04 Foxhunt

by Thescarredman

Caitlin and Mr. Lynch's 'milk run' to Italy goes horribly wrong, ending with Kat alone and on the run. A rogue IO agent offers Kat a way out... but is his asking price more than she can afford?

2. Run For It

Come on, Caitlin, she thought. Think of the things you've done, just in the past thirty-six hours. You've flown halfway around the world and back again in a private jet. You've done a deal with a criminal wanted by Interpol, played a terrorist for one man and a hooker for another. You've been shot at, crashed an airplane, and gone skydiving without a chute. Are you really sitting here paralyzed at the idea of some guy seeing you in your underwear?

She was crouched in a brushy stand of trees, looking down on a two-lane blacktop road cut into the side of the mountain. At this spot, the cut widened enough to accommodate a small store with a couple of gas pumps out front. In the past fifteen minutes, only four cars had passed, and none had stopped. It looked like a good place to pick up supplies.

The guy in question was standing outside the door. He looked about her age or a little older, and was dressed in jeans and a black T shirt that said, "Tell Your Children to Stop Staring at Me." He was staring up the mountain, and at first, she thought he'd spotted her. Then she realized he was looking at the fire on the distant summit. She'd glimpsed it over her shoulder from time to time during her descent, when breaks in the tree cover revealed it; she thought it rather resembled a dormant volcano about to erupt.

Get a grip. You wouldn't be any more covered up in a swimsuit. Pretend it's a stroll on the beach. Just pray the left strap doesn't pick this time to go. She stood, slid down the cut to the pavement, and crossed the road as nonchalantly as she could.

But his eyes were on her as soon as she hit the blacktop, and her step faltered as she passed the pumps and closed to talking distance. When she stopped, she couldn't help putting one hand on her shoulder and the other across her hips to cover up a little. "Listen, I'm in a little trouble. I was camping…"

But he wasn't listening. She saw his eyes, slightly unfocused, rising and falling with her breathing. Annoyance banished her self-consciousness. She snapped her fingers in front of his nose. "Hey!"

He blinked and raised his eyes to meet hers, as if coming out of a trance. He blushed.

"Clothes? You have any in there?"

"Uh, yeah. In back."

"Thank God." She walked past, towards the door, sure he was staring at her rear end and, for once, not caring at all.

The clothing display area, about ten feet square, consisted of a couple of clothes racks and a wall of shelves piled mostly with sweats. The selection was meager, especially for someone her size, but she wasn't feeling picky. There were no pants for her, but she found a pair of men's shorts to cover her hiney, although the fit seemed a little weird. She put them on over her soiled panties rather than do without. The only shirt she could squeeze into was a XXL sleeveless that hung way off her in front and stopped above her navel. She covered it with a short-sleeve sweatshirt with "Eagle Nest Lake" stenciled across the front.

"What happened to you?" The clerk had found his wits; she supposed it had something to do with her being mostly covered up and standing behind a clothes rack. "You weren't in that plane."

"No way. Nobody walked away from that." No socks or shoes, only sandals. Her Gen made footwear unnecessary for walking, but she'd be conspicuous with nothing on her feet. Again, she had to choose a sturdy men's style. "I was hiking, this side of the mountain. I'm sleeping in my tent when I got woke up by the crash above me. There's stuff falling through the trees all around, and my tent's on fire. I barely crawled out of my bag and got out the door. I lost everything."

"I thought those tents were fire-retardant."

"Not once they get sprayed with burning jet fuel." She found a small backpack and stuffed a few more items into it. "I'll pay you for all this as soon as I get my hands on some cash. Okay?" she offered him a smile, feeling ludicrous.

But he smiled back. "Sure. No prob."

"I suppose I look ridiculous."

"Ah, actually, you look totally hot. Even covered with dirt. Suppose we better call the cops?"

"I suppose. What's your name?"

His smile got wider. "Jeremy."

"Jeremy, have you got a cell phone?"

He showed her a fancy phone, with a three-inch screen, a camera, and a flip-out QWERTY keypad, that must have cost him a month's pay.

"Great. Dial it for me? I don't know the number. Not 911; I'd feel ridiculous telling an emergency dispatcher I lost my clothes." She eyed a junk food display on a nearby shelf.

"I don't know it either. Let me look in the phone book."

"Kay. Mind if I call home? And do you have a restroom?"

He handed her the phone. "Back hallway and around the corner." He headed up front to the register. As soon as his back was turned, she stuffed a double handful of candy bars and several bottles of water into the pack and headed for the restroom.

-0-

"After about fifteen minutes, she didn't come out, so I tapped on the door. She didn't answer. I thought maybe she had a concussion or something and passed out. I opened the door with the master key and there's this hole in the back wall, and she's gone."

"What did she take?" Gierling let Ireland ask the questions while he listened and looked around. The heli sat in the middle of the road, blocking the sparse traffic. They were both wearing windbreakers with "NTSB" across the back.

"Just clothes and a pack. And my phone. I got no idea how she took down the wall." The kid shook his head. "Her story didn't make any sense. I just wasn't thinking."

The agents exchanged a look. Gierling put on his "concerned public servant" face while he smirked on the inside. Walked out of the woods in bra and panties. I don't suppose you were. "How so?"

"It's a day's hike down from the summit. She was here fifteen minutes after the crash. And why would she be sleeping in her tent at suppertime?"

Gierling looked up at the mountainside. Besides the big fire on the crest, there were several others downslope. The forest was scarred with impacts from large pieces tumbling down the side of the mountain. "You never know. Looks like quite a hike. Maybe she was tired, simple as that. Some of that debris flew a long way. She didn't say she was camped on the summit, did she?"

"I don't think so," the clerk said doubtfully. "So, you believe her? Why'd she run off?"

"People do the strangest things when they're plunged into a disaster," he told him. "I went to a crash site once, a downed chopper, where the only survivor was running around the wreck, gathering up all the pieces he could find and trying to put it back together. Shrugging off the medics, picking up chunks of rotor and such, stuff that two men couldn't lift, and dragging them into place. You know, trying to unmake the accident. Maybe she's obsessed with getting home where she feels safe. She say anything about that?"

"She borrowed my phone to call home. She took it with her."

Ireland took out his PDA. "Can we have the number?"

The kid gave it to him. "I tried to call from the store already. She turned it off."

Saving the battery, or does she know something about the tracking chip?

The kid looked up the mountainside. "What's that?" A Hercules was passing over the mountain, just downslope of the fire. Liquid sprayed from its belly. "Firefighters? They-"

The mountainside erupted in flame. Jet fuel wasn't quite as spectacular as a napalm strike, Gierling thought, but at least as effective.

"What are they doing?"

"Building a fire break," he said. "It's awfully dry up there. That fire won't go out by itself. It's not like we have to worry about toasting survivors." But we do have to worry about erasing evidence. If he could have got away with it, he'd have had Ferris order the pilot to hit the store on his next pass.

He left the envelope containing the photographs of the girl in his inside pocket, not bothering to show them for confirmation; the kid's description was spot on, and very detailed. The little punk must have been staring like a moron the whole time she was in view. "Don't worry, son. We'll find your girl."

"I wish." The kid grinned.

On the walk back to the parked chopper, Ireland punched a long series of numbers into his phone; Gierling knew the kid's number was part of it. "We'll know every number she called in a few minutes. Audio on the conversation, too. And if the battery's still in the phone, we'll know where she's at, whether it's switched on or not, and listen to everything she's saying."

"Good." He called Ferris, on intercom, so his partner could hear. "Better set up a perimeter, the largest you can manage that's tight. Cover every highway, road and antelope trail. Fairchild's up and moving."

"Only half the team is here," she answered. "Even when they get here, I won't be able to manage more than a ten-mile search. We've got an army coming from Boulder, but they won't start arriving for another hour or so."

"Shit. That'll be too late. Better recruit locals, people who know the terrain and the roads. Tell them we're looking for a witness to the crash. She got banged up and she's delirious and might run from them. Just locate her." He was sure of local cooperation: even in a one-stoplight town like Eagle Nest, IO would have something on somebody. "And we need a spysat tasked to this area."

"Julius, we won't find her with a sat."

"No, but if we locate her once, she won't get away." He hung up the phone.

Ireland was looking at him. "Ten mile perimeter? You think she hitched a ride?"

"Doubt it. She won't want us to know which direction she's headed."

"We're only forty-five minutes behind her."

"You heard what the kid said." He looked upslope; the line to the burning summit was all folds and ravines and a million trees. "She must run like a deer. And I'll bet terrain doesn't slow her down much. I hope ten miles is enough."

Ireland's PDA chimed. He studied it briefly. "Battery's out of the phone. One call in the last hour. Want to hear it?"

"Bet your ass."

The speaker on the little handheld computer was good; both men could hear the conversation easily.

"Yes." A male voice, middle-aged, deep.

"Sir. It's me."

"What happened?"

"The rendezvous is blown. We crashed. Got shot down, actually. The guys…" A moment of silence.

"It's okay." The man's voice was gentle, fatherly. "It's okay."

"No, it's not. We were doing what we were told. They shot us down anyway. Our guys were heroes. They deserved better treatment from a government they risked their lives to defend."

Gierling made a disgusted sound. Ireland paused the audio. Gierling said, "Jeez. Hum 'Battle Hymn of the Republic,' why don't we."

"Hey. A lot of private pilots are ex-military."

"Exactly. Those two bailed out as soon as they could draw pensions, to sell their millions in training to the highest bidder. Who happened to be a worse traitor than Benedict Arnold, and one of the most dangerous men on the planet. When we caught up with them, they'd broken enough laws to go to prison for half a lifetime. I don't have a molecule of sympathy for them."

Ireland resumed the recording. "Where are you now?"

"In the mountains between Trinidad, Colorado, and Albuquerque. Someplace called Eagle Nest. I'm afraid that's all I know."

"Don't panic."

"I'm not."

"It's okay to be scared."

"That's good, because I'm terrified. But I'm not losing my head."

"That's my girl." Another pause. "You still there?"

"Yes. You never called me 'your girl' before."

"Sorry. Guess I'm scared too. Listen. I'm almost a day behind you. Head toward Dieter's place. Stay off the roads, and don't risk being spotted. I'll find you."

Ireland paused it. "Any idea who Dieter is?"

"Doesn't matter. It's the first time they mentioned a name. It's a code. What about his phone?"

"Damnedest thing. As far as we can tell, it doesn't exist. Trace doesn't even come up with a number. She made a call to nowhere."

"We got nothing then. The search pattern stays circular." He nodded, and Ireland turned it back on.

"This is some really rough terrain."

"It doesn't matter. I'll find you. Just keep moving. Stay free and out of sight till I get there."

"Kay."

Ireland pressed the stop button. "That's it. She shut it off and popped the battery right after. Not big on goodbyes, are they?"

"Not when someone's listening in, anyway." I wonder if he's doing her. If he is, maybe he'll be thinking with the wrong head. "When he gets closer, he might approach from any direction. But we know he's coming in from the east. Let's throw up some seatbelt and sobriety checkpoints on the interstates, just this side of the Mississippi. You never know. If he's in a hurry, he might get careless."

-0-

Caitlin sat down in the shadow side of the barren gully, shrugged out of her pack, and put her back against the slope, drawing up her knees. Unzipping the pack, she wormed her hand inside, past the spare clothes and candy wrappers, to her last bottle of water. She drew it out, cracked the cap, and took a long pull of the lukewarm liquid before twisting the cap back on and stuffing it back in the bag. If Anna saw what I've been eating, she'd blow a fuse. I've put more junk down my throat in the last five hours than I have in the past ten months. She listened absently to the faint buzz of a helicopter circling to the west, and tried to think. For the first time since she'd met him, on that awful night when he'd passed her clothes through the door of her cell and called her out, she was thinking of disregarding Mr. Lynch's instructions.

He'd said he'd find her wherever she went, and she believed him. He'd told her to avoid being spotted, and that had seemed prudent. He'd directed her eastward, no doubt to minimize the time to rendezvous. From his standpoint, it was a perfectly reasonable set of orders. From hers, it looked like a sure way to get caught.

She was certain he hadn't been looking at a map when he'd given those orders. Not a terrain one, anyway. Still halfway up the mountain, she'd moved eastward across its southern face, through trees and wide ravines. As soon as she'd passed the southernmost point, the landscape had changed dramatically. The folded woodlands had disappeared, giving way to steep, barren scrubland, with one sheer-sided gully after another thrown across her path; without Gen, traversing it might take days. With the trees mostly gone, she could see for miles, from the smoke-wreathed summit to the thread-sized road on the desert floor. Standing in the open, she felt she could be observed easily by air or from someone on the road with binoculars. She'd taken to the gullies immediately, scrambling up and down their slopes and sprinting from one to the next, expecting to be spotted every time.

The grade steepened perilously. She'd seen places where the ground appeared seamed; a closer examination showed those to be places where huge sheets of thin, weedy turf had lost their grip on the substrate and slipped downslope like paint sags, exposing the rock underneath. Traversing them seemed an invitation to disaster. So did using Gen to leap the gullies, if that was possible; the open land above them felt horribly exposed, and any movement so unnatural would draw the eyes of her hunters.

It was near sunset, and the moon hadn't risen. Continuing on her present course in darkness would make her difficult to spot from the road. But it would also make finding her way through the broken land nearly impossible. Besides, she'd got a look at the helicopters swarming around the mountain: they looked like military types, and probably had some sort of night-vision equipment, which meant they could see in the dark better than she could.

Hunkering down was tempting, but dangerous. She didn't want the widening search perimeter to reach her; if she let it pass beyond her, even if she escaped detection, Mr. Lynch would have to pass through it to meet her, and then they'd have to get through it again to make good their escape.

She couldn't safely move eastward fast enough over this terrain to stay ahead of the search. She couldn't hide. She needed to get away, in whatever direction she could, by a faster means than her feet. By the sound, the helicopters' search pattern was drifting closer. She got up, brushed off her shorts, shouldered her pack, and turned down the gully, headed for the road in the deepening gloom.

-0-

Ireland grunted. "So, what did you say to them? Do you think they'll talk?"

Ferris had brought several rental cars with her; Gierling and Ireland had taken one, and they were cruising the highway south of the mountain, in case their quarry headed that way.

