We met Landon a few blocks away in a hotel room. He looked uncharacteristically tired and a little on edge. We sat down at a small, round table and waited for him to start.

“Your competition,” Landon said. He pushed a folder to me across the table, and I opened it. There were five sets of documents inside with names and pictures. “Study them. See what you can learn about them, and make sure you know how to take each and every one of them out.”

I scanned the documents, stopping immediately when I saw a familiar face.

Fuck me.

Even without the sunglasses, I recognized the picture as the dude on the beach with the ridiculous, fucking tongue twister, only now it didn’t seem so ridiculous. Now I saw it as the threat it clearly represented.

“You’re the pheasant.”

Evan Arden. He was listed as Rinaldo Moretti’s key hit man. The picture showed him at a shooting range with a high caliber rifle in his hands.

“I believe I may have mentioned that he’s your primary concern.”

“I’ve met him,” I said quietly.

Landon eyed me.

“When?”

“A couple weeks ago,” I said. “He talked to me on the beach when I was out for a run.”

“Recon is a specialty of his,” Landon said. “He’s probably been on a rooftop with his sniper rifle pointed at you already.”

“He’s a sniper?” John Paul said.

“Former Marine,” Landon informed us. “One of the best shooters they’ve ever seen. I knew of him through my military contacts before he got himself involved with Rinaldo Moretti. He’s taken out hundreds of Moretti’s enemies over the years, but he disappeared shortly after the war broke out.”

“Seems like a weird time to take off,” John Paul remarked.

“I couldn’t get a lot of detail,” Landon said, “but I got the idea he might have been at the crux of the issue that started this war in the first place.”

“You think he had sights on me but didn’t shoot me?”

“Arden knows the rules.” Landon stood up and walked over to the window to look out at the ocean. “Taking out a player once the tournament has been announced would inflame the war, not end it. He’s military, and following orders is in his blood. He’s also probably the next in line to run that organization if something happened to Moretti. Moretti’s only other options are his daughter Luisa, who might very well do it, or an illegitimate son he barely recognizes. Ending the feud is in Arden’s best interest.”

“But Arden hasn’t been involved in the war recently?” John Paul asked.

“Not at all,” Landon said. “He doesn’t even appear to be residing in the Chicago area. Probably has a place outside the country—no one seems to know for sure where he’s been, not even Moretti himself. Obviously he has a way to contact him though, or he wouldn’t be here.”

John Paul looked over to me with concern in his eyes.

“Tomorrow we meet with everyone,” Landon told us. “All six family heads and your competition will be there, Bastian. The others aren’t much of a worry, but I want you up close and personal with Arden before you have to take him on. Figure him out. Fuck with his head, if you can—I understand he’s a pretty hard nut to crack.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

“He was a POW in the Middle East. It fucked with his head, which is why he was discharged shortly after he was recovered from a camp in Afghanistan. There’s video out there—go watch it. Use it against him.”

“Will do.” I picked up the folder full of information and stood. John Paul followed suit, and he drove me back to the condo where Raine was still trying to study.

“Good workout?” Raine asked. She looked me over, and it was obvious I hadn’t been at the gym.

“I learned a lot,” I responded vaguely. She didn’t press for more, and I wondered if she just didn’t want to know.

“We have to move,” she said suddenly.

“What? Why?”

“We can’t fit us and a kid in this condo,” she said, “and I don’t like the public schools here. We need to move somewhere where Alex can get a good education, and we can get a place that will have enough room for him.”

As I looked around the apartment, I didn’t have much of an argument. She was right; there wasn’t enough room for another person in here even though we did have an extra bedroom.

“A house, maybe?” I said.

“I think that would be nice,” Raine agreed. “Someplace with a yard where he can be outside and play. I don’t want to worry about traffic.”

“Here in Miami?”

“Not in the city,” she said.

I knew what she really meant—not too close to the beach. I didn’t like it, but considering everything else, I wasn’t going to press the issue. She had my back on this, and I’d sacrifice whatever it took to make it work for all of us. Maybe I’d manage to convince her that Alex would benefit from living near the beach.

