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Ash Pierce kept a straight, sullen face as the bus pulled into the underground garage. They always removed the male prisoners first, then the women. So she waited patiently as the men were individually unshackled from their bus seats and then led out.

As Haddonfield shuffled down the center of the bus, he glanced back at her. She didn’t make eye contact. Unlike on the drive over, the guards were paying attention now. Any indication of a personal connection between the two most infamous killers in Los Angeles would raise alarm bells. She didn’t need that.

But she'd laid out the bread crumbs for the kid. Now, she'd see what he did with them. The truth, which he didn't know—which no one but her knew—was that her memory had returned weeks ago. She was the old Ash Pierce, with all her original memories and skills intact, not to mention the moral ambivalence that had made her so good at her job: killing.

However, Haddonfield reacted to her idea, it would create chaos. If he agreed to work with her, she could use that to her advantage. If he went to the authorities, maybe even to Jessie Hunt herself, she could deny his allegation and claim that she was being railroaded by the LAPD, which would help her at trial.

Either way, Mark Haddonfield, though a prodigious killer himself, could be a useful idiot. And she intended to use him.

Ash Pierce lowered her head. She didn’t want anyone to see her face. She didn’t want them to see that she was smiling.