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March 4, 5:32 PM

Budapest, Hungary

He knew she was being hunted

Seated at a chilly bistro table, wrapped in a woolen jacket, Tucker Wayne watched the wo tér, or Trinity Square The blonde, early twenties, glanced over her shoulder one too h most of the plaza was already thick with shadows as the sun set Her crih over her chin, not because she was cold; such thin ainst the chilly gusts that swept the plaza Also, she walked too fast co around the heart of the city’s Royal Castle District, a major tourist hub for Budapest

The arence, to watch for the unusual aers, he and his partner had served as the unit’s trackers through two tours in Afghanistan—for search-and-rescue operations, for extraction, for hunting down targets of acquisition In the outlying districts and villages of Afghanistan, the difference between life and death was not so much about rifles, Kevlar, and the latest risk assess the rhythms of the environ for anything out of the ordinary

Like now

The wo was out of place: the ivory knee-length coat, the red shoes thata winter crowd dressed in browns and blacks or tans and grays, she stood out

Not hen you were being hunted

As he watched her nervous progress across the square, he cradled the cup of hot coffee between his palertips cut out of theathered inside the small space, where it arm and crowded at this hour They were bellied up to the counter or perched at small -side tables He was the only one banished to the outdoor patio at the edge of the cold square

He and his partner

The coian Malinois, lay at his feet, the dog’son the tip of his boot, ready for any cohanistan They’d worked together, eaten together, even bunked together

Kane was as

When Tucker left the service, he took Kane with him

Since then, Tucker had been adrift in the world, intending to stay lost, taking the occasional odd job to support hi on He liked it that way After all he had seen in Afghanistan, he needed new horizons, new vistas, but

With no faer needed a home

It came with him

He reached down and ran his fingers through the dog’s dense black-and-tan fur Kane’s old, stared up at his—they studied us as much as we studied them

He ave a small nod—then flicked his eyes to the square He wanted his partner to be ready as the woman crossed toward them, about to skirt past the outdoor patio

He scanned the flow of humanity into and out of the plaza as it wound around the towering statue in the center of the square Its Baroque façade was covered in old star It represented those in the city who had escaped the Black Plague during the eighteenth century

As the wo toward her There were a few She was a woman who naturally turned heads: slender, curvaceous, with a fall of blond hair to the middle of her back