Gan Ning darted down an alley and vaulted over the wall at the end using a trash bin as a springboard. He kept up his pace through the back streets, prize firmly in hand and familiar grin bright on his face. His collection of gold chains jingled as he ran. The old bag he had swiped wouldn't be worth much, but Ning was never one to resist a quick score. And that sucker skidding down the subway stairs on his ass with his mouth hanging open like a Looney Tune? Priceless.

Some fool had tried to tail him, some slowpoke who would undoubtedly lumber over to the wall and give up and go home. Ning was the wind. Ning was a thunderbolt in his slick orange track suit and matching trainers. Ning was

THUMP!

sprawled on the ground, unwilling sandwich meat between dead weight on his chest and sharp bits of gravel digging into his back. The dead weight in question was a dark-suited oaf who had jumped out of nowhere and clotheslined him.

"Hey!" Ning flailed at his captor, who looked more bored than threatened. "Get off me, you load!"

Cao Ren took hold of Ning's throat like a vise as the thief realized that his choice of words might not have been the wisest. Ning was not known to think before opening his mouth.

Ning was also a slow learner. He continued to flail and got more pressure on his neck as a reward.

"No funny business. Are we clear?"

Ning settled down and sputtered agreement. Ren loosened his death grip.

"Why did you take this bag?"

"C'mon. Y'know how it is."

Ren looked at him, apparently not knowing how it was.

Time for the old charm. "A guy's gotta eat?"

Ren sifted through the pile of gold around Ning's neck, lifting a medallion between thumb and finger as if it were a week-old gym sock. "Sell some of this foolishness if you are that strapped for cash." He got up and hauled Ning to his feet by a handful of chains. "Or make an honest living instead of preying on others."

"Strange one to bitch about bad behavior, Mr. Almost Choked Me to Death," Ning sneered. "You're no saint."

"Only to bullies like you."

Ren picked up the satchel and walked off down the alley. Rubbing his sore neck, Ning scowled at the snags in his track suit and the fresh scuffs on his shoes. Here he'd been, minding his own business. Then this stone-faced stuffed shirt had felt the need to throttle him halfway into the grave and wreck his style over some stupid bag that nobody was ever going to miss. So who was supposed to be at fault in this situation?

"You want bullying? I'll give you bullying," Ning muttered.

He sprinted off and easily closed in on Ren, who was still moseying along like he was carting milk home from the store. Ning took a flying leap and ate an elbow in the stomach before Ren even turned around.

Ning staggered against the alley wall, doubled over in pain. A trashed outfit, a bellyache, and nothing to show for it...this hadn't been such a great idea after all.

"Don't be silly." Cao Ren shooed Shadow off the kitchen table. "There isn't any room for you in there."

The cat habitually sniffed anything that Ren brought into the apartment. If there were a possible way for him to climb into the thing in question, he'd give it his best shot. Ren had taken a few seconds to grab a drink and found Shadow nosing under the flap of the leather satchel he had just set down.

A punk kid had been running up the street with the bag under his arm. The satchel was oversized and well-weathered. The kid wore about five pounds of bling and a Day-Glo track suit the color of a traffic cone. Ren did the math and approached the kid, who then veered into a nearby alley and cleared the dead end wall with a dumpster-assisted leap.

High school football was a decade in the past, but the lessons stuck for life. Ren didn't challenge the fleet-footed string beans to a full blast sprint. He outmaneuvered them. And this string bean had done most of the work for him, taking a one-way trip into a maze of back streets with a single alternative exit. Once Ren followed him, it was a simple matter of waiting. His martial arts training and general indestructibility had taken care of the rest. Hopefully the kid had learned from the experience after he finished crying over his ruined clothes. Ren didn't derive any particular joy from tackling troublemakers, but he had to admit that it was funny to see this one get his shorts in a twist about something so trivial.

An address card was set in a clear pocket underneath the satchel flap. Wondering if the information was current, Ren searched for it online. The only Lu Meng in the city turned out to be a history professor. Meng had pulled his hair back for the photo posted on the department website, but his face was unmistakable. He had the rugged features and deep eyes of the mystery man at Paragon.

Ren had intended to drop the bag off at a police station. Instead, he would deliver it personally.