I went over to the couch and knelt beside her. I looked up into her face and captured her eyes with mine.

“Anything you want,” I told her. “Anywhere you want. I just want us all together when this is over.”

For once, I really meant it.

She bent over and placed her lips on mine.

“I love you,” she said.

“Right back at ya, babe.” I smiled and kissed her back.

* * *

I followed John Paul to his car after I made sure Raine was good for the day. I had no idea how long this meeting was going to last or where we were even going. John Paul drove south for some time, and as we reached Homestead and the unending fields of squash filled with migrant workers in wide-brimmed hats, we turned down a gravel road and headed toward a large barn out in the middle of fucking nowhere.

I’d spent the night studying all the documentation Landon had given me. I’d even found a video of a news release about Lieutenant Evan Arden and his capture in the Middle East. It included footage of a man being executed right beside him. I hadn’t studied the others as closely, but I was prepared to meet them all and get a better idea of their weaknesses. For the most part, the rest didn’t concern me.

As we got out of John Paul’s truck, I looked up to see ultralight planes and a few gliders up in the sky. Far across a field of yellow crook-necked squash, I could see a small airfield. Other than that, there was nothing and no one to be seen except for two menacing guys standing by the large double doors of the barn. John Paul’s boots kicked up dusty gravel as we approached, and the guards checked us both for weapons before they opened the doors to allow us inside.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but there were a lot of people in there. They formed six small groups around the mostly open area. I checked each group, silently naming the associated crime lords and their tournament participants.

Gavino Greco from Chicago was the closest to the door. Towering over him was a massive guy sporting hundreds of tattoos. There was enough ink showing on him that I wondered if even his dick was decorated. Aside from his face, he was covered in them. I remembered from the documents Landon had given me that he was called Hunter, and he wasn’t going to be easy to take down in a melee fight though he was mostly a bow-hunting fanatic. Of all the other fighters, he had the most tournament experience, with or without weapons.

The next group was also from Chicago. Since the start of the war and the fall of the last boss in Chicago, the organization had nearly failed completely. It was now run by two guys from Azerbaijan—Sergi Dytalov and Igor Severinov. They were unimpressive figures physically, but they had the most at stake in this little game, and they watched me carefully with calculating eyes as I walked in.

Their representative in the game was nearby, slouched in a chair and glaring at his own hands. His dark hair hung in his face a little, and the look on his face was anything but calm and collected. Erik Dytalov was into knives, according to the information I had on him, especially Busse and Kunai knives. A distant cousin of one of the new bosses, but not Russian born, he’d survived in the games for a couple years before he backed off and eventually quit playing. He hadn’t played for a while now, and I wondered just what he had been doing for the last few years instead of fighting.

To my right was Grant Chamber from the New York mob. There was a woman beside him I was pretty sure I recognized though I hadn’t figured it out from her picture. She was tall, dark-skinned, and had enough muscle on her to make you look twice, no doubt about it. As I looked at her in person, I realized I’d met her before.

“JP?”

“Yeah?” he responded quietly.

“Isn’t that the chick you dated in Seattle? Stacey?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I know. She goes by Reaper now. She’s been playing in the games for about a year.”

Obviously, he wasn’t surprised to see her here. He didn’t look at me, and I wasn’t sure if he cared or not that I was going to be killing her in a couple of weeks. If it mattered to him, he didn’t show it.

On the other side of the New York group was an imposing-looking woman with short hair and flashing eyes. I assumed through the process of elimination that it must be Maria Hill—the woman who ran the operations in Los Angeles. The tall African-American guy with her was Tyrone Chimes, an expert in knife combat and a good shot as well. He’d also been in the games for the last year or so.

In the very back, there was a tall, bald man with sausage-like arms and a bit of a gut. He made an imposing figure with two gigantic body guards on either side of him.

Joseph Franks.

I hadn’t seen him since the trial where I testified against him and Gunter Darke. Gunter had been convicted and killed in prison shortly afterwards. Franks, however, had gotten off scot-free even though I’d told the jury he ordered the deaths of everyone in the room. He just had that kind of pull, in and out of the system.