Not that he thought much of their chances of spotting her if she did. Desert nights were dark. The closest town was on the other side of a mountain range, its lights masked, and the moon was nowhere in sight. Except for the fifty yards of road in their headlights, they might just as well be inside a sack.

He tapped on the steering wheel, smiling. "I told the one who pulled the trigger that the Gulf's little sideslip was the pilots taking back control of their plane. They'd have landed heroes if he hadn't blown them out of the sky. Let him know they were both ex-Air Force too, decorated veterans. Just rubbing it in hard, and acting totally pissed at the loss of those two fine men for nothing." He felt his smile widen. "I told him they deserved better from a country they'd risked their lives for."

"Oh, you prick."

"Then I threatened a court-martial for exceeding his orders, and quoted a couple of little-known provisions of the Patriot Act. After I've got him convinced he'll spend years in prison and never fly again, I tell him we might be able to salvage something from this disaster, so those men didn't die in vain. But we needed to make the cause of the crash disappear. The perp's accomplices had to think it was an accident, that we hadn't caught on to him. Flyboy was ready to cut out his own tongue. It was beautiful. His buddies won't talk, either. They stick together."

"Jesus." Ireland laid a hand over his stomach, rubbing absently. "You just came up with that on the fly? And they bought it."

"Bullshitting people's my gift and my pleasure. It's what got me in the Project."

"Must have been a hell of a recruiter."

"Never had one refuse the bait or slip off the hook." He tapped the pocket holding the photos. "This one was easy as a drunken cheerleader. She wiggled for a day or so, but I knew I had her the first five minutes." He stared out the windshield, thinking. On the blind drive from nowhere to nowhere, he reflected on his part in creating the monster they were now hunting.

He'd recruited six brats for the Project by that time, but as he'd read her dossier, it had seemed to him that Caitlin Fairchild would be a very hard sell. For one thing, she was already enrolled at one of the most prestigious universities in the country – at sixteen. According to her transcript, she'd aced every course she'd taken, and finished her freshman year four-oh. She was smart even for a Gen, and any Gen would outscore him on a standardized IQ test. She might be the first one to see the holes in the cover story.

Then he'd met her at her aunt and uncle's house, and his confidence had done an about-face and come running back. She was smart all right, but everything about her shouted easy prey to someone like him. She was pretty and geeky at the same time, just below average height, but skinny, with beautiful red hair mostly gathered behind her head in a tail, and emerald eyes magnified by thick glasses. She wore her heart on her sleeve; she couldn't help showing everything she was thinking and feeling, if you knew what you were looking at. If she'd been a new student in his high school, she'd have found herself in a stall in the boys' room the very first day. He'd watched her interacting with her family for thirty seconds, and known she was miserable at that Ivy League school.

That had been his opening. He'd run through his spiel, and watched her skepticism flicker and die as he'd talked about the free ride, the syllabus, the careful screening that ensured that the student body was a classless society where there were no outsiders, only a diverse group of people united by common goals. Before he'd got to the end of it, the tone of her questions had changed, looking more for reassurance than information.

The stipend had clinched the deal. One look around the Fairchild place, and you knew the grownups were on their asses trying to put both their girls through college at the same time. She'd glanced at her cousin and asked her uncle to sign for her.

The next step had been the "entrance exam," conducted in a hotel room while he timed the sections. There hadn't been any doubt she was headed for the Project; the daylong series of multiple-choice tests and essay questions would have been a challenge for anyone in the ninety-fifth percentile, but for her it was intended mostly as a distraction. Buried in the crap about differentials and reading retention were the questions they really wanted answered: are you good at finding lost objects? Do you ever feel you know someone you've just met? Are you unusually lucky? Have you ever witnessed an odd or unexplainable event? Do people ever seem to act oddly around you, and if so, when?

He'd watched her all day, poring earnestly over that paperwork, pushing her glasses back up on her nose and pressing her pencil eraser against her lips. And sometime during the day, he'd been surprised to realize that he wanted her. He'd amused himself thinking about it. She was vulnerable, separated from family and friends, and clearly aware of him as a male, put off-balance by the proprietary attitude of a man not her uncle. She was jailbait, but he had no problem with that; he was sure he could convince her to keep quiet until she was headed for Darwin, and once she disappeared behind the Project's fence it wouldn't matter. He'd gone so far as to work the seduction out in his head. They were already in a hotel, after all, and she'd jump at the offer of a break. She looked to have zero practice handling men, and wasn't likely to spot a good BS job; and he knew BS was his long suit. A little sympathetic conversation over dinner, and he was sure he could convince her they were soul mates. He'd have to be very careful pushing her over the threshold from romance to sex, especially since he was pretty sure she was cherry. But he'd had a lot of practice with women. Doing her might even serve to dispel her last doubts about going through with her enrollment; sort of combining business with pleasure. He'd smiled at the thought of kissing her goodbye at the Project, and her listening to him with dewy eyes as he promised to see her when she came home from school. Knowing if he ever saw her again, she'd have got her brain wiped in the basement, and probably wouldn't remember him.

But if she did…

Only with the greatest reluctance had he let go of the whole idea.

"Odd." Ireland broke into his very pleasant thoughts. He was working his PDA, really a powerful handheld computer linked to the beyond-cutting-edge mainframe at the new IO headquarters in Boulder. "Albrecht gave us a list of the stamps on her passports. Hardly seems possible she's moved around so much, but the Customs documentation matches up perfectly." The tone of the man's voice said it all.

"So what is it?"

"According to her passport record, she was in Istanbul thirteen days ago. Like I said, the data entries into Customs and Immigration log her in, and out a day later."

"So what's the problem?"

"The entry wasn't there a week ago, when IO did a sweep of their files."

"Maybe they're slow putting it in?"

Ireland shook his head. "I've checked several other entries at the same checkpoint on the same day. The data was entered that day. Hers shows as being entered that day… but it wasn't."

A pair of headlights went by, going the other way; it was the first car besides theirs he'd seen since sunset. This was one lonely-ass stretch of road. "So somebody's been changing the records. It's the same thing Lynch hired Albrecht for."

"So if he's already got somebody doing it, why hire Albrecht?" Ireland shifted in his seat, and pressed a hand into his belly. "You're looking at it backwards, Julius. She was never in Istanbul. She forges the stamp and entry data maybe a week ago, then shows it to Albrecht and asks him to erase it."

He got it then. "Setup."

Ireland nodded. "The passports may be completely bogus, and she fed them to Albrecht, knowing it'd reach us. Why would they do that?"

Ireland was new. He didn't know how the Shop had been chasing all over the world looking for these kids since they'd disappeared. The hunt had felt like a game of Keep-Away, and IO was the short kid who could never catch the ball. It would interest the higher-ups greatly to discover they'd been chasing their tails. That maybe their quarry hadn't been on the run at all, instead going into hiding and laying false trails. It would entirely change the nature of the hunt. And it might be worth a bonus to the man who proved it.

Something bothered him about that, something he was missing. "What else can you find out about those passports?" He tried to think it through.

"Got an idea." Mike studied his readout and tapped keys. "Give me a few."

It came to him that hiding should have been harder than running, false leads or no. If you moved at all, you couldn't help leaving tracks, however faint; if you kept going back to the same place, you were bound to make a path. Why hadn't IO spotted them anyway?

"Got it. Check this out. I found two other stamps where the Shop swept the files right after the entry and exit dates."

"They're screwy too?"

Ireland shook his head. "No. everything matches perfectly."

"So what's the problem?"

"These last two were routine computer sweeps. The Istanbul report was an eyes-on that we did looking for something else." His partner looked up at him. "If we assume these passports were made as a diversion, then the records pertaining to Fairchild were sanitized at the time of inquiry; the Istanbul record wasn't because it's another case and there's no reference to her in the inquiry. They're not just hacking the ID database. They're hacking our computers."

He smiled. "Hacked our hacking system? No way. If there was the slightest chance of this system being compromised, IO would ground it until it was fixed. The smartest computer guys in the world take runs at it, to make sure it stays secure. It's bulletproof."

"Uh huh. Wiretap system's supposed to be bulletproof too, but they've got phones we can't trace. The national ID system is good, but anybody who could get into our system could crack it like a walnut. Occurs to me that the Shop has been leaning pretty heavily on their computers to hunt these guys down. Didn't he trash the computer system once?"

"World of difference between forcing a crash from the inside, and subverting it so well nobody can tell it's been burned." But his unease had found a focus. Fairchild's major in college had been computer science.

A genius couldn't penetrate and turn IO's computers. But maybe a Genactive genius could.

"Keep this under your hat for a bit, Mike. Try to round up more evidence before we show it around."

"Kay. Can we stop, next bathroom we find? I'm not feeling so hot."

-0-

"Anna."

"Yes, sir. What's wrong?"

"We've had to switch from Plan B to Plan C, that's what's wrong." He was driving a pickup truck down Tennessee 100, passing Henderson on his way into the Chickasaw State Forest. He estimated he was about an hour from Memphis, where he planned to ditch it and climb on a bus.

"I didn't know there was a Plan C."

"Exactly." He resisted the urge to pound the dash. Stupid. What was I thinking, getting her involved in this? I'm supposed to be protecting them, giving them all a normal life. Instead, I've plunged Alex's child into danger and put her back in Ivana's reach. "Do you know where she is? Do you still have a trace on her?"

A pause. "Yes. Her transponder is still responding to queries. Do you want longitude and latitude?"

"No. Give me an approximate location I can find on a map. Better give me speed and direction, too."

"She's approximately eleven kilometers east of Eagle Nest, New Mexico, traveling south-southeast at a trot."

He squeezed the wheel until his knuckles turned white. "Not east?"

"No. She appears to be headed for US 64."

"God's sake, why?"

"I'm looking at a geo map, sir. The terrain to the east is strewn with gullies and precipices, quite impassable. I think she's traveling under cover, in whatever direction she can."

She told me the terrain was rough, and I blew her off and sent her east anyway. He considered taking a chance and pushing on in the truck. No. I can't help her if I'm caught. I can't call. Just have to swallow my fear and brook the delay. "Keep an eye on her, Anna. If anything significant changes, let me know."

"Sir, I'm about as close to her as you are. And I don't have a gauntlet to run."

He considered it. Anna could travel under the radar, and her GPS system would take her straight to the girl.

No. I can't afford to risk anyone else. "No. Just keep me posted." Great. I'm on Plan D, and I didn't even have a Plan C.

-0-

Gierling said, "You look like shit."

"I look like I feel then. If we don't find someplace soon, you need to pull over and let me crap in the bushes." Ireland was bent over in the seat, hugging himself. "I'm just glad you didn't pick up anything from that stand. Jesus. When's the next town?"

"Might be something in Ute Park, but I doubt it. If not, we'll head back to Eagle Nest. It's closer than going on to Cimarron."

Hunting her on the road like this was a waste of time anyway. Even if she was walking the shoulder, she'd see headlights long before they illuminated her, and the jumbled terrain on either side of the road gave her plenty of places to hide. They might have passed her already without knowing it.

The road bent. Coming around the curve, he saw building lights and a gas station sign. It was a little combination gas station and convenience store. The building was dark and untenanted, but the big sign out front was lit, and the lights in the steel canopy over the pumps bathed them dimly. He'd seen stations like this before, where you could still gas up with a credit card after closing. He turned in. "If there's no restroom open, we'll turn back to Armpit, New Mexico, okay?"

Ireland nodded and got out, headed around back. Gierling guessed he'd shit his brains out back there, whether he found a toilet or not.

He decided to top off the tank. It was only a few gallons shy of full, but he didn't like taking chances with it in the middle of nowhere. The idea of calling Ferris to say he was out of gas held a certain attraction, if he'd been alone and she'd come to the rescue by herself; she was cute. But he wasn't alone and of course she'd send someone.

He pulled up to the pumps, got out, and stuck a card in the reader. Then he had to get back in and turn the car around because the fuel door was on the other side. He stuck the nozzle in and listened to the gas flowing into the tank. There was absolutely no other sound, seemingly in the whole universe. After a couple of minutes, it clicked off, and he bent to pull it out.

He heard a soft scuff on the concrete close by. He hung up the nozzle and turned to replace the cap. "Feeling any better?" He glanced at the pavement next to him, and saw a dirty foot clad in a sandal. He had just enough time to glance up and get a glimpse of bare leg before a hand in the center of his chest slammed him against the pump.

His brain kicked into high gear. His gun was useless, even if it had been in his hand; he knew who he was up against. He had his issue syringe of Lethe in his jacket pocket; he figured his chances of getting it out to use on her at zero. The hand on his chest slid up to his throat, tipping his head up to look into the rather pissed and extremely dirty face of Caitlin Fairchild. Her eyes were a pair of shining emerald lasers aimed at his face. "Keys," she said, just before her eyes flickered in recognition.

Instantly, a plan formed in his mind. To cover any look of recognition she might have seen on his face, he said, "Jesus. You're the camper girl. The one off the mountain." Ignoring the steel-hard fingers around his neck, he said soothingly, "It's all right, miss. No one's going to hurt you. We're here to help. We'll get you home safe. We just need to know what you saw." The next few moments, the next few words, would be critical. He gently placed a hand over the one at his throat, trying to seem unafraid. "Come on. Let us help you."

She was clearly thrown by the double surprise of seeing him and his reaction to her. The hand on his throat loosened slightly. "Mr. Gierling."

He pushed his brows together. "Do I know you?"

"It's Caitlin Fairchild."

He frowned. "No, you're not. There's a resemblance, but you're twice her size. And she's a thousand miles away at school. Who are you?"

"School's out, Mr. Gierling." The hand tightened on his throat again. "It's really me. I just didn't come out the same way I went in. You remember how you teased me about that big pink sweatshirt I wore to my exam?"

He widened his eyes. "My God. Kat?"

"How could you send me to that place, Mr. Gierling? Don't tell me you didn't know what was going on there." By which she really meant, please tell me you didn't know.

This was it, the make-or-break moment. Careful not to sound like he was trying to convince her, he said, "I sent a brilliant kid to a school for young geniuses. I thought it was a chance of a lifetime. The only catch was, it was run by the Shop, and they were bound to try to recruit you."

The hand slid back down to his chest; still pinning him, but it didn't matter. The hook was set. So long as he was careful reeling her in, he had her. "I suppose you never even saw the Academy."

