The Blonde

The word spread early—they had Kowalski in custody, and The Blonde was dead.

Kowalski was flying in on an AH-64 Apache 2, due to arrive any moment.

The Blonde’s headless body was currently under the knife at a small medical facility south of San Diego, not far from the border. The guys in the lab coats didn’t want to hang around Mexico any longer than they had to. Cartels, and all. Things were bad. Decapitations were the order of the day. They didn’t want to get caught up in that shit.

Nobody was too worried about The Blonde anyway.

They wanted Kowalski.

He was the one with the intel.

They prepared the secret prison facility like parents preparing the house for their five-year-old’s birthday party—the first with friends from preschool. The landing pad was hosed down as well as the interrogation room. One staffer was surprised to find some blood and bone fragments still congealed in one corner of the room. He could have sworn he’d cleaned this place out good a few days ago.

Lights were checked, and in some cases, replaced. It was important to have the right amount of buzzing and flickering. Chairs were positioned just so. A new meat hook was hung suggestively from a metal eye towards the back of the room.

The government has secret prisons all over the country, tucked away in little corners. This secret facility was halfway between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Neighbors—the closest ones living a mile away—thought it was a place where they pulped books. That was intended to explain the screaming. Machines are high-pitched and loud, they’d explain, if asked, which was never.

The Apache landed at 4:46 a.m. Kowalski was rushed down the ramp, still in his street clothes, except for the hood. He’d been checked for weapons, of course. Outwardly, he was clean.

They whipped off the hood to give him a hit of sunshine right before pushing his head down and running him through the musty steel hallway that led to the inner chambers of the facility.

They walked him around a lot to confuse him.

They stripped him naked, even removing the metal brace around his broken leg. They saved the vial of blood around his neck for last. It took them a while to realize what it was. Even better: it was early generation, from a month ago. Well worth studying.

A guard reached out, enclosed the vial in his meaty paw, then snapped it off Kowalski’s neck.

Now he needed them. Otherwise, he was fucked. If they wanted to kill him, all they would have to do is lock him in a room and wait ten seconds. Without anybody within a ten-foot radius of Kowalski, the nanites would travel to his brain and explode. There. Nothing easier.

For now, though, two guards stayed with him. They could kill him later. They needed information.

It was time for final security checks. They force-fed him something to make him vomit.

He did.

They repeated the process, and then checked his mouth and ass.

They hosed him off, sat him in a metal chair.

They’d opted not to put him on the hook. It was better to build up to something like that.

“Hey,” Kowalski asked. “Is my brother-in-law around?” It was the first thing he’d said since being apprehended in Mexico.

They said nothing.

Others watched him wait, via fiber optic cameras.

Kowalski waited.

Sometime later the door opened. A guy Kowalski supposed was the interrogator stepped in. The guards stepped out.

The interrogator didn’t look like much. But those were the guys you really had to worry about.

He didn’t offer his name. He looked kind of bored.

“To be honest,” the interrogator said, “I just want to get to the part where I hang you on the hook back there and start cutting away little pieces of you. Starting with your anal cavity.”

“You guys are really fond of my ass.”

“Shall we begin?”

Kowalski said, “I’ll tell you everything.”

“Crap,” the interrogator said.

“And then,” Kowalski said, looking up at the ceiling, “all of you will die. One at a time.”

The interrogator perked up. “Oh yeah?”

“Every last one of you.”

Huge smile from the interrogator. “Sure, sweet cheeks. Listen, let’s get the story going. I’ll call bullshit and then we’ll have some fun.”

“I outthought you bastards every step of the way.” Kowalski stared at a corner of the ceiling.

The people watching him were impressed. He seemed to know exactly where the cameras were hidden.

“And yet,” the interrogator said, “you’re here.”

He stood up and reached inside a pouch on his pants. He took out a small, thin blade with a black handle. It had a cardboard cover over the blade, which the interrogator removed. Apparently, it had been sanitized for Kowalski’s protection.

“Here with me.”

“We went to L.A. first,” Kowalski said.

The interrogator sighed, then settled in to listen to the story.

Let’s go to L.A.,” he told the blonde, whose real name was Vanessa. She’d come a long way in the past few weeks. She was napping less. Recovering most of her memory. Still, her mood remained the same: sad. Verging on black depression. Not surprising, considering that she’d almost died and, before that, spent a few weeks acting like a serial killer. Most people acting like that either ended up dead or in a padded room.

“I thought you said San Diego,” she said. “Where I stashed the key.”

“C’mon, L.A.’s fun. I’ll take you to Musso & Frank for a steak. Then we’ll drive down to San Diego.”

