I’m about to get stabbed and I know it.

I shift my body to the right, just a few inches, and Jaco’s cold steel connects with the skin on my left shoulder, just below the clavicle. The blade plunges into me, hilt deep, and I scream in pain.

And then I swivel my left hand out of the pack and shoot him on the right side of his midsection, at contact distance, with my suppressed Walther .22.

He lurches back in surprise, and I take the opportunity to scramble back myself. His knife is still stuck all the way into my shoulder, so I disarmed him, but I paid one hell of a price to do so.

My left arm hangs low to my side now; I can’t lift it to fire the pistol again.

The bullet I shot him with is small and slow, one of the least powerful rounds one can use. I haven’t killed him, but I’m sure I’ve hurt him and put a tiny bit of lead a few inches into his intestines. He starts to stand, and I try to do the same, but my left arm still won’t cooperate.

But my right arm is fine. I reach down one more step into the pool, retrieve the knife I dropped there seconds ago, heft it as I launch to my feet out of the water, and dive on him at the edge of the pool.

I land on him fully and the knife sinks into his chest, hilt deep.

I push myself off him and sit on the top step. The smoke blows away enough to see him there on the patio, his legs dangling down into the water, his face ashen and his eyes wide with bewilderment. He just lies on his back, staring skyward.

“Still love your job, Jaco?”

He coughs up blood that stains his face, then runs down to his white shirt and crimson tie, trickles into the pool, and reddens the water around him much like the last wisps of the smoke grenades redden the air around us.

He dies lying next to me without saying a word, and I pull myself up to my feet and step out of the pool. I walk over to him and kick him over towards the edge, and he falls into the water and begins floating away, facedown.

The smoke clears finally, and I regard the knife sticking out of my shoulder.

I have to leave it there for now; otherwise it will only bleed more.

I switch the Walther to my right hand and begin again for the pool house.

Suddenly I’m aware that the gunfire from the main house has stopped.

“Rodney? Report status?”

“House is clear. I’m hit. Not life threatening. I’ve linked up with Kareem. We’re coming over to the pool house.”

The door is just feet in front of me now. “Remain outside. Watch for squirters.”

“No reason for you to breach alone, Harry.”

But he’s wrong. There is a reason. “Say again, hold positions on the patio and provide cover.”

Rodney is obviously confused by this, but he’s a good soldier. “Understood. Be careful in there.”

* * *

• • •

Dr. Claudia Riesling had called the Uber when she was still hidden in the trees on the hillside, and then she’d waited until the app told her it was less than a minute away before struggling over a fence and out onto the street.

The road in front of her was empty other than parked cars. Police sirens wailed lower on the hill, but she didn’t think there was any law enforcement presence up here just yet.

There was an LAPD helicopter nearby; she was very familiar with the sound, and farther away she heard what might have been a news chopper. She didn’t see either of the aircraft directly above her, so she straightened out her clothes, put her phone in her purse, and walked out into the winding two-lane road, just as a gray Toyota Camry pulled around a tight hillside turn and stopped twenty feet in front of her.

A woman sat behind the wheel; Riesling hadn’t bothered to look on the app to see the driver or the car, but she stepped to the back door, opened it, and climbed in.

The woman just turned back to her and stared.

Riesling said, “The Four Seasons, Beverly Hills. You got that, right?”

“What’s your name?” the woman asked, her voice accented, like many Uber drivers here in LA.

“Claudia. Let’s go.”

The woman behind the wheel reached for her purse, fumbled in it a moment.

“Don’t you hear the shooting going on down the street? I said, let’s go!” Riesling demanded.

Soon the red-haired woman began driving forward, towards the sound of gunfire, not away from it.

“Turn around! What the hell are you doing?” Riesling asked. “You know, forget it, I’ll walk. Pull over, now!”

But the Camry only picked up speed on the winding road.

Dr. Riesling shouted with all the authority she could muster. “Pull over!”

She reached for the door handle, but the driver slammed hard on the brakes, sending the psychologist forward. Claudia’s face smacked the headrest in front of her, hard.

Dazed, she held her hand to her bloody nose and started cursing her driver, but only until the back door opened next to her.

The driver reached in, grabbed Dr. Claudia Riesling by her sweater, and shoved her down onto her back. Riesling brought her hands up to protect her face, but a large kitchen knife was pressed against her throat.

The younger woman leaned over her through the open door. In an accent Claudia suddenly realized was Central European, perhaps Romanian, she said, “You’re not going anywhere, bitch.”

Talyssa Corbu pulled the woman she recognized from the LinkedIn page of Dr. Claudia Riesling out of the car, and soon both women walked down the hill along Jovenita Canyon Drive.

* * *

• • •

I clear the downstairs of the pool house and find a young girl hiding on the ground floor in the back. She’s terrified, crying, and dressed in a wetsuit, which seems like a very strange thing for a young sex trafficking victim to be wearing.

I say nothing to her at first, only help her up to her feet and walk her back down the hall towards the living room and the staircase there, because I know now Cage and the others are on the second floor.

I motion to the front door with my head, my gun still pointed at the staircase.

When she doesn’t move, I say, “Do you speak English?”

She nods, her voice is meek. Staring at the dagger hilt jutting from my blood-drenched left shoulder, she says, “Yes, sir.”

She’s clearly American, probably fifteen or sixteen, and this confuses me. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here.” Then she says, “Are you going to kill my dad?”

Cage’s child? She’s so like the girls I saw along the pipeline that I can’t even process it. How could these people, Cage and the others in the Consortium, be so unspeakably evil when they themselves have children?