"Sure I did. They gave me a tour before I started recruiting. It was summer break, no classes, but the place looked great."

"What about the basement? How did that look?"

Careful. "They didn't show me the boiler room, just the educational environment. I wasn't selling the place on its mechanicals."

"And what, exactly, do you think you're doing here?"

He said evenly, "I'm chasing terrorists. It's not the first time. It's what I do. Selling kids on Darwin was just a side job. This guy I'm after is a senior planner for Al Qaeda. He hijacked a private jet. The plane crashed, but he might have got out, so we went in to make sure. Then we found out there was a witness to the crash, a girl who was camping when the plane came down on top of her. She freaked out, bolted from a convenience store near Eagle Lake, and she hasn't been seen since." He made a show of looking at the logo on her sweatshirt. "What are you doing here? And what happened to you?"

The pressure of her hand lightened to a touch. "Long story. The short version is, your precious Shop isn't what you think it is. The Darwin Academy is a mad scientist's lab. And every kid you recruited is running for her life right now." Something caught her eye; she looked past him, towards the building, and tensed.

"My partner." Without letting her think about it, he stepped sideways slightly and pulled her along, hiding her behind the pump. "Maybe he didn't see you. Stay here. I'll talk to him." Without hesitation, she took her hand away, and he rounded the pumps towards the building. When he was three steps away, he let the grin break out.

Ireland was standing at the dark front corner of the building, his hand in his right pocket. "Christ. Is that-"

"Yes. Don't fuck this up. I've just about got her talked into going with us."

The hand slid out of Ireland's pocket. "Fuck. If you ever get within a hundred yards of my niece, I'll shoot your ass. One dose gonna be enough?"

"One dose is always enough. But we're not doping her up. We're going to help her get away."

Ireland's hand hadn't dropped yet; now it froze, waist-high. "What the fuck?"

"We're going with her to meet Lynch."

Ireland looked past Gierling's shoulder and shook his head slightly. "Too risky."

"Mike. If we take her down now, he'll get away. He's at the top of Ivana's wanted list. She's on the first page. If we net them both, we can name our reward." And if we pass it by, Ivana may have us shot, because we play for keeps in the Genesis Project.

"He killed six of our people at Charlotte, Julius. We're not going to take him by ourselves."

"Oh, I'm sure we can. If we've got his girl."

"You're crazy." The hand slid back into his pocket. "This is our one chance. Anything else is wishful thinking. You'll get a fortune for this one. It'll have to be enough."

Gierling sighed, just an exhale, really. "All right. I think we're blowing the chance of a lifetime. But all right. Let me do her. She trusts me. You distract her." He nodded at Ireland's pocket. "Take your hand off that. We don't want to both hit her by accident; a double dose is enough to kill anybody." He turned. "Remember the story. I just talked you into helping her. We're all pals." Ireland stepped past him, and Gierling brought his syringe to Ireland's neck and triggered it.

The man went down like a sack of cement. Gierling turned and bent over the limp form, blocking the view from the pumps; he was sure he only had a couple seconds. He put a second dose into Ireland's neck, pulled out the man's shirt, and wiped the syringe. Then he set it on Ireland's chest just as he heard her behind him.

"What happened?"

"He… I think he had different orders." He put just the right amount of shock into his voice. "You're right. There's more to it than I thought."

"What did you do to him?"

He nodded towards the pen-sized syringe. "Anesthetic. Handy little gadget. No needle, just a jet strong enough to penetrate skin. Breathing it works almost as fast, and the jet's accurate for maybe ten feet." He stood and grabbed under Ireland's armpits. He nodded towards the syringe again. "Grab that."

She picked it up and examined it, studying the indicator on the side. "Multiple doses?"

"Yeah. Ten per syringe. One-hour increments. I didn't want to give him too much. He'll wake up sick as it is." He started to drag the body towards the back of the building.

She reached for it. "Let me."

"No." He looked up at her. "I started this. I'll see it through. Just stick that thing in his coat pocket and go lie down in the back seat before someone else spots you."

She stuck the syringe in the closest pocket, the left. With her hand still in the coat, she caught his eyes and said, "I'm sorry. You're throwing away your career, aren't you?"

"It's like you said. The Shop isn't what I thought it was. But you've got a lot of explaining to do, Kat."

She took her hand out of the pocket and headed for the car. He dragged the corpse around to the deep shadows behind the building, dropped it, and went through the pockets. He grabbed the PDA, the phone, and Ireland's syringe. He left the Glock nine-millimeter in its holster. He cleaned the cash from the wallet and replaced it in the man's pocket. He kept his hands away from the coat pocket containing the other syringe, the murder weapon with the girl's prints on it. Ivana would have probably shot him anyway for passing up a chance to nail Lynch, but why take a chance?

The jackets were reversible; he turned his around, and now it was plain black with no letters on the back. He didn't know why, but he didn't want to show his shoulder holster to the girl. He grinned at himself. She knows you're armed. And a nine-millimeter is no more threat to her than a spitball. Your most dangerous weapon is your tongue.

She was out of sight when he got back to the car. He felt a moment of unease until he opened the door and the dome light came on. She was curled up sideways across the back seat. She looked up at him with eyes so hopeful and trusting, she should have had a finger in her mouth; he felt his balls pucker at the sight. He got in quickly, and the inside lights went out, hiding her again.

He pulled out and headed east. Only the driveways branching off the road told him he was passing through Ute Park; he didn't see how the place rated a name on the map.

"Where are we going?" No suspicion in her voice, just curiosity.

"East. Just staying ahead of the search for now." It was the only direction they could travel anyway; he'd gain a little more trust before he asked for directions. "Don't worry, I'll come up with a better plan when we need it."

"Kay." A pause. "Thank you. For believing me."

"You haven't told me much. What happened at the Academy?" See how much she's willing to tell me.

For the next fifteen miles, as the road wound about, descending through the darkness, he let her tell her sad little story. He didn't comment or interrupt; truthfully, he wasn't paying much attention to what she was saying. He already knew what they'd done at the Project; he'd helped design the containment level. He was interested in how she'd escaped, and where the others had gone, but she stopped before she got to that. He pulled over to the shoulder and twisted around. She was leaking tears. "Sorry." She wiped at her eyes, smearing the dirt on her cheeks and the side of her face. "Guess I'm not over it yet. Can we talk about something else?"

"Sure, kid. Just one thing. Did everybody get away safe?"

She nodded. "We were last out. Everybody got away. The man who rescued us gave us all money, and contacts where we were headed."

He nodded. "Good. Good. I sent seven kids to that place. It'd be good to know they're all okay." He turned back to the wheel. "We're coming down out of the mountains. Cimarron coming up in a couple minutes. Stay down. We'll go just a little longer, maybe another ten miles. Find a place to spend the night."

"You think that's safe?"

"Yeah. The search won't come out of the mountains for a while yet. And, frankly, I don't think daylight should catch you looking like that."

"God. I must look like I crawled out of a grave." He could hear the smile in her voice, hear her getting easy with him.

"Yeah." He chuckled. "And you smell like a barbecue grill, just before the cook touches a match to the coals. Phew." He rolled down his window, but not really to air out the car; he rested his elbow casually on the sill. He exhaled again. "What were you doing up there? Is that how you've been staying out of sight, camping in the wilderness?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Gierling. I can't say. It's a secret."

He knew better than to push. "Okay. Do your folks know where you are?" Can we get at the others through their families?

"No. None of our families knows. They think we're still at the Academy, for all I know."

They breezed through Cimarron, where he managed to leave a sign for Ferris. On the other side of town, he turned off US 64 onto a state highway. "If the map is right, this is a shortcut to the Interstate. We'll find a place to spend what's left of the night." And give Lynch a chance to get closer.

-0-

"Sir, Caitlin's changed course. She's traveling eastward on US 64, approaching Cimarron, New Mexico at about fifty miles per hour."

The bus was idling at a terminal in Little Rock, exchanging passengers. He planned to endure four more crawling hours on it until he reached Tulsa, then pick up a car. Got her hands on one already. That's what she was doing. Girl's keeping her head better than I am. "Let me know if anything changes."

"Yes, sir. What should I tell the kids? They know she's overdue."

"Has the crash been in the news?"

"Yes, but very low-key, and no details. They don't know it's her plane."

"Fine. Tell them she's okay, that I talked to her on the phone, and that she's lying low, waiting for me to pick her up." At this rate, she'll be doing most of the traveling.

-0-

Gierling walked out of the motel office feeling strangely keyed-up. He calmed himself as he walked to the car. He looked to make sure she was still lying down in back before he got in and let the dome light come on. As he settled behind the wheel, he said apologetically, "I only got one room, Kat. I-"

"-Couldn't get two, it would be suspicious. It's okay."

"Twin beds, anyway." He started the car and rolled to the end of the motel. He'd requested the room because it was near the end, three rooms away from the nearest neighbor, and the light in front was out. He'd only asked about the beds as an afterthought. "Stay here, while I open up. I'll come back and open the back door like I'm getting out my luggage."

Once inside the room, he looked it over carefully, to be sure the door was the only way out, and made sure the curtains were drawn and heavy enough to hide the interior from casual observation with the lights on. The place was worn, but neat. Let her get a little more comfortable, and give me a chance to seem more protective. He turned out the lights and went out, leaving the door open. A quick glance around as he stepped to the car, and he said, "Okay. Stay low."

"Easy for you to say." He opened the door, and she slid out with surprising speed, passed through the doorway and disappeared into the darkened room. He followed her in. She was standing between the beds in the dark, waiting for him.

He checked the curtains again and turned on the light. "Go take a shower. You got something else to wear?"

"Yes." She hoisted her pack and turned to the bathroom.

He shrugged out of his coat and holster. "Need any help in there?"

She turned back to him, eyes wide. "What?"

Why the fuck did you say that? "Jeez. Guess that didn't come out right, did it?" He tapped a finger to the corner of his eye. "I thought you might need someone to tell you which little bottle was shampoo and which was rinse."

She smiled. "Thanks. But I don't need glasses anymore." She shut the bathroom door behind her.

He stretched out on one of the beds, remote in hand, and surfed without really looking at the screen as he listened to the action on the other side of the bathroom door. He strained to hear the small rustling sounds of her movements as she stripped and dropped her clothes on the tile. Then he listened to the curtain being drawn open and shut as she stepped in. He heard the water come on, listened to the sound of it hitting the tub floor change as she moved around. He imagined her naked and soapy under the stream.

What are you thinking? Ivana's going to make you a millionaire for bringing these two in. You're going to risk throwing away the girl's trust by making a pass? No pussy's worth that.

But it was a hell of a lot of fun thinking about it. Here they were again, alone in a rented room, and her hotter than ever, and even needier. It would be easy. Maybe seducing her would loosen her tongue, ha-ha.

And if worse came to worst and she turned him down and got upset… there was always the syringe, and the collar and cuffs in the car. They could let Lynch come to them, and have a little party while they waited.

He shook his head. Are you losing your mind?

"Shower's all yours." She was standing in the bathroom doorway, dressed in a pair of cotton gym shorts and a sleeveless shirt so skimpy it looked meant for a ten-year-old; her head was bent down as she toweled off her hair. He hadn't heard the water shut off. God damn, she cleans up good. And she's not wearing a bra. Or much of anything else.

He rubbed his eyes to keep from staring. "Hm. Must've dozed off."

"Been a long day." She looked at him, those beautiful green eyes holding his.

"Not as long as yours. Feel better?"

"Much. Thank you." She looked him over. "You don't have a change of clothes, or anything to sleep in. And I've got nothing left to loan you."

"I'll manage." He usually slept in the buff, but it didn't seem like a good way to build trust. He passed by and entered the bathroom.

The air was steamy and perfumed with soap. He felt a little thrill at the sight of her plain white bra and panties hung over the towel bar, damp from washing. His fingers stole out to examine them, briefly rubbing the material between his thumb and forefinger. He eyed the washcloth and imagined running it all over her. He stripped quickly, got under the water, and jacked off. Then he washed up, finishing by turning the water temp as low as he could stand and letting it beat down on him until he was chilled. Nevertheless, when he put his clothes back on and left the bathroom, his breathing roughened at the sight of her under the sheets of the bed nearest the window.

She lay on her side, back to him, knees drawn up, silent and unmoving. Feeling strangely wary, he stretched out quietly on the other bed, fully dressed, without turning down the covers.

"G'night," she said quietly.

"Night, Kat." He turned off the light; the room's only illumination was the face of the alarm clock. Gradually, his vision adjusted enough to make out objects in the room. For God knew how long, he lay staring at the ceiling, when he wasn't stealing glances at her, and listening. He heard a soft exhale, and visualized her lips parted in a sigh at his touch. Whenever she stirred, turning over or just shifting a hip or shoulder, he could almost feel her moving beneath him. His breathing grew heavy and deep, in time to hers.

What the hell is going on?

He sure as hell wasn't falling in love. He was certain he'd never loved a woman, not even his mother. They were useful, and many of them were easy to manipulate. In fact, Screwing with their heads was just as much fun as using their bodies. The afternoon when he'd watched her fill out her test, fantasizing about doing her, half the pleasure had come from the thought of gaining her complete trust and then betraying her. Their present relationship was going to end with her being led off in chains to an underground cell, and he hoped to see the look on her face when she realized how thoroughly she'd been played.

So was it pure lust? Anyone with balls would think she was superfine, but he'd tripped so many women he'd lost count, and there hadn't been a bowwow in the bunch. He'd never got stupid about it. It was unbelievable that he was lying here, seriously thinking about doing something that would almost certainly blow his cover and might get him killed.

His thoughts went back to the day of the entrance exam. Had it been like this for him then? No, he decided, he'd just been feeling a desire to lure a pretty young thing into his bed, amplified by knowing what was going to happen to her afterward. She hadn't riveted his attention like this. No woman had ever…

He stopped breathing for a moment, and felt a chill all the way down his spine. One woman had.

Gierling had encountered only two female Genesis test subjects after they'd manifested. One was sleeping beside him. The other was Nicole Callahan.

It had been just after the construction phase of the Project, before they'd gone recruiting. He'd been part of a panel discussing security measures for Phase Two: eight men, two women. Nicole was supposed to chair as one of the Project administrators.

