It was a fortress.

But no castle was impenetrable.

A plan was already building in her head. They would need uniforms and passes and a French police truck. She had left Kowalski at an Internet caf'e in the neighboring village of Bar-sur-Aube. Through a Guild source, he was gathering a list of the names of both prisoners and guards, including their photos. She believed she could have everything ready by tomorrow. Morning visiting hours would allow one or two of them to get inside. The rest would need to come in the marked truck with fake photo credentials.

Still, there remained many variables. How long would they need to be in there? How would they get out? What about weapons?

She knew they were moving too fast, too recklessly.

Seichan suddenly ducked behind the thick bole of a white oak. She couldn't say why she felt the need to hide.

Just a prickling at the base of her neck.

She knew better than to ignore it. The human body was a big antenna, picking up signals the conscious mind often missed, but the deeper part of the brain, where instinct was rooted, continually processed them and often sounded the alarm.

Especially if trained from childhood, like Seichan, whose survival had depended on listening to those darker folds of awareness.

As she held her breath, she heard the crackle of dried leaves behind her. Ahead, a rustle of branches. She dropped into a crouch.

She was being hunted.

Seichan knew that spotters had followed them to France. Before leaving England, she had reported in with her contact. Magnussen knew their destination. The tail had picked them up again in Paris. It hadn't taken Seichan long to spot them.

But she would have sworn no one had followed her from Bar-sur-Aube after she dropped off Kowalski. She had left her car parked at a roadside rest stop and headed into the woods alone.

Who was out there?

She waited. Heard the rustle behind her again. She fixed the location in her head. Pivoting out, she took in the view in one unblinking stare. A man with a rifle, camouflaged, crept through the woods, clearly military-trained. Even before she was done pivoting, she snapped out her arm. The steel dagger flew from her fingertips. It shredded through the leaves and impaled the hunter through the left eye.

He fell back with a cry.

She rushed forward and closed the distance in four steps. She slammed her palm into the hilt, driving it deep into his brain.

Without slowing, she snatched his rifle and continued upslope.

A boulder lay near the ridge. From her earlier survey, she had the entire terrain mapped in her head. Reaching the shelter, she slid and flipped over on her belly. She came to rest in a sniper's crouch, her eye already at the scope.

A ping ricocheted off the boulder near her head.

She heard no gunshot, but the round's passage had brushed through a pine branch. Needles puffed. She fixed the trajectory through the scope, spotted a solid shadow moving through a dappled one, and squeezed the trigger.

The rifle spat with no more noise than the snap of a finger.

A body crashed. No scream. A clean head shot.

Seichan moved again.

There would be a third.

She ran along the ridgeline, triangulating the most likely spot for a third assassin. She kept to the high ground. The map of the terrain overlay her vision, like the heads-up display inside a helmet.

If she had been setting up an ambush in this region of the woods, there was a tempting roost ahead. A lightning-struck dead oak with a hollowed-out trunk. If she had hiked another thirty yards, she would have moved into its field of fire. The other two assassins, sensing their prey about to stumble into the snare, must have let their guard down and closed in prematurely, foolishly exposing themselves in their haste.

Surely Magnussen would have warned them of their target's lethality.

But these were men, mercenaries with egos to match.

She was only a woman.

She came at the tree from behind, from upslope. She slipped to it without disturbing leaf or twig.

Planting her rifle an inch from the back of the dead oak, she fired through it. A cry of surprise and pain erupted as a body fell out of the tree's hollow on the far side. She came at him with her dagger.

He was burly, smelled of grease, his face stubbled with a black beard. He cursed at her in Arabic with a heavy Moroccan accent. She had the dagger at his neck, intending to interrogate him, to find out why she had been ambushed and who had sent them.