She picked up her pace to make sure Rain didn’t get to Manzanita too far ahead of her. They were working off maps, not the actual terrain, and there had been no time or opportunity for practice runs. In fact, they were getting uncomfortably close to three o’clock and the next video release. So there was going to be a lot of adjusting on the fly.
Rain reached Manzanita and turned right. He must have seen her coming—she was only thirty feet away when he turned—but he gave no sign of it. She felt nothing from him, no recognition, no awareness. Of course it made sense that he would ignore her, but still, somehow the totality of it, the absence of anything, surprised her.
She rounded the corner and saw the man sitting on the bridge, holding a brown paper bag as Evie and Maya had described. Rain had slowed his pace slightly. Was he breathing more heavily? Maybe. But she doubted it was from exertion. More to appear winded, and therefore less of a potential threat.
Rain was fifteen feet from the man now; Livia was twenty feet behind him. The man glanced past Rain at Livia. He seemed uninterested. But the contrast with Rain was impossible to miss. The man seemed uninterested. With Rain, there was nothing at all.
Ten feet. The man glanced to his right. The street was otherwise empty, but still he must have decided he didn’t like the pattern of two ostensible runners closing in on him from Sand Hill, the first on his side of the street, the second angled off on the other. He stood, his hand drifting toward the small of his back.
Rain’s pace and posture remained unchanged. Livia wanted to shout a warning to him—the man was going for a weapon. She reached into the bellyband and gripped the Glock.
Rain had pulled abreast of the man. She thought he was going to go right by. Instead, he shot out his right hand and clapped the man hard on the left shoulder, shoving him to the side. The man braced against the impact, and instantly Rain caught the fabric of the man’s sleeve and yanked him in the opposite direction, his right foot arcing in and blasting the man’s legs out from under him in deashi-barai, a judo foot sweep. Livia knew the move well and in fact favored it herself, but in competition no real accuracy was involved beyond taking your opponent to the mat. Rain was more precise, steering the man’s head into the concrete wall he’d been sitting on. The man’s skull connected with a resounding crack! and the gun he’d been trying to draw went flying through the air. Instantly Rain encircled the man’s neck front to back, locked his arms, and arched violently away. There was another loud crack! and the man went limp. Before he could fall Rain shoved him back onto the wall, pushed him over it, and then vaulted lightly after him.
Despite all her experience with killing, Livia was awed. Carl had told her about Rain, about what he was capable of, and though she had been impressed by his self-control, his tactical acumen, and his ability to cohere and lead a team, she’d never seen him take direct action. The only other time she had witnessed anything like it was a freak who had attacked her in a hotel room when she’d been in college. A complete lack of warning signs was therefore something she associated with sociopaths. It didn’t horrify her to see it in Rain. On the contrary, she instantly understood it as a form of power, the same way jiu-jitsu itself had struck her when she’d first seen it as a terrified junior high student beset by bullies at school and sexual abuse at home.
She scooped up the gun, stepped off the road, and dropped down behind the bridge wall into the culvert. Rain was going through the man’s pockets. “Did he make you?” he said.
He was as matter-of-fact as though nothing had happened. Her awe increased. “What do you mean?” she said.
“Something tipped him. He went for his gun.”
“I didn’t think you saw his hand moving.”
“I saw.”
“Yeah, I’m getting that now. I reached for mine. He might have reacted to that. Sorry.”
“No harm done.” He pulled a cellphone from one of the man’s pockets. “Nothing on him but this. It’s turned off. Probably a burner. We’ll leave it. You picked up the gun?”