None of them had met any of the handful of Gens in active service to IO, much less one of Ivana's pets. But rumors about Nicole were everywhere: that she spent every night in a different guy's bed; that she had some kind of sex-attractant ESP, and no man could resist her; that sex with her was an experience that was life-threatening in its intensity; that, in fact, some of her one-night stands never rose from their beds again.

She'd been the last to arrive; in fact, they'd started without her. But everyone had been talking with one eye on the door, and all conversation had died when it had opened. When she'd stepped in, he'd taken one look at her and decided every one of the stories was probably true. The half-dozen men in the room had made a sound like wind in the trees. She'd accepted it with a smile, as if it were applause. "Sorry, guys. This time of the month, it's really hard to keep reined in."

She was exotic and gorgeous. Her eyes were violet, her hair a sort of blue-black with strange purple highlights that shimmered at every step. There was a mesmerizing grace and suppleness to her movements. He couldn't remember what she was wearing, because he couldn't look at her without imagining her naked. She was the most fuckworthy woman he'd ever seen in his life.

She'd been bright and friendly, trying hard to keep the meeting going, referring to the written agenda, getting peoples' names and soliciting comments. Her Mona Lisa smile had slipped only once, when one of the guys had tried to take her hand on some pretext or other. She'd pulled it away before he'd touched her and raised a finger in warning. "Not a good idea." Not upset or offended, more like she'd grabbed the guy by the back of his shirt and pulled him back to the sidewalk just as a semi rushed by.

The reaction of the two women in the group was inexplicable. You'd expect Nicole to make two enemies the instant she stepped in the room; instead, the three of them had acted like old girlfriends. "Men are such pigs," one of them had said, watching her male associates struggling to control their lust.

"Do you think so?" Nicole swept the table with a gaze that, he was sure, gave every man it touched a chubby. "I love 'em."

The meeting had been a disaster; no one could stay on task. He had come with a couple of proposals to push, but once the girl was there, the only thing he could think of was screwing her. When she'd noticed a third of the men were sitting with only one hand on the table, she'd got up. "Perhaps you'd better just send me the minutes." She'd dropped a note on the table in front of one of the guys on her way out, some young stud whose name he couldn't remember. The kid had stared at it and put it in his pocket carefully, his expression a weird mix of fear and excitement, like he'd just been told he was going to be put on a rocket to the Moon tomorrow. Gierling didn't recall seeing him at any follow-up meetings.

He'd had pissed-off women point guns in his face; they hadn't scared him a tenth as much as Nicole Callahan. She was a woman, hardly more than a girl, whose head couldn't be screwed with, who could take whatever she wanted from any man she wanted… including yours truly. It horrified him to remember her power and easy confidence, certain that she could draw a man to her effortlessly, and that man, knowing that her embrace was death, would go into her arms anyway. Such a woman could push all his buttons, pull all his strings, and make him do anything she wanted. I love 'em. They're my favorite toys.

What if they're all like that, once they manifest?

Quietly, he slid off the bed and stole to the bathroom. He saw her underwear on the towel bar; it still conjured images of her naked under her PJs, but this time the sensation wasn't pleasant. He wished she was wearing it. He wished she was wearing a goddamn burkha. The idea of fucking her now was as scary as sticking his dick in a bear trap, and yet it was all he could think about. He jacked off again, trying to empty his balls and reduce the effect. Then he splashed a little cold water on his face and came back to the sleeping area.

She was half sitting up in bed with the sheets thrown off. His eyes moved with a will of their own, taking in the erotic vision: the incredibly long bare legs; tight, slightly ridged abdomen, equally bare; the unbelievable rack, scarcely concealed by the light sleeveless shirt that rode up above her ribs. From this angle, her nipples were clearly profiled, almost poking through the fabric. His eyes finally rose to her face. She was looking right at him, of course. "I know. Ever since I got so tall, I wreck the bedsheets. I kick them out at the bottom, and before I know it, they're gone. It's embarrassing. I think that must be why I make my own… Mr. Gierling? Are you okay? You don't look well."

"Uh, I ah …" He gathered his wits. "I just had a bit of a shock. I'm an old bachelor, Kat. When I wash my face in the bathroom sink and pick something off the towel bar, I expect to be bringing a towel to my face, not a pair of girl's panties."

"Eek." She brought three fingers to her lips. "Sorry. I was just so glad to get out of the grubby things, you know?" She stretched, putting her hands behind her head, and he sat heavily, trying to hide his budding erection. "You can't believe how good it feels just to wash up and put something clean against your skin." She rolled towards him and propped her head on one hand, casually putting the other on her hip. "But I can't sleep."

"You should try. You're just overtired. That was a heck of a hike today." Maybe the effect damps down when you're asleep. Then maybe I can think and plan again.

"Legs are a little sore." She smiled at him. "You're not sleeping either."

"No. my head's full of weird notions and unanswered questions."

"What kind of weird notions?" She leaned forward.

"Um, well… You're not even eighteen, are you?"

"Next month. Why?"

"In New Mexico, I can go to jail for sharing a room with you." You'll be celebrating your eighteenth birthday at the Complex. If they let you know what day it is, and you still remember your birthday by then.

She snorted. "Oh. Oh, let's worry about that, shall we?"

He smiled at her. He hoped it didn't look as strained as it felt. "What about you? If we talk, maybe we'll put each other to sleep."

"Okay." She closed her eyes softly. "I usually sleep with a teddy bear."

"Get outta here."

"Really. Ever since I was little. I think that's one reason I'm having trouble."

"And another?"

She rolled on her back, lifted her knee, and slowly rubbed her thigh and calf with one hand. He stopped breathing. "What's your first name?"

He swallowed. "Julius."

"Like Julius Caesar? That's so cool." She dropped her knee and raised the other; this time, she used both hands. "It suits you. Stern and manly." She dropped it. "Don't think I'm being ridiculous, okay? I'm feeling a little edgy sharing a bedroom with you."

"Yeah?" He searched for something innocuous to say, some leading question that might make her give up a clue to the others' whereabouts or some way to get to them. "What would your boyfriend think about it? He the jealous type?"

She huffed. "He's pink and about a foot tall. I don't even date, Julius."

"To stay under cover? That's tough."

"No." She shook her head, sending her hair brushing across her bare shoulder; even in the dim light, coppery highlights flashed. "I could, it'd be safe, if I was careful. But guys my age are swimming in a stew of hormones. Conversations with them are kind of one-sided." She ran her hands down her bare torso, actually sticking a finger in her navel for a second, and he felt his balls bunch up. "It's a struggle just to get them to lift their chins and make eye contact." She dropped her chin on her chest and almost closed her eyes. "I find myself attracted to older men. Years older. They make me feel, I don't know, safe and protected. In capable hands. But I freeze up when it's time to get romantic. Guys with experience intimidate me. So I'm stuck." She turned her head towards him; he could swear they were shining with their own light, they looked so huge and luminous. "My sister says I'm a daddy's girl who never had a daddy."

Change the subject. Right now, before you get off the bed and go to her. "Sister? You mean your cousin?" He put his legs up on the bed, to make it harder to get up, and lay on his side facing her, with his knees up to hide his erection.

"No. Half sister. Different mothers. We met at the Academy." She rolled towards him, and he tried not to stare as her shirt rode up, nearly exposing her; she tugged it down absently. "So, what's your girlfriend like, Mister Old Bachelor?"

He wet his lips. "I'm between girlfriends right now. A woman my age who's easy to be with is hard to find. I date a lot of younger girls, but they don't have long attention spans. They usually move on after a couple of months." He smiled with just a touch of sadness. "I get my heart broken on a regular basis." Jesus. You just can't help yourself, can you? Talk about the weather or the road or something. Take your eyes off her. Get a freaking grip.

She swung her legs to the floor, and he had to close his eyes to keep from trying to look up her shorts, knowing she was naked underneath. He felt the edge of his mattress compress as she sat, and his breath stopped as her ass pressed against his stomach and her hip against his crotch. He could feel her body heat through three layers of fabric, and was certain she felt his hard-on; it had to be the biggest one of his life.

Her fingertips brushed his cheekbone. Not a good idea, she said. His skin felt cold and tight, yet he felt hot at the same time. "You sounded so sad, I was sure you were crying," she said softly. The hand came to rest gently on his neck. "Julius, I know I'm just an overgrown child to you. But I understand about broken hearts, and unrequited love." She took a deep breath and let it out. "Talking didn't work. I'm not sleepy at all. Are you?"

This is it. We're going to do it. And afterwards, if I live, I'll forget all about my job, and the reward. She'll be able to do anything she wants with me, like Nicole. I'll be her slave. If he'd been able to reach for the syringe, he'd have knocked her out and gone to the backup plan. Only he wouldn't have dared to fuck her while she was conscious, collared or not. He swallowed. "No." Behind her, his fingertips crept closer, unseen.

She stood quickly. "Why don't we just get on the road, then? I'll go get dressed."

-0-

"Sir, she's moving again, headed east on US 56."

Lynch checked the dashboard clock on the stolen car: just after three AM. The moon was just clearing the horizon behind him, less than half full, not doing much to illuminate the landscape. Anna had called about three hours before, to tell him Caitlin had stopped in Springer, New Mexico. "Didn't rest long. Probably as far as she could get before she collapsed. She's had quite a day."

So had he. He'd tensed when the bus had approached a roadblock thirty miles short of Tulsa, but the police had waved them through. It had banished his doubts about the need for caution. Not that a half dozen cops would have stopped him, but the attention would have been disastrous.

He was just on the outskirts of Tulsa. He consulted a map, and picked a county road headed roughly west. Avoiding interstates might halve his progress, but the Federal highway system was sown with cameras, and a man being hunted by IO did well to avoid them whenever possible. He noted that Caitlin seemed to be avoiding them as well. He couldn't remember ever warning her about the Shop's improvised yet effective surveillance system. But the girl was smart, and scared, and had the enhanced intuition common to Gens; maybe it was prey instinct steering her away from all those pole-mounted electronic eyes.

He eyed distances on the map. It seemed likely they'd meet up just this side of the Oklahoma panhandle, four or five hours from now.

-0-

Gierling pulled into a truck stop as the sun came up. "Want to stop for a bite?"

She was slow answering. "You think it's safe, Julius?" Her voice, coming from the seat behind him, seemed a little blurry. Sleeping. It explained the clarity of his thoughts while he drove.

Sometime during the drive from the motel, he'd remembered the pictures. They were no use to him now, and would be his death warrant if the girl laid eyes on them. He'd been driving with the window down, as usual; he'd eased them out of the jacket on the seat beside him, carefully torn the pictures into tiny pieces, and dropped them out the window, careful not to let any of the fragments blow back into the back seat. He'd breathed easier when they were gone.

"Well, I've never been on the run before. But this isn't your usual manhunt. No one's radioing ahead with an APB. If we just stay ahead of the searchers, I think we can take it easy." In fact, he was in no hurry at all, as long as he stayed ahead of Ferris. He wanted her close by for backup when he took the girl and Lynch down. Let Lynch do most of the driving, he thought, and arrive at the rendezvous exhausted and fuzzy from travel and lack of sleep.

An hour later, sitting in a booth in the restaurant, he was shaking his head. "I've never seen anything like it. What's it take to fill you up?"

Her fork, loaded with pancake and dripping syrup, paused on its way to her mouth. "I've been living on candy bars and bottled water since yesterday noon, and I threw up the last decent meal I had before that. And I've been burning a lot of calories." She smiled. "But I'm almost there."

"Thank God. People are staring."

"They were staring before we ordered." She'd put a sweatshirt on over that skimpy beater, but it didn't really hide her figure, much less those legs, and she'd still given the half-dozen drivers in the place an eyeful as they'd taken a table.

He smiled. "Yeah. If I find a place, I've gotta get you a change of clothes. Not that you don't look great in those." Careful. It's taking hold again.

She looked down at her plate. "Uh, Julius. I said some things last night that seem kind of foolish in the light of day. I hope I didn't embarrass you." She shifted, and her bare leg bumped his under the table. "Sorry."

He raised his coffee cup to his lips to hide his lower face. "Don't be. I think I forgot myself for a moment too. If I did, I'm sorry. You're a sweet kid, and I wish to God I hadn't got you into all this. I'm gonna do right by you, if I can."

-0-

Ferris Mars was cute. A hundred men had had told her so, before and after puberty. She stood five-five, trim-figured, with dark brown eyes, a pert little nose, and a dusting of freckles that made her look younger than her thirty-four years. Her smile was brilliant, and showed just a trace of her gumline. Her hair was dark brown with red tones that went well with the freckles. All in all, she looked like a very doable kid sister.

That was a serious handicap in almost any branch of IO. She'd had to prove herself time and time again to earn notice and promotion at the Shop. But now she was in her most challenging position yet: a female ex-Naval Intelligence officer running a crew in the Special Security Section, an outfit composed almost exclusively of combat veterans with a reputation for ruthless behavior. Leading such men and earning their respect had often required showing them she could be a vicious, flesh-rending bitch when the situation demanded it.

It was about to happen again. Jeffrey, her second-in-command, closed his phone and looked at her, eyes invisible behind his sunglasses. "Chopper says we've got company, maybe ten minutes out. State Police." It was six in the morning, just sunup, and she and three other IO agents were at the little gas station where Ireland had been found twenty minutes before. The clerk who'd opened up and found the body was hiding inside the building, confused and a little scared, no doubt; he'd called the police to report it, and Ferris and her team had arrived in two cars while he was still on the phone. Her people were examining the body and vicinity, looking for clues. Jeffrey came back from a perimeter walk while she was looking around under the canopy. "No sign of the car, or Gierling." He pointed to a gas pump. "He pumped six gallons of gas from this pump at ten-fifty last night, using his credit card. Nothing since then."

"That sat we've got watching the mountain. Would it be taking pictures this far out?"

"Ten miles? Maybe. Frame rate and resolution might be for shit, though."

"Check it out. I want to see what happened here. If you get image, transfer the file to my pad ASAP."

She gave his rear end some appreciative scrutiny as he walked out from under the canopy to make the call. But she had no intention of taking her interest any farther. Female agents with ambition had to conform to unwritten but very strict guidelines about such things. Boinking your male subordinates was bad for morale, and was frowned upon by higher authority. Boinking your male superiors was okay, but sex as a career advancement strategy at IO had begun and ended with Ivana Baiul. Besides, the guy was eight years younger; they probably didn't even like each other's music.

