Jurgen.

Rebekka froze—but only for an instant. Being taken alive was worse than dying.

She scrambled toward the corner of a burned-out building.

Brick chipped as a bullet struck. Fragments hit her face, making it sting and bleed. She bolted, desperately looking for someplace to hide with each step. The prospect of being flushed out into the open like game and easily picked off with a rifle made her bite her tongue to keep from whimpering.

The rubble and debris along the waterfront became too difficult to maneuver around with Eston in her arms. She turned, and within a block the street loomed ahead, an asphalt-coated killing ground.

A sob caught in her throat at the thought of crossing it. But the thought of being raped by the guardsmen or sold to be raped by criminals running the maze kept her moving.

She should have let Levi take Eston. Abandoning him near the Mission was no crueler fate than what might happen to him with her.

Rebekka paused next to the burned husk of a military tank that had been used hundreds of years before her birth to reclaim the city from anarchy. She strained to hear something beyond Eston’s whimpers and the sounds of her own harsh breathing, something that would tell her it was safe to emerge from hiding. She found no reassurance.

Every second she delayed added to her peril. And yet she had to steel herself to edge forward and peek around the black and rusted metal of the tank.

Hope rose in her when she saw no guardsmen. Up ahead there was a curve in the road. In her mind’s eye she pictured what lay beyond it, the true beginnings of Oakland. There were shops there, places it wouldn’t be easy for a guardsman to take a woman and child away without witnesses.

She doubted the guardsmen hunting with Gulzar wanted what they were doing known. Not all those in authority were corrupt—Rebekka knew that, though only dire circumstances like the one she was in would make her risk her life on it.

“Just a little bit farther,” she whispered, more for her benefit than Eston’s.

She rubbed her cheek against the soft down of his hair as she gathered her courage to leave the shelter of the tank. Another peek and she ran, angling for the corner and the promise of safety it represented.

She’d almost reached it when the jeep came into view, racing from the direction she’d come from and carrying two guardsmen, Jurgen and the one she didn’t know.

Jurgen stood, taking aim with his rifle, and she pushed herself harder, drawing on the last of her strength to get around the corner. Her terror spiked when she saw a car approaching.

Before she could reach an opening between houses and dart through it, the black sedan cut her off. The man she’d noticed as the bus passed the library emerged and opened the back door, forcing her into the car. He followed her, slamming the door shut behind him.

It happened so quickly she had no chance to offer any resistance. And then he was urging her to stay quiet, and the instinct for self-preservation made Rebekka comply as the jeep carrying the guardsmen stopped next to the sedan.

A partition shielded the backseat from the front but didn’t filter out sound. Boots crunched as one of the guardsmen got out and approached. An electric window in front slid down. The man driving, a chauffeur or bodyguard maybe, said, “Are you chasing a woman carrying a child?”

Rebekka closed her eyes, willing Eston to remain silent. She fought to slow her breathing and could barely hear over the thundering race of her heart.

“You saw them?” Jurgen asked, wariness in his voice, or suspicion.

“Nearly hit them,” the driver said. “If I’d been going any faster I wouldn’t have been able to swerve out of the way in time.”

Jurgen didn’t say anything immediately. Rebekka could almost sense him struggling for a legitimate reason to search the car. Finally he said, “Which way did she go?”

“I don’t know. By the time I looked again, she was gone. What’d she do? From what I saw, I wouldn’t have thought she was someone the guard would be interested in.”

“She’s wanted for questioning. Her companion just killed a guardsman without any provocation.”

Fear for Levi flashed through Rebekka, overwhelming the fury she felt at Jurgen’s claim the attack hadn’t been provoked. She silently urged the driver to ask if the killer was alive and in custody. But Jurgen stepped away from the sedan, and the sound of his heavy footsteps marked his return to the jeep.

The window in the front seat hummed as it closed, the sedan already in motion. It wheeled around to head in the direction of the city, and the pressure in Rebekka’s chest eased though the worry for Levi remained.

She turned toward the man who’d probably saved her life. But before she could speak, Eston chortled and opened his arms, leaning away from her in order to go to the stranger.

“Mas,” he said. “Mas.”

Rebekka reacted without thinking. Her hand snaked over to the door handle but just as quickly the stranger grabbed her arm. “You’ll hurt yourself,” he said, ordering the driver to secure the car.

Locks snicked into place. The man released her and Rebekka pulled away, pressing her back to the door. “What do you want?”

“The prisoner you and your friend freed when you ambushed the trapper’s truck.”

A small shock of amazement went through Rebekka, that Araña had managed what seemed impossible. But on its heels came fear as Eston wriggled and struggled to get to the man who was no stranger to him—the man who must have escaped into the woods before Levi could stop him.

“I don’t know where the prisoner is,” Rebekka said, reluctantly giving up her hold on the toddler rather than continuing to restrain him. “Who are you?”

Her rescuer grunted as Eston clambered onto him, but his hands were gentle as he repositioned the child.

“Who are you?” she repeated.

Indecision played over his face. It lasted only a split second before he shook it off. “Tomás Iberá.”

Her heart stuttered, the blood it pumped turning to ice. Iberá. She recognized the name.

His family was old, one of those who’d “founded” Oakland—reclaiming it from the chaos of lawlessness after The Last War and the subsequent emergence of the supernaturals. Enzo Iberá was a general in the guard and said to be one of those in contention for taking it over after its last leader was killed by werewolves and feral dogs in the red zone.

Tomás tapped on the partition separating front seat from backseat. “Home,” he said to the driver.

Rebekka forced thoughts through a mind nearly frozen by fear. She tried to make sense of what Tomás had said—and hadn’t said.

His only interest seemed to be the prisoner. And yet he hadn’t turned her over to the guardsmen—though perhaps the reason for that was simple. He might not have recognized them as men who did business with the maze.

She wracked her brain for what she knew of the Iberás, and came up blank. If those in his family frequented the red zone, they didn’t visit the shapeshifter brothels.

“What’s so important about the convict?” Rebekka asked.

Tomás turned toward the front without answering, leaving her imagination to run riot with images of what would happen when they reached their destination.