Chapter 58

Daniel was right to think something would happen, in the end. Beth had mastered stalking her quarry in the past life, but in the almost three seasons she had spent in this new one, she had become utterly out of practice.

Perilously so. And she realized it only when the man stiffened, turned his head, and sniffed the air over his shoulder. She tried to slink back behind the closest corner only to find that they were both in the middle of a narrow brick alleyway, and there was no escaping detection.

The smog that muddied the air was thinner than two and a half streets over where the flames had grown to a raging conflagration, and there was no hiding within it. Beth and the man locked gazes as he turned, and adrenaline thickened in her veins, warning her: fight.

The man was trained. Highly trained. The span of time between the instant he saw her and the instant he leaped to attack was less than a second. He didn't just know how to fight; he lived like this, constantly struggling, consta