the feeling won’t leave.

It’s been three months since I walked out of that warehouse in stolen clothes. Three months of building this new life—Kathy Morrison, underground fighter with a taste for vigilante justice. I should feel secure by now.

Instead, I feel like prey again.

My boots echo against the cracked sidewalk as I navigate through the evening crowd. Construction workers heading home, office drones catching buses, kids cutting through the district on their way to whatever trouble they can find. Normal people living normal lives, oblivious to the predators that move through their world.

I use a storefront window to check behind me. Nothing unusual— the typical mix of pedestrians, no one maintainingconsistent distance or showing particular interest in me. But my nervous system doesn’t believe what my eyes are telling it.

Someone’s watching. I know it the way you know a storm’s coming before the first drops hit.

The grocery bags cut into my forearms as I pick up the pace. Milk, bread, protein bars—the basics that keep me functional between fights and kills. Simple groceries for a simple life, if you ignore the knife in my boot and the blood under my fingernails.

My apartment building squats between a pawn shop and a liquor store, all crumbling brick and broken dreams. The same type of place I’ve been hiding in for years—forgettable, temporary, populated by people who mind their own business.

Three locks on the front door, two more on the stairwell entry. I run through them quickly. Still nothing visible.