This route will keep her out of Serbia, and I make her promise to get off the train in Moldova before she gets to Tiraspol, where she can take a local bus to her little town.

She’ll be fine, I tell myself. At least in the short term.

Long term? I don’t know what this experience has done to her, but I can take a guess.

I feel bad for Liliana, because even if this is over for her . . . it’s not over for her.

The public address system announces the boarding of the train to Zagreb, and Liliana looks up at me without speaking.

“Take care of yourself” is all I can manage.

She hesitates, and I realize she’s trying to think of something to say, as well. I figure she could just say Thanks, but I’ve got her all wrong.

“The other girls, Harry. They are not like me. They don’t deserve what happened to them.”

Jesus. This woman is so psychologically damaged I don’t know if she’ll ever recover. It’s the most depressing thing I’ve seen in the past day. Not the violence, the murder, the kidnapping, the rape. It’s the fucking with people’s brains that is the end result of shit like this.

Like someone once fucked with mine.

This world. I swear to God. If there weren’t just a few good people left in it I’d burn it down to the ground with me inside.

I wish I had a way to make her understand that what happened to her isn’t her fault, but I’m not that guy. All I say is, “Go home. Be safe. Find out what makes you happy, and then do it. Everybody’s got to do something that makes them happy.” I give her a smile, or my version of one. It’s stressed, tired, forced . . . but it’s all I’ve got at a moment like this.

She nods and boards the train. I wonder about her, whether she’ll go back to her village or whether she’ll go back to Tiraspol to start turning tricks again. I have no idea.

I’m a gunfighter. Full stop. So much of the other stuff that happens around me is over my head.

I tell myself this so I don’t think about it too much, but it doesn’t really work.

I think about it all the time.

A minute later I’m in my Jeep, heading back to Mostar, ready to beat the holy fuck out of some piece-of-shit dirty cop because, just as I told Liliana, everybody’s got to do something that makes them happy.

* * *

• • •

Shortly before ten p.m., the three Hungarian police officers working for the Slovakian mob stood in the shadows of a side street just twenty-five meters from the foyer to Vukovic’s old building, smoking cigarettes and doing their best to control the adrenaline that had been rising in their bodies all day as the moment their target arrived home from work approached.

Their plan was straightforward, but it had worked for them in the past in similar situations. When his vehicles pulled up out front, they’d start walking along in that direction, just three men out for an evening stroll.

And then, when Vukovic and his two guards were close to them on the sidewalk, the three Hungarians would pull pistols. Two would shoot the three on foot, while the third man would empty his handgun into the driver-side windshields of the two SUVs on the curb.

Three men attacking five didn’t sound like great odds, but the Hungarians knew they would have complete surprise on their side, and they were confident killers.

The leader of the group looked down at his phone. “Should be leaving the station about now. Probably another ten minutes till he’s here.”

Karoly replied, “We’re ready.”

And Florian said, “Quick and dirty. Like last year in Maribor.”

Zente, the leader, nodded. “Just like Maribor.”

* * *

• • •

While the Hungarians had chosen a closer position than the night before, Talyssa Corbu stood in the same darkened alcove she’d hidden in the previous evening. And also the same as the night before, she was unable to see the Hungarians because her sight line into their side street was obstructed by a corner building.

Unaware she wasn’t the only person here right now with aims on the Mostar chief of police, Corbu had a plan of her own. She would wait for the police chief to be dropped off, and then, once the man was alone in his flat, Corbu would walk across the square and knock on his door. Using authentic credentials in her pocket but hoping to flash them so fast the cop didn’t catch her name, Corbu would make her way inside and then pull out the little stainless steel pistol she’d bought on the street in Belgrade a few days earlier.

She’d demand answers from Vukovic, threaten him by waving both her gun and her credos, and just stay there and keep it up until she got what she wanted. That Corbu had never shot anyone, had never roughed anyone up for information, had never even been trained with handguns, was not lost on her. But with each passing day since she’d left her home, her limits had been challenged, broken, and thrown out the window.

She stood there in the alcove, checking the time on her phone and talking to herself over and over in a frantic whisper. “You can do this. You can do this.”

* * *

• • •

I shift my eyes left and right as my brain tries to take in and process the scene in front of me. In the distance I see three men in the dark next to a gray van in an alley near the home of my target, and they definitely do not look like part of his security team. They’ve got the bearing of police officers, but they are plainclothed, and from their furtive looks to Vukovic’s building and their nervous pacing around the alley, I think they’ve got some sort of mayhem in mind.

These guys are waiting for the chief of police of Mostar, and not to get his autograph.

My guess is they’re here to kill him, and I can’t let them do that. Not yet, anyway.

But the three men in the alley are just one part of the equation. Ahead and to my left, on the opposite side of the quiet little square, I see a lone man covered in a hooded raincoat doing his best to stay invisible next to a darkened mosque. A couple of vehicles have rolled through in the past five minutes, and both times I saw the figure in the edges of their headlights, and both times the man shuffled and bounced from one foot to the other with nervous tension.

Focusing on the black alcove helps me see him a little better now, even without the headlights. But I can’t make out a face. This guy is a lookout for the three in the alley? It’s the only thing that makes sense to me, but I can’t be certain. Otherwise he’s some sort of a solo act, just like me, because I don’t see anyone else around.

I’m inside a real estate office opposite the alleyway where the three men are standing by the van, maybe forty meters away. I broke into this business half an hour ago, wanting a secure place to watch the square, just to get a feel for the rhythm of the scene. A few passing vehicles, one or two people walking dogs on cobblestoned streets on a warm night, lights on in many of the windows of apartment buildings.