Chapter 6: Agent Reyes Finds Him First

The parking structure smelled the way they all smelled — exhaust and damp concrete and the particular cold of spaces that never see direct light. Hayden had been down here twice a week for three years of law school, and the smell was so precisely the same that for a half-second on the ramp he was twenty-three years old and late for Property and his biggest problem was a blue book exam.

He had taken the stairs. Old habit from Bratislava, where the elevator in his building had a two-second lag between the button press and the motor engaging, and two seconds was enough to think about whether you wanted to be in a box.

He heard her before he saw her. Not much — a shift of weight, the micro-creak of a driver's seat accepting a body that had been still too long. His rental was a gray Accord parked in B2-14, exactly where he'd left it Tuesday, and the silhouette behind the wheel was not his.