“I don’t eat red meat.”

They decided to go to L.A. anyway. Kowalski was just about finished with his Philadelphia business—there wasn’t much left of the original crime family who’d butchered his fiancée, except for a couple of low-level numbers men who really weren’t worth the trouble. Already the Russians and the Poles were moving in to fill the void. They could have it, Kowalski thought. He could care less if he ever saw Philadelphia again. Maybe if terrorists nuked it he’d stop back, just to piss on the burning ashes.

It was time to stop thinking local, and start thinking global.

As in:

Global Apocalypse.

Vanessa told him as much as she could about Proximity. She relied on memory; the hardcore data was on a USB key in San Diego. But what she knew was frightening enough. Those little Mary Kate fuckers replicated like trailer trash: fast and furious and without much thought. And if The Operator—the dead headless bastard—was to be believed, the Mary Kates were currently busy inhabiting the bloodstreams of much of the population of North America. It had been a few months since their adventures in downtown Philadelphia. A lot of time for the Mary Kates to go forth and prosper.

Meanwhile, Kowalski’s employers, CI-6, were slowly putting the pieces together, like a toddler with a plastic Tupperware shape toy. They weren’t entirely stupid. Just big and awkward, like any government agency.

Kowalski didn’t think he had much free time left with Vanessa. They were going to come looking for them, hard. Maybe within the week. He could tell by the way he was treated when he called in to ask about new assignments. A new chill had set in. Something was going on.

L.A. was the smartest move he could come up with.

She went along with it.

They rented a car and hit a mall in Neshaminy, a suburb just north of Philadelphia. They bought what they needed—small suitcases, clothes, some crime novels for Kowalski, some toiletries for Vanessa.

Kowalski flicked the paper shopping bag with a finger. “What’s that?”

“Me skin wasn’t meant for California sun,” Vanessa said. Her Irish accent was back in full bloom. She’d been faking deadpan Midwestern American during her trips from airport to airport across the country. No reason to now.

“Your skin is just fine,” Kowalski said.

Vanessa flicked the side of his plastic bag. “What’s that?”

“I’m in a Ross Macdonald mood.”

“Can’t get enough of the Oirish, can you.”

It was meant to be funny. Neither of them laughed.

They took the PA turnpike east, crossed over to the NJ turnpike, then flew out of Newark.

Yeah, I know.”

“You know what?” Kowalski asked.

“I was there in Newark. I saw you. I was the guy who alerted the team in LA.”

“Bullshit.” Kowalski shifted in his seat. The metal seat was cold against his balls and ass. He knew why they’d stripped him naked. It makes you feel that much more vulnerable. Not Kowalski—he really didn’t give a shit. It was just uncomfortable, and that pissed him off.

“No, seriously,” the interrogator said. “This probably isn’t professional of me, but I was there, three rows away. You were trying to read a paperback copy of The Way Some People Die, but you kept looking at your blonde friend. She looked distracted. Maybe even a little sad.”

“Did she, now?”

“Don’t take it hard. I’m good at what I do. As you’re about to learn.”

“Well, your L.A. team sucked.”

The interrogator smirked. “Yeah. They did suck, didn’t they?”

Kowalski spotted them just a few yards out of the gate at LAX. He didn’t tell Vanessa, because he didn’t want to worry her. Not until it was necessary. As it turned out, it never was.

Out of the rental place, Kowalski avoided the freeways and found La Cienega and rode it all the way up, right through the hoods. He lost them near Inglewood. Kowalski hoped they weren’t fresh CI-6 recruits. They were fond of plucking them right from colleges, filling their head with junk, patting their fannies, and nudging them out into the field. If they didn’t have a few ounces of street sense, they would be eaten alive. Not that this was Kowal-ski’s problem.

“This is L.A.?” Vanessa asked. “Jaysus, it’s just another slum. With palm trees.”

“They’re dying out, actually,” he said. “Some kind of fungal disease. Pretty soon it’ll be just slum.”

“Maybe the Mary Kates got to them already.”

Kowalski watched her as he drove. She touched the vial on her necklace. It matched his, which he also wore around his neck. Hers with his blood, his with hers. The vials kept them both alive.

Forty minutes later they made it to the safe house.

It was the sweetest safe house imaginable—a one-bedroom apartment up in the Hollywood Hills. The place belonged to a screenwriter friend of Kowalski’s, a guy he used to pal around with at places like Boardner’s during the early 1990s. For a few hardcore weeks there, Kowalski and his buddy had tried to kill as many brain cells and bang as many aspiring actresses as possible. Now Lee Michaels was up in Vancouver shooting his first big-budget movie— a radical update of a hyperviolent 1980s TV show called The Evis-cerator. Kowalski kept in touch with Lee over the years, buying him a rib eye and a couple of lagers whenever he found himself in L.A. In exchange, that bought him access to Lee’s pad on occasion.

