The drive to the Coloane hills was different this time.
I didn't take the armored Maybach, and I didn't take the Aston Martin. I drove a nondescript, matte-black SUV, the headlights cut, navigating the winding mountain road by the pale light of the moon. The road was narrow, hemmed in by dense bamboo forest on both sides, the stalks swaying in the night breeze like skeletal fingers reaching for the sky.
I wore a dark tactical suit, stripped of any identifying insignia. I carried the suppressed USP in a thigh holster and a ceramic combat knife strapped to my chest rig. I wasn't walking in as a billionaire investor or a polite Head of Security. I was walking in as the man who had dismantled the Four Dragons and survived a federal-grade assassination attempt. I was walking in as Noah Reed, and tonight, that name was the most dangerous thing on this mountain.