She looked down the road, towards town. A convoy of cop cruisers was approaching, lights on and dust flying up behind. Here we go.

The cops' tactics were predictable. The fleet of four vehicles pulled up and parked all over the station, staking out the territory. Two cops got out of every car; clearly, they intended to overwhelm her team with numbers and crowd them aside. She'd only brought three men with her; the rest had better things to do than gawk at Ireland's corpse. She stayed where she was, pretending to be referencing her PDA, while Jeffery went straight to the first car that opened its doors.

Jeffrey acted about as cowed as a pit bull in the ring. She couldn't make out what he was saying to the black-uniformed man in the peaked cap and shades who stepped out of the passenger side, but the toes of their shoes were almost touching, and the two men were making quite a few arm movements as they talked. Finally, the head cop stilled, asked Jeffrey something, and Jeffrey gestured towards the canopy. The cop actually had the balls to raise his shades over the bill of his cap for a second when he looked at her, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. In the shade of the pumps, she'd perched her sunglasses on top of her head; she supposed she looked very cute.

The cop walked towards her and paused, expecting Jeffrey to follow. But her second-in-command was already walking the other way, intercepting a couple of cops headed towards the back of the building and Mike's body. She smiled into her display at Jeffrey's show of respect, his certainty that she wouldn't need backup.

She continued to ignore the man as he walked up, until he got within earshot and looked about to open his mouth. "You're wasting your time. We're not leaving. You are."

The cop swallowed whatever patronizing thing he was about to say, and tried to play hardball. "This is a murder in my jurisdiction. Who the hell are you?"

She took out her wallet and showed him her FBI ID. "He's a Federal agent. That makes him ours." NTSB investigators were technically Federal agents, and the killing of a Federal agent on duty brought the case under Federal jurisdiction.

"That's lawyer bullshit, and you know it."

"Yeah. I'm just trying to give you an excuse to leave without losing face with your men." She thumbed the wallet open to show him another badge, the Homeland Security one. "He wasn't really NTSB, either."

"I'm not leaving until I know what you people are doing here. If this got anything to do with that circus going on up on Sawyer's Mountain-"

She reached up, snatched the cop's sunglasses off his face, dropped them to the ground, and stamped on them, sending pieces flying. She glared up into his shocked face. "Listen up, Deputy Dawg. We're not getting into some pissing contest over jurisdiction. This isn't some cop movie or a TV show where the local law faces down the big bad Feds. I make one phone call, and you'll be in a cell in your own jail an hour from now. With two, I can end your career and ruin your life forever. Get the fuck out of my way." She slipped her sunglasses down over her eyes and pushed past, walking towards the back of the station.

On the way, she made a phone call, giving the man who answered a brief explanation of what she needed and Deputy Dawg's shield number. Even if the cop took his team home, she was sure he wouldn't really back down. He'd make calls and file complaints, maybe even contact the media. He needed convincing.

When she rounded the corner, two of her guys were standing over Ireland's corpse, facing two more of New Mexico's finest. All four men were resting their hands on their gun butts. She looked at the uniforms. "Before you do something you'll surely regret, you'd better talk to your boss."

"We're here to take charge of the crime scene," one of them grated.

"And we're here to see that doesn't happen." She stood between the two groups. "Officer, you're fighting out of your weight. If you so much as draw your piece out of the holster, you'll face a hearing. If my guy shoots you, he won't even have to fill out paperwork." She nodded towards the top cop's cruiser; the man was standing alongside the passenger door, talking into a radio microphone with the cord stretched through his car window, glaring at her. "Run along, now. Your boss wants to talk to you."

One of the cops left; the other stood waiting. Ignoring him, she addressed one of her men. "Where's Jeffrey?"

The man's eyes flicked to the cop. "Around the other side, on the phone. Taking care of that thing you asked about."

Jeffrey was folding his phone as she reached him. "Got it. Extreme eastern edge of the search pattern. Won't be as sharp as you're used to, especially at night. And the frame rate's, like, ten a minute."

"I'll take it."

"Loading now." On the other side of the building, they heard car doors slamming and tires crunching on gravel. From where they stood, they could see a short stretch of the road a quarter mile east of the station. Two cruisers appeared briefly on the two-lane, headed back towards town.

She took out her PDA. When the "download complete" window appeared, she said, "I'm taking this back under the canopy." She retraced her steps. Only one of her agents stood guard over the body. The cop was gone. "What have we got?"

He held up a Lethe dispenser, gripped loosely by the business end in a sheet of notebook paper. "May be prints."

"Anything else?"

"His PDA and cell phone are missing, and there's no cash in the wallet. Everything else seems to be here, even his gun. The dispenser's got two hits missing."

"Is it his?"

"Dunno. It's the only one on him. It was in his jacket pocket."

She rounded the corner to find all but one of the cop cars gone: the straggler wasn't the leader's car, so she walked past, ignoring it. When she got in the shade under the canopy and could see the display better, she started zipping through the frames. The view showed the station and part of the surrounding scrub at a slight angle from the west, letting her see a little of the pavement under the canopy. At 10:47 PM the night before, according to the time stamp in the corner, a flicker of motion on the screen made her stop and run it back.

It looked like the rental car she'd given Gierling and Ireland. It appeared for only two frames before it pulled under the canopy and disappeared. Three frames later, a man in a black windbreaker appeared from under the canopy, headed for the building. One of the three frames that tracked his progress showed four large white letters on the back of the jacket: NTSB, she supposed.

Six frames later, the car emerged from the canopy, U-turned, and re-entered on the other side of the pumps; this time, the back bumper of the car remained in view. The driver got out, with only his trousered lower legs visible, and stood by the side of the car; gassing up, no doubt.

Jeffrey joined her. He indicated the remaining cruiser with a nod. "Run em off?"

"Don't bother, as long as they stay in the car." She resisted the inclination to zoom the image, knowing it would simply dissolve into a pattern of pixels. She ran it back to the walking figure and pointed to the screen. "Mike or Julius?"

"Can't tell. Told you the picture'd be disappointing." Under ideal weather conditions, in daylight, and in the center of the search pattern, directly over the subject, the sat returned an image that would allow you to read the brand name on a cigarette pack and identify individual faces easily. At the edge of its search pattern, looking through twenty percent more air and with only starlight and the glare under the canopy to work with, they'd be lucky to get the plate number on the car. "The lab could clean this right up, but you said you wanted it right away."

She nodded. "Send them a copy."

"Done."

She smiled at that; Jeffrey was a good right hand who sometimes seemed able to read her mind. She briefly wondered, for the hundredth time, what he'd be like in bed, then got back to business.

She advanced the image, slowly. About twenty frames after the jacketed man had disappeared around the side of the building, another form appeared, entering the service area from the darkness.

"A meet?"

"With just one of them? And who would they be meeting with?" She ran it back to the second figure's appearance. The figure came in from the west, so they only got a top rear view, but the second subject appeared to be bare-legged. And long-legged. Color in the picture was washed-out, but the new subject's hair was more than shoulder-length, and light.

"Female."

She looked at him. "Do you think?"

He shrugged.

The second form approached the one already under the canopy, and it, too, mostly disappeared from view, with only the lower legs visible.

"Son of a bitch," she said softly as the frames advanced. The two pairs of legs met. The trousers backed into the pumps and the bare legs pursued, the second figure clearly pressing against the man. They stayed in that position for eleven frames, until the first figure reappeared from the side of the building. Then, together, the two figures stepped slightly aside, behind the pump, and the trousers slipped around the dispenser, headed for the building. "What are we looking at here?"

Jeffrey blinked. "Wasn't an attack."

"Hell no, it wasn't. It looked like a clinch."

"Truck stop prostitute?"

"In the middle of nowhere?" She advanced the recording, a suspicion building in her mind.

The trousered figure emerged from under the canopy, and proved to be dressed in a black jacket like the original figure, which remained at the corner of the building for several frames while the other went to meet it. The two men appeared to talk. The bare-legged figure remained hidden behind the pump.

Then things happened a little fast for the camera's six-second frame cycle. One frame showed the two men walking together towards the pumps. The second showed both men headed down to the pavement. The next showed one man lying face-up, and the other half-kneeling over him, with a hand pressed to the other's neck. The bare legs were starting to round the pump, headed towards the pair on the ground.

"Fuck. Gierling."

Jeffrey was shocked. "Why?"

"Bet the answer's coming out from under the canopy." She advanced one more frame. "Uh huh." She tapped the pad. "Fairchild."

For a second, her partner was puzzled. "You can't make out her face…Oh. Yeah, it's her."

Ferris smiled sourly. The cameras might be having trouble making an image clear enough to read faces, but, from this angle at least, the bitch had a rack that was literally visible from orbit. "You know, a lot of people were never convinced Lynch was acting alone. People who thought that he had to have inside help to bust open the Project and trash the database. I wasn't one of them, but I guess I was wrong. Julius was a security consult on the Project. Jack's a very wealthy man. And Julius does love his pussy. Miss Double Dee there would make a nice bonus." She watched Gierling drag Ireland's body to where it had been found, while his whore headed back to the car. She exhaled in disgust. "Seven hour head start, maybe three hundred miles. I don't suppose either of them has a cell phone that's turned on?"

"No such luck. Probably pulled the battery, just to be sure. PDAs, too."

"And the sat can't track them from here, can it?"

"Maybe for a couple miles, but that doesn't tell us anything." He called up a map on his PDA. "They had to head east on this road for about four miles. Then they can turn off onto a couple little two-lanes that wind northward through the mountains into Colorado, but it'd be slow going. If they went that way, they're probably still in the mountains. Send a chopper after them?"

"Not yet. Where else?"

"Once they hit Cimarron, they could head in any direction, depending on how fast they want to move."

"Cimarron got any traffic lights?"

Comprehension dawned on his face. "I'll check."

Traffic lights were often equipped with cameras that looked at approaching cars and changed the timing of the lights to optimize traffic flow. It wasn't generally known, but many such cameras put what they saw into digital storage for twenty-four hours or more. Any vehicle passing through the intersection last night would be on their video record.

"Good. Send a chopper north to scope out those trails. No, send two. Let the firefighters up on the mountain; we're done there." She looked at her watch. "I'm guessing they're giving Deputy Dawg his one phone call about now. Let's see if he's in a more cooperative mood. Have the others wait for the ambulance and get Mike shipped back to Boulder."

Jeffrey nodded towards the PDA in her hand. "How well did you know them?"

"I didn't know Mike any longer than you did. Intel weenie, but he knew his stuff. Seemed like a nice guy. Julius, I've known for years. A very charming sociopath."

Her mood was dark when she paid a visit to the cop in jail. She didn't have a grudge against the guy; he just hadn't crossed swords with IO before, and had to be shown his place. The sooner he was on her side of the bars and following her orders, the better for both of them, and the better she'd like it. But treason in IO's ranks was an idea that thoroughly disgusted her.

He didn't get off the cot when she approached the bars. She realized for the first time that he was kind of good-looking. He looked up at her with an unreadable expression. "How did you do it?"

She raised her eyebrows. She could have truthfully said she didn't know what he was talking about, since she wasn't sure how her IO "persuader" had applied pressure. Once, it had been a huge cash deposit into the guy's bank account; another time, a stash of drugs in a rental space in the man's name; the stubbornest one had had his ex-wife's body stuffed in his trunk.

His voice turned stiff with anger. "How did you put a ton of coke under my porch and get the DEA to raid my house, all in thirty minutes? You fucking bitch." He came off the cot towards her. But he stopped cold when she raised her cell phone.

"I'm going to make my second phone call about five minutes from now. Depending on what I say into the phone, the lab that's testing the evidence will determine it's either the North Valley Cartel's finest or Portland cement for that patio slab you've been planning. And what I say into the phone depends on how our little discussion goes right now."

"What do you want?" He ground out. Not beaten yet, just looking for answers. She couldn't help liking him. I bet overall he's a good cop. He just needs a little attitude adjustment.

"I want to cede jurisdiction and hand the investigation over to you. The crash too."

He was too smart to react. "Go on."

"We want to fade away and let your people handle things. We just want the body."

"Not much of a case without a body." He was getting it.

"No. We'll give you a full autopsy report-" -not an entirely accurate one- "-but the case will probably go nowhere without suspects. He was from out of town, after all. No enemies, no motive but robbery. Just a random act of violence." She stepped close to the bars. "If you need to tell your people something else, say the guy had a drug problem, and we're just protecting our own."

He stepped up and put his hand on the bars; their faces were a foot apart. "Tell me."

A very good cop, maybe. She glanced at the hand on the bars: it was his left; no ring. "We've been hunting a terrorist cell for three months. They're part of a much larger group, maybe a couple hundred of them, people who are well funded and well connected and don't fit any profiles. That jet was supposed to hit the Luxor in Vegas."

"Shit."

She nodded. "Over four thousand rooms. It could have made Nine-Eleven look like a bus crash." She met his eyes. "We managed to alert the pilots what their passenger was up to, and we think they were both killed trying to land at Kirtland. But we have evidence the hijacker got away, and he's on the run. He won't contact his people till he knows it's safe, and that leaves us a small window of opportunity. If he disappears, they'll think it was a crash, and they won't be any more cautious when they try again, and maybe we'll bag them. If they learn we burned their op, they'll plan the next one more carefully. He killed our guy at the gas station and stole his car. We've got to nail the son of a bitch – quickly and quietly." She put a hand on the bars, next to his. "Alive, if possible. The guy's a senior planner. He's a treasure trove of information. With what's in his head, we could shut them down, make them extinct."

His eyes narrowed. "If he's so senior, what's he doing on a suicide mission?"

"Cancer."

"Oh." He was silent a moment. "If he's dying, how will you get him to talk?"

She let her face turn stony. "He's not dying tomorrow. What he's got will take months to kill him, and it's unbelievably painful. He's controlling the pain with drugs for now, but it'll get worse, quite soon, until it's so bad nothing will help. We'll get his cooperation by keeping him alive… without his meds."

She let him think about that: the sort of people she opposed, what she was prepared to do to bring them down. Eventually he said, "I feel sorry for you."

She twitched a smile. "Sometimes I feel sorry for myself. But if I can save another four thousand people from these monsters, I'll put up with the sleepless nights. Do we have a deal?"

