New York didn't smell like jasmine and grapes. It smelled like garbage, wet asphalt, and the frantic, suffocating energy of eight million people who didn't know they were being watched. The rain in Manhattan was cold a biting, grey drizzle that turned the neon lights of Times Square into blurry, bleeding stains on the pavement.
Nala stood across the street from St. Jude’s Private Infirmary, a sleek tower of black glass that stood like a tombstone in the middle of the Upper East Side. She was wearing a heavy wool coat, her hands shoved deep into her pockets. One hand was wrapped around the Director’s ring; the other was clutching a small, vibrating device Silas had given her.
"He’s on the fourth floor," Silas’s voice crackled in her earpiece. He was sitting in a van three blocks away, sur