She walked out of the jail in a much improved mood. Not only had she gotten Deputy Dawg, aka Lieutenant Brendan Martens, to buy her little fairy story and agree to cooperate; they'd exchanged numbers, purely for professional reasons, and there was a bare chance she might get laid sometime in the next couple of days.

Her phone chimed: Jeffrey. "You were right. Two intersections with cameras on US 64. He rolled through town about eleven-thirty, and turned onto State route 58, headed towards I-25. I'm ordering recordings from the interchange now. But have a look at the ones from Cimarron. You're not gonna believe it."

Her PDA chimed its "download complete" signal; a new video file had been added. She opened it, and studied the four clips it contained: Gierling's car as he approached and departed each intersection.

At each approach, Julius was looking through the windshield right at the camera. As he drove past each light, the camera taking a picture of the rear of his car showed him with his arm out the window, elbow resting on the lower window frame and his hand resting against the roof. His hand was making a beckoning gesture.

Jeffrey was still on the phone. "What do you make of that?"

"He knows we'll track him. The prick is thumbing his nose at us."

"No sign of the girl."

"Napping in the back seat, probably. Saving her strength. He sure as hell can't claim he was under duress. Get those Interstate downloads ASAP." She added, "Got you now, you son of a bitch."

"He's still six hours ahead of us."

"Not for long. We know where he's going now. He's headed east, to meet his boss."

-0-

Lynch eyed the trunk of his stolen car with disgust. What kind of idiot lives in the middle of nowhere like this, and doesn't carry a spare tire?

He'd felt the need to switch cars once more after leaving Tulsa, but it had proved a slow and difficult process. In the small towns along his route, he'd had fewer vehicles to choose from, and the theft was more likely to be quickly noticed. His last acquisition had been a big step down, a station wagon at least twelve years old. In the predawn darkness, he hadn't noticed the condition of the left front tire. Now he was stuck, miles from anywhere, and the derelict vehicle was sure to draw unwanted attention. Should've stayed on the bus.

He looked at a map. The only town of any size was Enid, Oklahoma, which he'd left thirty minutes before. On foot, he might get back there for another car in two hours.

He slung his duffel over his shoulder and started walking. He flipped open his phone and called home. "Anna. Where is she?"

"Stopped near Keyes, Oklahoma, about two hundred fifty miles west of you."

Four hours away, he thought. By the time he reached Enid, she might be right where he was now standing. It would almost make more sense to sit and wait for her, or start walking west. Some rescuer I am. I should have just told her to go home.

But she sounded so alone on the phone, so… "I've had a breakdown. I'm hiking back to Enid for another car."

"Oh, dear. What plan are we on now?"

"E or F, I'm not sure. Let me know if anything changes. Do you have any idea what she's doing?"

"If I know our girl, she's eating."

-0-

Gierling glanced out the truck stop window as he stood to pay the check. "Uh oh."

Kat followed his gaze, to the black-and-white parked next to their car, and the man in the striped gray trousers and Smokey Bear hat looking it over. The man looked right through the window at them with no sign of recognition. If he didn't spot her at a glance, he doesn't have a description of her. Maybe something's wrong with the car.

"Stay here." He picked up his coffee cup and took a seat at the counter. He caught the waitress's attention. "Can I get a refill?"

She brought the pot over. "I would have brought it to your table, but I thought you were done. I never seen a football player pack it away like that girl of yours. Daughter?" Her look said plainly that she wouldn't believe it.

He sipped the coffee. "Daughter-in-law. I think she's eating for two."

The woman's face crinkled in a smile. "First grandkid?"

He nodded. "They're not saying yet. Superstitious. It's their third try."

"Excuse me, sir." A man's voice behind him. "Is that your Impala parked out front?"

He turned to face the Highway Patrolman. "Yes. Something wrong, officer?"

"Will you step out to your car with me, please?"

"Sure." He noted that the cop followed him out, rather than leading; not a good sign. On the way out, they passed Kat, sipping water at the table with only a glance their way.

At the car, the Mountie placed his hand on the grip of his pistol. "License and registration, please."

"It's a rental. I'm not sure if it'll be in the glove compartment."

"Where did you rent it?"

"My company rented it for me. I'm not sure."

Kat came ambling along, no closer than ten feet away, hand in one pocket as if fishing for keys, eyes on a car three slots down. Even in the middle of trying to talk his way free, he couldn't help pausing to admire her. The cop's eyes drifted her way, too, as if being pulled against their will. Then he seemed to shake himself. "Miss, step back, please." He turned back to Gierling. "Place your hands on top of the car and spread your legs. You're huuuk!"

He hadn't seen her move. She was behind the cop, one hand on his gun hand, trapping it and keeping the piece in the holster, and the other around his neck, lifting him right off his feet. His hat tumbled off his head into the gravel. "Sorry, sorry. Just relax and go to sleep."

The cop kicked and reached up with his left, pulling on her elbow; he might as well not have bothered. He faded out while Gierling pulled out the keys and got in the car. Kat dropped him to the dirt and got in the front seat.

He pulled out in a spray of gravel. "You didn't learn that in school."

"I didn't learn it anywhere. I just hope I didn't hurt him."

He took the first right, a two-lane state route headed south. "Guess he was looking for the car. Bad news. Kat, I'm not sure what to do here." Dammit, Ferris, what are you doing? I don't want to lead the local yokels to Lynch. This could screw everything up. "We can't keep running forever. If you've got someplace to hide, or someone who'll shelter us, now would be a real good time to mention it."

He watched her bite her lip. "Keep heading east. We're meeting someone."

"Just 'east'? How'll we meet up?"

"I don't know. But we will."

A stop sign appeared where another dusty two-lane crossed the road, going east and west; the road signs identified it as US 412. "For now at least, I don't think we should take any more highways. Stick to back roads. Okay?"

She nodded. "Just so we don't head west." Her hands felt around the bottom of the seat. "Doesn't this thing go back any farther? My knees are up against my chest."

He'd noticed. He'd also noticed the way the shorts slid down her upraised thighs. He wrenched his attention back to his driving, crossed the road, and started looking for left-hand turns.

-0-

Ferris and her team, a three-car convoy, pulled into the motel in Springer around eight AM. Three traffic cams on I-25 had pointed them this way, right to this little dump where the interstate crossed US 56. "Where's their car?"

"Nowhere in sight." Jeffrey got out and headed for the office. He returned three minutes later. "Looks like they're gone already. Clerk says they weren't in the room more than a couple hours."

She lifted an eyebrow. "Oh, those crazy kids. Couldn't wait another minute."

"He didn't strike me as the impatient type."

"How long could you wait for something like that?"

He gave her a look that momentarily made her feel twenty years younger. "I prefer my redheads darker and smaller. Freckles are nice, too."

When I lost my cherry, he was still playing with toy trucks. She ignored the comment as the safest course. "Room been cleaned yet?"

"Not till noon. That's checkout time."

The team spread out at the door and windows, guns out. Jeffrey eased into the room first, gun in one hand, syringe in the other, just in case, followed by two others. He came out and gave her an odd look. "Guess you were right."

A quick look around inside the room told the expected story. One of the twin beds was still made; the other looked like a cyclone had hit it, sheets torn off and mattress slightly askew. One of her men came out of the bathroom with a couple of copper-colored hairs. "Found them in the shower. And some short brown ones, probably Gierling's. And some stuff I don't like describing in mixed company."

She looked around the room. "Okay. Check the floor and drawers and wastebaskets. Not that I expect to find anything but used rubbers."

Jeffrey shook his head. "They didn't waste any time. Once in the bed, once in the shower, then back on the road."

"She pays her bills promptly, I'll say that for her. Is there a lobby camera, by chance?"

-0-

"Motion, sir. Now south of US 412, zigzagging south and east down back roads. Approaching from the west-northwest."

"Any idea why she left the main roads?"

"She's obviously trying to avoid notice. Whether that's just caution or whether something happened, I don't know. I see you're making progress."

"Is that sarcasm?" He'd had to scramble into the ditch to hide whenever he saw a car approach from either direction. On the arrow-straight highway, that meant hiding from cars that were still a mile away. It seemed like he was spending more time in the ditch than on the road.

"If you have to ask, I must not be doing it right. I really think you should have let me come for you both."

"I think so, too. But it's too late."

-0-

Ferris's team left the motel, headed east on US 56/US 412, their quarry's choice as observed by the motel's lobby cam. Her phone chimed twenty miles down the road. She checked the ID before she opened it: Lieutenant Martens. "Hope you've got something for me, Brendan." A clumsy double entendre, but she didn't think he was gentled enough to pick up on it yet.

"I've got good news, bad news, and truly sucky news. Oklahoma Highway Patrol spotted the car at a truck stop near Keyes, about an hour ago. The Okie got stomped trying to arrest him. It was a bad way to find out he had an accomplice, Ferris." The accusation in his voice was unmistakable.

"We didn't know about an accomplice. Describe him."

"Her. Tall redhead. Young. Brickhouse figure."

She inserted just the right note of alarm into her voice. "Oh, shit. How did they get together? Brendan, spread the word. If anybody sees them again, observe and report, but do not engage. That girl's a killer, spetsnaz-trained."

"That'll just make them more determined to apprehend her. They're not going to let someone like that roll free on their turf."

"Then say something else. Salvage it somehow, Brendan. The safest course for everyone is to observe from a distance until we get there. Is the patrolman alive?"

"Hardly even hurt, except for his pride."

"She must have been feeling mellow. Where are they now?"

"Last seen fleeing south. All I've got for now. Got something you need to tell me?"

"I'm in the dark here. She's one of them, but she wasn't on the plane; she must have already been in the area. Why, or how they hooked up, we'll have to find out when we question them." Which should give me time to make up something plausible. "I'll call you as soon as I have something."

She hung up and consulted a map on her PDA. "Jeffrey. When Fifty-six and Four-twelve split, take Four-twelve. We're less than three hours behind them now."

-0-

"Kat, I think we need a new car." Gierling squinted out the windshield into the sun. "And when we do, you need to get in back again." So I can think about something besides your legs.

"Where, Julius? We haven't even seen a car in half an hour."

They were zigzagging east and south on a broken grid of two-lane roads south of US 412. The terrain was mostly farmland presided over by huge wheeled irrigation machines, but the occasional stony hill rising out of the fields would break the grid and end their road, forcing them to find another. They were getting nowhere, which suited him, and getting deep into the middle of nowhere, which suited him even better. All he needed now was a better idea where Lynch and Ferris were, so he could time the springing of his trap.

"Don't know. But if we're still in this one when we take to the highways again, they'll be all over us." Again, he wondered what Ferris was up to. She must have the local law in hand and working for her, else the cop would never have made the car. So why had the Mountie known only about the car? Maybe the cop was just supposed to observe, but got a little curious. In which case, Kat would have done him a favor by snapping his neck. On the other hand, if local law enforcement had independently connected the car with the body at the gas station somehow, and Ferris was having trouble keeping them reined in…

No. Ferris wasn't the type to let circumstances get away from her. She'd told the cops about the car, but not him or the girl, using them for bird dogs. A bit of a risk, but it added manpower to the search. He'd expected Ferris to be right on his tail, almost from the start; he'd tried to make it easy enough. His main reason for the motel stop had been to bring Lynch and his pursuers closer together; likewise the breakfast break. He'd assumed by now she'd be close by and observing, but now he wasn't so sure. How to pinpoint their location to Ferris without raising Kat's suspicions or falling into the hands of the police?

"Julius. Look."

He looked out into one of the fields ahead. He saw some unidentified crop, green and about waist-high. A huge machine was traveling down the rows away from them, its cab a good ten feet above the greenery. What the hell's he doing, working on Sunday morning? You'd think any God-fearing redneck would be in church right now. Then he saw the car, a ten-year-old sedan on the shoulder. He must leave his rig in the field at the end of the day, and take the car back and forth from home.

He pulled over behind it. "Suppose the keys are in it?"

"We're in the middle of nowhere. Maybe he's feeling trusting. But I don't think we should just take it."

He frowned. "Well, sure." If I was alone, I'd shoot Farmer Jack first. I don't see any cellphone towers nearby, but lots of those tractors have CBs. "At least, not unless we have to."

She opened the door and unfolded herself; he got out at the same time, to keep from staring at her as she swung her legs out.

He went straight to the car and tried the handle: locked up tight. He started searching the ground around the car. He stuck his hands into the wheel wells to feel the tops of the tires. When he stood up, Kat was gone.

Panicked, he threw a glance at the rental. But it was still parked ten yards back, empty. Next, he looked out into the field.

The tractor was headed back towards them, and she was flagging it down. It snorted and rolled to a stop right in front of her, idling as loudly as a semi. The driver was invisible behind the sunlight reflecting off the high windshield. She cupped her hands as if to shout, then she shook her head and climbed the ladder leading up into the cab. A door swung out as she reached the top, and she disappeared inside. The door closed.

Gierling grew uneasy, watching the blank bright windshield. What the hell is she doing up there? Mugging him for the keys? Or telling him everything, asking him to call someone, maybe Lynch?

The tractor snorted and started up again, moving towards his end of the row. Caitlin hadn't climbed down. The glare slid off the windshield, and he could see the two figures inside: Caitlin and some middle-aged hayseed in a ball cap, both grinning like kids. She was driving the damn thing. The hayseed had one hand on the seat back behind her, and the other on top of hers where it rested on the wheel, helping her steer. The machine wheeled neatly and trundled down the row, away from him.

He thought about running down the rows after them, but hesitated. The tractor wasn't getting away, even if it left the field, and the cars were this way. He waited, and the beast turned at the end of the field and headed back towards him.

It halted at the end of the row, and the door opened. Kat climbed out and turned to descend the ladder. "Thanks, Mr. Jasman. I'll leave the keys in the car."

"You just be careful. You're too trusting, girl."

"So I've been told. But if I wasn't, I wouldn't have met you."

She's working him, using her hoodoo on him. The sap.

She slid down the ladder and gave him a set of keys. "Leave ours in the car, so he can get home. He'll put it in his barn until I call him and tell him where we left his, then he'll put it in the field and call the police to report it."

He shook his head. "Damn. You work fast. Guess I shouldn't be surprised, though. You convinced me easy enough."

She gave him a look that made him suck in his gut and raised the hairs on the back of his neck at the same time. "Good hearts are easy to touch, Julius. Do you need anything out of the car?"

The collars and handcuffs. "Just your bag. And some cop stuff we shouldn't leave in the car." He unlocked the doors. "Get in back and lie down, before someone comes along."

He quickly opened both trunks. Keeping an eye on the rear window of their new car, he transferred the case containing the restraint collars, along with the handcuffs and the stuff he'd taken from Ireland's body. His jacket went in last, covering everything else. He closed both lids and tossed the rental's keys on the seat. He glanced into the passenger window of their new ride; she was curled up on the back seat like before, looking up at him with those same trusting puppy eyes. He smiled down at her and got behind the wheel. He fired it up and pulled onto the road.

"Tap the horn," she said, unseen from the back seat. He did, and the tractor snorted and resumed its work.

"What did you tell him?"

"I said we were on the run from crooked government agents because we witnessed them committing a crime. You know a man you can trust who'll blow the lid off the whole racket with our help, but we have to reach him without getting caught. The crooked Feds have the local police looking for us, so we have to change cars."

"He bought that?"

"Sure. Guys like Mr. Jasman think the government's mostly corrupt anyway. It didn't stretch his credibility much. And if you think about it, it was nearly the truth." A pause. "My second choice for a story would have been an elopement."

He snorted, feeling wary. "The first one was more plausible."

"I suppose. Julius, did you take your partner's phone?"

He gripped the wheel a little tighter. "Yeah. What, you need to make a call?"

"Soon. He must be close by now. I don't want us to pass each other by."

"It's in the trunk with everything else. I'll stop and get it out for you, if you really want it. But it may lead them to us, you know."

"Not as soon as using my phone or yours, I hope. Once we meet up, it won't matter."

Carefully, he said, "I hope this guy we're meeting isn't a boyfriend."

The voice behind him sang with amusement. "He's not. Why would it matter?"

"Because I'd like a better justification for all the faith you've got in him."

"Oh. You've heard of John Lynch?"

He kept his voice casual. "Who hasn't? Top guy in Operations until a couple years ago. Then he embezzled about a hundred million dollars and disappeared."

"No, he didn't. He found out what IO was doing at the Academy and shut it down. It ended his career at the agency, and made him a fugitive, like the rest of us."

He nodded as if he didn't know more about it than she did. "So he's the man who helped you. But you're still not telling me everything, Kat."

"Time enough for that when we meet up. He'll help you too. We'll probably be hiding out together, for a while at least." The tone of your voice softened. "I'm afraid you're stuck with me, Julius."

"Kinda figured that at the gas station. Okay, let me get a little distance from the car we ditched, and I'll pull over." Even with her invisible behind the back of the seat, the warmth and trust in her voice was giving him a chubby. He promised himself he'd do her at least once between knocking her out and confronting Lynch. It was too bad she wouldn't be awake for it, but he'd make sure she knew anyway.

He smiled. He'd write a note on her ass in ballpoint, where she'd see it in a thousand reflections once she was back where she belonged.

-0-

Lynch figured he'd covered less than five miles in the two and a half hours since he'd started back to Enid; he imagined he could still see his abandoned car on the shimmering horizon behind him. At this rate, he thought sourly, Caitlin would be picking him up on the road.

His phone chimed. He looked at the ID: an unfamiliar number, and therefore unsecure; not the one Caitlin had called from before. "Yes."

"It's me. How close are you?"

"Not very. I've had a delay."

"I've had a little trouble too. I'm on the run from the police."

"All right. Listen. Change of plan. Did Jim tell you about the job he retired from?"

"Yes."

"You remember that place they sent him sometimes, where he really hated to go?"

"Yes."

"I want you to start traveling in the opposite direction." The same direction you've been traveling, but if we have eavesdroppers, it may throw them off. "Got it?"

"Got it. Changing course as soon as I take out the battery."

"Good. Call back in a couple of hours." He snapped the phone shut. Change of plan. Mine, not hers.

He turned and headed back the way he'd come. Shortly, he heard a car behind him, still distant, but distinct in the clear still air. He walked backwards and stuck his thumb out. The car passed without slowing, as he'd expected. I wouldn't pick me up either. But, if I was a model citizen, I might call to report a man walking out in the middle of nowhere, especially once I pass a car on the shoulder.

In the next fifteen minutes, two more cars dusted him. The fourth car to approach was an OHP cruiser from the direction of Enid; it slowed and its lights came on just before it reached him.

-0-

"We're changing direction?"

"Yes." She flipped the phone closed and removed the battery. "No. Just a dodge. Keep heading east."

She even knows we can listen in on a phone that's switched off. "The terrain's getting rough."

"Doesn't matter. Maybe we'll be harder to find."

Just what I'm afraid of. "Okay, but it's going to slow us down." He wished for a map, but there wasn't one in this car. Ireland's PDA would have a map function, but he was afraid to turn it on. He'd been impatient for Ferris to close in before, but now, with Lynch farther away than planned, he was uncertain. He was beginning to wonder if Ferris understood what he was up to; he didn't want her to pounce before Lynch was in custody.

"That one." Caitlin pointed to a dirt track that wound up into the rocky hills to the east. He took it, and began to climb.

-0-

"Ferris, we didn't find Ireland's phone."

Ferris looked up from her map. They were minutes from the Oklahoma border. She'd been trying to figure likely routes for the fugitives. A soon as they'd determined the fugitives were headed east, she'd given orders to the army of agents they'd left behind in Eagle Nest: several teams had descended on the local airport to charter private planes, a fairly common mode of transport around here, and were flying ahead to likely ambush sites. If her team couldn't close and capture, she intended to beat Julius and his skank towards one of them. "Ah. Good thought."

She called up Ireland's phone and PDA from the Shop's directory. Neither was presently in use or active. She summoned usage logs for both devices. "Shit. They called someone an hour ago on Mike's phone. I want audio and location."

Ten minutes later, they'd listened to the call twice. GPS placed the phone on State Route 95 about ten miles south of US 412.

"So, which way did they go? Who's Jim?" Jeffrey raised his eyebrows.

"They suspect we're listening in." Ferris tapped the edge of the PDA against her teeth, thinking. "He said there was a change in plan… but I still think they intend to link up."

"Which means they're still probably still headed east to meet Lynch."

She studied a map. "Heading east from that point means crossing a lot of broken ground and bad roads. They're probably not making thirty miles an hour as the crow flies. Before they're back in the flatlands, our advance teams will be ahead of them." She closed the unit and stared through the windshield. "We're two hours behind them now, maybe less."

-0-

Gierling steered the car carefully on the two-lane near the top of the low ridge, which wove among low hills and scrubby trees. To the right, the ground sloped gently away to a shallow riverbed. Driving didn't demand as much attention as he would have liked right now; the girl was in back, but he knew she wasn't asleep; he felt his eyes constantly drawn to the rearview for a glance at her. His mood shifted regularly from unease to cocksure confidence, and he wondered how much influence the girl was having on his thoughts.

He was now of two minds about involving Ferris in his plans. He'd thought he could count on his boss to trail them closely and come in quick when he called, but it seemed she was doing everything ass-backwards, unnecessarily turning the op into a manhunt. As if she had no confidence in him, and was trying to catch Lynch and the girl independently.

He reflected on that. He'd thought he'd need backup when he'd first taken off with the girl, but now he was sure he could have handled it himself; trusting as she was, taking her down would be a walk in the park. He wished he'd never left a trail for Ferris. Why hadn't she just followed his lead? He'd just about decided that the little bitch was using him to bird-dog Lynch, too; she'd intercept him just before the meet and claim the reward, after all his work and risk.

Sound and movement in back broke into his thoughts. He glanced in the rearview and was finally rewarded with the sight of those luminous emerald eyes. "Have a good nap?"

"Uh huh. Pull over."

Thinking she needed to take a squat, he eased the car to a stop on the shoulder. But she pushed open the left door and stepped out. She rested a hand on his windowsill. "Move over."

He smiled, trying not to stare at the rack so nicely framed by the window opening; her head was unseen beyond the top of the car. "Got a license?"

"Funny. Come on. You've been driving all night and day, almost. Let me take a turn."

"You should stay down."

"Julius, there hasn't been another car on this road. We're in the middle of nowhere." The door latch popped. Her voice turned dove-soft. "Come on. Let me do something for you."

Without conscious decision, he found himself sliding over the bench seat towards the passenger side, while notions of what she might do for him ran through his head. He had just enough presence of mind to pull the keys from the ignition before she got in. "I, uh, want to get my jacket."

At the trunk, he pulled out the black jacket and made sure the Lethe syringe, his phone, and the battery were in the pockets. When he approached the door, she said, "You could get in back and sleep."

He considered. It would be easier to surprise her from behind, but harder to take control of the car afterward if he did her while they were rolling. He smiled. "I think I'd rather sit up front."

Her answering smile was little-kid sunny. "Good. I was kind of hoping." He got in, handed her the keys, and they started off.

He watched the road carefully, trying not to stare at his driver. She drove prudently, and he tried to relax. She chattered about the scenery, such as it was, the combine she'd driven, and a bunch of other things. He listened with half an ear while he watched road signs.

Eventually, the road descended towards the riverbed, and the land flattened out. They crossed US 412 again as it bent southward, and suddenly they were back in farm country. They avoided all but the smallest towns and headed almost due east.

"Julius. What's it like, being an IO agent?"

He stirred and looked thoughtful, trying to decide what to tell her. "Rewarding. America has a lot of enemies. I don't know what they were up to with you, Kat, but I've spent my career there chasing down maniacs who want to hurt people. I can't be wrong about that." He looked out the passenger window. "Still. Now I wonder if all the people I went up against were what I was told. How many times I was duped. You must have wanted to kill me when you saw me at the station."

He felt fingers at the crook of his arm, and his breath caught. "I won't say it didn't cross my mind. But I wouldn't have, even if you'd known what they did. As it is… I'm awfully glad you were there, Julius."

His balls bunched up hard. He couldn't look at her. Using all his self-control to keep the lust out of his voice, he said, "I'm glad I was there, Kat. Really."

-0-

Lynch sent the Jeep Grand Cherokee down the road at precisely the legal limit, despite a nagging urge to floor the accelerator. Miles behind him, the OHP cruiser was sitting in a farm storage building; the Mountie and the Jeep's owner were handcuffed together to an overhead beam nearby. He intended to change cars just once, then beeline to her. "Anna, where is she now?"

"About ten miles east of Guymon, Oklahoma, and just north of US 412, proceeding east at about forty miles per hour on average. Estimate two hours to rendezvous."

-0-

Ferris's team was rolling east on US 412, just east of the US56/US412 split. Ferris had taken the wheel at Boise City, and Jeffrey was fiddling with his PDA.

"Huh." He looked at the screen. "You said Gierling was a security consult for the Project. You know he recruited the talents, too?"

"No."

"One of them was Fairchild."

"Son of a bitch."

Her cellphone rang; she picked it up and glanced at the number. "Son of a bitch."

-0-

Lynch's unease began to grow after he passed Fort Supply. He had left a broad trail, and Caitlin had said she was running from the police; it seemed likely that local law enforcement – and, immediately after, IO - would "acquire" one or both of them before they linked up. He called Anna for another position check, and instructed her to make some phone calls.

"I'll call back when everything is in place, sir." She hung up.

Immediately, the phone rang again. He almost didn't look at the ID, but habit made him glance at it anyway. The number was a new one. "Yes."

"Actually found a phone booth, can you believe it? Glass walls, bifold door, the whole thing." Her voice was a so cheery, suspicion flared.

"Are you okay?" Anna had placed her near Hardesty, Oklahoma: seven blocks square, probably just a wide spot in the road with a grain elevator.

"Giddy with relief, I guess. I can finally talk to you without an audience. Oh, and I've got a surprise."

"I'm not sure I want any surprises, C-" He almost said her name before he caught himself; it would have been certain to trip an alert from the surveillance system.

"It's a nice one, and completely harmless. You'll see when you get here. Where are you?"

"About an hour and a half away, on US Four-Twelve. I'm driving a black Ford Explorer. Find some high ground and wait."

"Okay, but why?"

"Because you need to see who's coming a ways off, and I'll want to look things over before I come in."

A pause. "What if it's not you?"

Then we've come to the end of all plans. "Break contact however you can. Run. Put the battery in your phone and turn it on; if they're that close, it won't matter, and I'll probably need to call you. Just run, and I'll find you." Before they do, pray to God.

-0-

The gas station looked like it had been built in the Fifties, and never remodeled; even the pumps looked ancient, with scrolling numeric readouts instead of digital ones. The price-per gallon sign near the road only had room to display two digits. Gierling pumped gas into the tank and watched Kat through the glass of the old phone booth on the corner. He couldn't make out anything she was saying, but she was smiling into the receiver like she was talking to an old friend. Then she glanced his way, and the smile got even wider. He smiled back, hung up the nozzle, and went inside to pay.

The geezer behind the counter looked like he might have been there since the place opened. Gierling paid, then said, "Bathroom?"

"In the garage, just past the lift."

It was a shabby little space just big enough for a stained sink and toilet, but the door locked. He ran the faucets wide open, slipped the battery into his phone, waited for the service to connect, and made a call.

"Son of a bitch. Julius? Did you change your mind? Surely you're not tired of your new girlfriend already."

"Nice to hear your voice, too, Ferris." He kept his voice almost to a whisper.

"We're breathing right down your neck."

"Finally. I was running out of ways to drag my feet. What are you playing at, Ferris? Why sic the cops on us? Wasn't my trail clear enough?"

A pause on the line. "What, exactly, are you doing with her, Julius?"

Puzzled, he said, "What am I doing? I'm letting her lead us to Lynch. He's coming for her. She thinks I'm helping her."

Another pause. "What about Ireland? We know it was you."

Sweat broke out on his forehead. "I'm sorry about that, but it couldn't be helped. He was too green about Gens for this assignment, Ferris. We found out she walked away from the crash and he started getting twitchy. Then he saw the hole she smashed in the wall at the store. When he heard what Lynch did at Charlotte, he couldn't keep food down anymore. And when she showed up at the gas station and I conned her into taking us to Lynch, he spazzed out at the idea of getting in a car with her. He was going to double-tap her. We'd have lost them both. I had to stop him." He'd practiced the story while he drove, and he thought it sounded pretty damn good.

"Leave your phone on."

"Okay. But, for God's sake, don't call me on it. I'll let you know when he's coming." I'll call you in after they're both collared and cuffed, and no one can deny they're mine.

-0-

Ferris shut off the hands-free phone and turned to her partner. "What do you think? Has he got brass ones, or what?"

"You don't believe him? His story fits everything we know."

"Except that he didn't really have to double-tap Ireland, did he? I think he already got what he wanted from her, and had second thoughts. He knows Ivana will pay better. Plus he won't have to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder. Whether he planned it this way from the beginning…" She shrugged. "But I know he enjoys a good lie, and lying to women most of all." She turned to her driving. "Regardless, we're only about an hour behind them now."

-0-

"Sir, the arrangements are made." Anna gave him some map directions, and an update on Caitlin's position. "If I may be so bold, it looks like our luck is changing."

-0-

Gierling slipped the phone back into his pocket, after making sure it was on silent mode. He stopped at the counter and made a couple of purchases from the snack rack before he returned to the car.

Kat was sitting behind the wheel; her cheery mood seemed to have vanished. "Kat. Everything okay?"

She nodded. "Just tired of running, I guess. We should meet up in about two hours."

Time enough. He wasn't worried about Ferris anymore; now that they understood each other, he was sure she'd trail closely, but not move in. He'd let the girl drive for another hour or so, suggest a stop, and dope her. "Normally, I wouldn't recommend a restroom like this to a girl, but I don't know when we'll see another chance."

"Yeah." She opened the door and slid out.

As soon as she disappeared inside the station, he pulled the ballpoint he'd bought out of the bag of purchases. He popped the glove box and rooted around among the documents and receipts and soda straws until he found a scrap of paper to test it on. It traced a heavy line of blue ink across the white surface. Perfect. He put it away in the glove box and waited.

She came back to the car and slid in. "You're right. It wasn't just grubby, my knees hit the wall when I sat."

The statement drew his eyes to her legs, imagining her shorts and panties down around her ankles; willpower forced them away again. It's getting easier for her to do that to me. I must be getting sensitized or something. Thank God this is almost over. He offered her the small paper sack. "By the way."

She opened it, and smiled as she pulled out a bottle of water and a handful of granola bars. He smiled back. "Gotta keep your strength up. It's better than candy bars, anyway."

"Oh, yes. Thank you." The smile was directed at him now, and he felt his dick stiffening. He drew his jacket across his lap. She reached for his hand, and it took all his willpower not to snatch it away before she could touch it. She gave it a quick squeeze and held it gently as she looked into his eyes. "Do you always take such good care of your women?"

His dick was so swollen it throbbed. Fear and hatred warred with lust, stealing his breath and leaving possession of his vocal chords in dispute. He felt his ears redden. "I, uh…"

"And bashful, too." She released his hand, started the car, and pulled out. "I can't understand why a girl would ever leave you, I really don't."

His penis still had a mind of its own, but his voice and confidence returned to him. "I'm on my best behavior right now. We stick together long enough, you'll find a reason to be upset with me."

She smiled at the windshield as she brought the car up to highway speed. "You'll never have to worry about getting on my bad side, Julius."

They tooled along in silence for a while. For his part, he was reluctant to chitchat, knowing Ferris was listening to every word; and Kat seemed lost in thought. That made it easier to share the front seat with her. He allowed himself quite a few stolen glances as he imagined what he'd do with her for an hour before Lynch arrived. An hour would be plenty of time; after all, he didn't have to waste any time on foreplay, did he?

Traffic was brisk, the highway full of Norman Rockwell families coming home from church, he supposed. Suddenly he realized the oncoming cars were pulling over onto the shoulder. He glanced at Kat, and she was staring tensely at the rearview. He looked behind them and saw flashing lights a hundred yards back.

Stupid. Should never have let her drive on the highway; even if they don't have the car, her height and hair are enough to get us flagged. His gun was in the trunk, but it would have been about as useless in his hand. A cop in pursuit would have used his radio by now, and taking him down would only buy them a few minutes; there were probably other patrol cars on their way already, converging on them like white blood cells on a germ. His plans turned to dust in his mind.

The patrol car closed to fifty yards. He could see the cop's lips moving as he conversed on the radio. Kat pulled over and slowed. The cruiser jetted past. She pulled back onto the road, and they watched the cop pull over a car ahead of them, for no obvious reason. The cop glanced their way as they rolled past, and Gierling knew that Ferris had called the dogs off just in time.

"That was scary."

Her hands relaxed on the wheel. The muscles in her thighs flexed. Her chest rose and fell as she drew a breath. He couldn't take his eyes off her anymore. "Kat. I think we need to get off this road."

She nodded. "Look for a hilltop, any sort of high ground where we can see him coming, and we'll wait for him."

An hour with her. Maybe more. And a king's ransom at the end of it. With that promise in mind, he pulled his eyes away and searched the horizon, suddenly impatient.

A few minutes later, he said, "There." He indicated a low hill a couple of miles off the road; in this flat country, it stuck out like Ayers Rock.

She glanced at the dashboard clock, then turned at the next road. "We have a little time yet. You could take a nap while I keep watch." The corners of her mouth turned up. "Or we could talk or something."

Finding a way to the hilltop took a bit longer than he'd hoped, but eventually they found a dirt road leading to it that took them right to the top. He looked the place over as she pulled to a stop and killed the engine. He liked the view: the fields and roads all around clearly visible, all the way to the highway. A couple of trees provided shade from the rising heat, and a gentle breeze drifted over the grass. Looks like a place teenagers would come to neck. Very romantic. "Know which direction he's coming from?"

"East, right down the highway."

He pointed out her window. "Rabbit."

As she turned her head, he reached into the jacket pocket. He grabbed the Lethe dispenser, but she was already turning her head back. Quickly, he brought it to his lap under the jacket.

"Missed it." She looked at him with heavy-lidded eyes. "What shall we talk about?"

"How about the future?" He turned the weapon in his hand, getting a proper grip on it. He held the syringe in the palm of his hand with his last two fingers, the actuator under his forefinger; just a casual wave near her face, a twitch of the finger, and she'd be out. By the time Lynch arrived, she'd be dressed again – or maybe not, as he pleased -, collared and unconscious, and Gierling would have the syringe pressed against her neck. Lynch would put on the other collar and activate it, then slip on the cuffs, and Gierling would hold a gun on him while he made his phone call to Ferris. He smiled at her. "Almost home, kid. Things are looking pretty bright."

She smiled back. "I couldn't have done it without you, Julius."

"Hey. Got something in your hair." He reached towards her.

Fwap.

The shock traveled the length of his arm to his shoulder. Her smile didn't change, but now his hand was gripped in hers, immovable. The business end of the syringe was still pressed against his palm, but now he couldn't open his hand. Her thumb brushed his finger aside effortlessly and rested on the actuator. "Thing is, Julius, I thought you were a weasel the first time I met you. A real snake-oil salesman, you know? But I wanted what you were selling so bad, I sort of suspended my disbelief. I'd have been stupid to do it again, don't you think? Still, it was reassuring to find my pictures in your coat while you were taking your shower."

-0-

"Oh, fuck." Ferris stamped on the accelerator. Jeffrey called the other two cars, telling them what had happened.

She began passing recklessly. Jeffrey reached for the grab bar on the windshield frame without comment. But when one of her maneuvers forced an oncoming car to the shoulder, he said, "He's not due for an hour. If she waits for him, we'll get there in plenty of time. If we don't die on the way."

"If he's really an hour away. Huh. If there weren't so much at stake, it'd be funny. Julius got played."

-0-

His face and neck and armpits suddenly felt greasy with sweat. "Kat, I-"

"You should stop talking now." The smile disappeared. "Hand me your phone." He dug it out of his pocket, feeling sick, and passed it to her; she saw that the battery was in it and crushed it in her hand like a cookie. "I'm no actress. I never passed an audition for a school play. I was sure I was laying it on too thick with you, especially in the motel room. But I guess something lulled your suspicions to sleep, too." She shook her head slightly. "I made an unpleasant discovery about myself last night. In front of a guy I liked even as a friend, I'd die of embarrassment, putting myself on display like that and acting like I did. Somehow, my contempt for you made it almost easy. I don't think I like that."

A car appeared on the road, still miles away, raising a plume of dust. She looked at it, then back at him. "My ride. Time for your nap." He could feel her thumb take up the millimeter of slack on the actuator. "Sweet dreams, Julius. Frankly, I hope you wake up good and sick from a ten-hour dose."

Darkness closed on him before he could scream.

-0-

"I see her, Anna. She looks okay. I'll call later." Lynch folded the phone, peering through the dusty windshield at the tree at the top of the hill, the car parked in its shade, and the familiar figure sitting against its trunk.

She rose to her feet and watched him pull up, and then moved to the driver's door as soon as he stopped. He got out and they looked each other over from a distance of four feet.

"Hi." Seeing her whole and safe made him feel like a kid on Christmas.

Her eyes searched his face. "Hi."

"Are you hurt?"

She shook her head, smiling. "Not even hungry." The smile disappeared, and she reached out to lay her hands on his shoulders. When he stiffened at her touch, she withdrew them and turned away. She bent to pick up her bag. "Sorry. I know you don't like being touched. I'm just so glad to see you, and I'm a little emotional right now."

He let his hands drop; he hadn't realized he'd raised them. "I'm sorry too. I know I'm not giving you the welcome you deserve. But I'm very, very glad to see you. You look good."

She turned back to him, composed again. "I look like I've been living in a cave. But thanks."

He nodded towards the car. "That was a smart move. You did the right thing, stealing a car."

"I didn't steal it. I got an IO agent to drive me here."

He studied her face. She seemed amused, but she didn't look like she was joking. "Oh?"

She nodded. "My surprise. Julius Gierling. He was my recruiter."

"Where is he now?"

"Sprawled across the front seat." She produced a Lethe syringe from her pocket. "This thing had enough juice to knock somebody out for ten hours. He actually showed me how to use it. I gave him all ten. I hope when he wakes up he pukes his shoes up."

He felt ice on the back of his neck as he reached for it. "He told you about the dosage?"

She nodded. "When he gave his partner a double dose. Said he'd wake up sick."

"Did you search him?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Then I will, before we leave."

As soon as he opened the car door, he saw there was no point in taking a pulse. In the heat of the compartment, rigor was already settling into the man's face. He searched the body, and removed the man's wallet and two PDAs. He wiped the syringe carefully, tossed it on the floor, shut the door, and locked it with the keys inside, just as Caitlin took a step towards him.

"He's okay, isn't he?"

He nodded. "Yeah, just fine. Sleeping like the dead." He headed for the car, "Let's get out of here. If we can drive ten miles without being caught, I've got a helicopter waiting."

Once they were on the road, he listened to her chatter with half an ear while he mused. Never mind it was an accident, and she doesn't know she did it. She's killed a man. And that's my fault too. I got lazy, tried to push some of my load off on the kids I promised to shelter from harm. But I've learned my lesson. I'll never do it again.

"Mr. Lynch, is there some way I can talk to Jim's wife? His last thoughts were of her; I think she should know."

"Oh?"

She nodded. "Just before we hit, I heard him say, 'Sherri, I love you'."

He looked out the windshield. "Caitlin, I don't think it was Jim you heard. His wife's name is Brenda. Cherie is the name of Barney's ex."

"Oh." She hesitated. "Still…"

"I'll tell her." To change the subject, he said, "How did you link up with Gierling?"

"I came down the mountain to this little gas station, thinking I'd hitch a ride or steal a car. A car pulls in, and two guys get out wearing NTSB jackets. Only, I kind of doubt IO's letting NTSB near the crash site so soon. One of them headed for the bathroom, one started filling the tank. I decided to mug the pumper for the keys and be gone before the other one came out.

"But as soon as we were face to face, I recognized him, and I was sure he recognized me. He tried to play it off, and that's when I decided it might be better to take him along."

"How so?"

"Once I saw he was trying to play me, it was obvious what he wanted. He must have listened to our phone conversation, or just suspected I was going to meet you. So we played a little game. He pretended to change sides, and was helping me get away. He even knocked his partner out and left him when he wouldn't go along with the scheme. I've been pretending to be duped, letting him help me and waiting for him to make his move."

"Seems risky."

"It was perfect, really. Once I knew what he really wanted, I knew he'd be helpful and cooperative until you were close." She smiled grimly. "You can't betray someone until they give you their trust. To me, it seemed like a godsend. He knew the searchers' methods and capabilities, so he could avoid them better than I could. I let him worry about everyone else, and I just watched him."

Her smile turned strange. "I did have a little trouble last night. He took me to a motel to clean up and 'get some rest.' I think he was looking for a little gratitude. I remember when I was taking my entrance exam to Darwin with him watching, I glanced up one time and caught him looking at me with this creepy little smile on his face." She shivered. "No way was I going to fall asleep in a room with him. Any time I turned my back to him, I was Genned up, waiting for that syringe. But it seemed to me he's one of those predatory guys – you know, the ones who like the thrill of the chase, and the smell of blood? I think I was turning him on, playing the helpless trusting little girl. Sort of a doe to his wolf. So, once we got to the motel, I switched gears. Sure enough, he doesn't like aggressive women. He lost interest."

"You. Aggressive."

"I've been watching Sarah. Nobody can turn a guy on and off like her. She would have been proud of me." Her smile turned sunny again. "And you worried about me not having a date Saturday night."

You've got a lot to learn about men, Caitlin, if you think you put him off by acting too willing. Maybe he thought it was too soon to jeopardize your trust. Or maybe he remembered that you can smash down steel doors with your fist, and decided not to let you get a grip on him in the throes of passion. We'll never know, now. But I'm sure it wasn't because he suddenly lost interest. Something scared him off.

"I just thought of something."

Something in her tone warned him. "What's that?"

"It was so obvious he wanted to get my prints on that other syringe, the one he used on his partner. I wiped it with the pocket lining before I left it. But why, if his partner's going to wake up in two hours and tell everyone who did it?"

"Maybe that was his way of providing a positive ID."

She wanted to believe it, he could tell. "Mr. Lynch… Julius, the one I dosed, is he going to be all right?"

"No," he said, carefully watching the road. "I'm sure he's going to be hurting when he wakes up." In Hell.