Lee’s pad was completely unknown to CI-6.

Lee’s pad was also famous.

Or famous enough, if you liked Robert Altman’s version of The Long Goodbye. Lee’s pad was where Eliot Gould, playing Philip Marlowe, lived. Upstairs, they filmed parts of Kenneth Branagh’s Dead Again.

Vanessa had never seen either film, so the fame was lost on her.

So was the apartment.

She didn’t even look out the window.

Even Kowalski had to admit the view was pretty spectacular: rolling hills of green and brown dotted with model-sized multimillion-dollar homes. In the distance, you could watch the glimmering lights of downtown. If you had to be in L.A., this is where you wanted to be.

Didn’t Vanessa even want to look?

“I’m going to have a shower,” she said.

Kowalski decided to have a beer.

The shower was off the bedroom. As usual, Vanessa took a long time. Kowalski idly wondered what she did in there. But he had a pretty good idea. He was halfway through his third Sierra Nevada when she stepped into the kitchen, towel around her torso.

“How about that wine?” she said, smiling as if she meant it.

Kowalski looked at her bare legs, then the towel, then her body beneath the towel, then her face, then her hair.

It was red.

Jesus fuck, she had dyed it red.

“What?” she asked, defensively. “I was tired of looking like me.”

Katie had been a redhead.

Katie was his dead pregnant fiancée, who was waiting to give birth sometime in the afterlife, whenever Kowalski could arrange to be there.

“Huh,” he said, then took another slug of beer.

And that’s when people started showing up to kill them.

You have to admit, the second team was pretty good,” the interrogator said. “Yeah,” Kowalski said.

“They were pretty good.”

They were:

Ms. Montgomery, a.k.a. “Ana Esthesia.”

Mr. Brown, a.k.a. “The Surgeon.”

Mrs. McCue, a.k.a. “Bonesaw.”

Their skills complemented each other, which was part of the reason for their silly nicknames.

But they were also a surgical strike team, specializing in accidental and bizarre sanctions. If you want someone to die and have nobody think twice about it, you call in these kinds of people.

So, yeah. Surgical strike team, surgical nicknames. CI-6 had a fondness for the literal.

Bonesaw dug her name. Then again, she was a pain freak.

The Surgeon hardly ever spoke, so it was difficult to ascertain what he thought of his nickname, or if it even occurred to him that he should have an opinion. He did Sudoku. He answered most queries with “Yep.”

Ana Esthesia had a mental defect; she claimed to be able to rid herself of any kind of pain by inflicting the equal and opposite pain on others. Shoot her in the leg, and she’d immediately recover after shooting you in the leg. CI-6 experts could find no physiological basis for this claim; they thought she was nuts. She considered it a superpower. They tagged her “Ana Esthesia” as a joke. She called them names—asshat, fucktard—so she’d feel better. Sticks and stones, and all that.

She went in first.

There were only two ways into Lee Michaels’s apartment: up a caged elevator within a high tower that gave the complex its name, or up a winding set of concrete stairs. The elevator clacked and hummed so loudly it might as well have been an announcement: Hello there—coming up to kill you! So Ana opted for the concrete stairs.

She jumped a white partition meant to give the apartment’s patio a little privacy. She crouched down then inched her away around to the glass-paneled door, which opened out.

She didn’t carry weapons. She liked to use what she could find.

She found something on the patio: a little metal table, with a glass ashtray and a couple of Corona Extra bottle caps littering the top.

She cleared off the crap, hurled the table through the glass.

She stepped in directly behind it.

Kowalski was too distracted by Vanessa’s new hair color to fully comprehend why the glass patio door had suddenly exploded and a surly-looking teenager had come charging through it.

The teenager pushed Vanessa to the floor. Vanessa’s towel unraveled. The sight distracted Kowalski for another fraction of a second. In the time they’d been living together, he’d never seen her naked before.

The teenager charged and smashed her forehead into Kowal-ski’s. His eyes teared up, and he staggered back into the kitchen. It was difficult to keep his balance; his leg was still in a light brace. The Sierra Nevada slipped out of his hand, shattered on the floor.

The teenager was grinning.

Through blurred vision he could see her face a little better, and okay, maybe she wasn’t quite a teenager. She had young features, though—small mouth, upturned nose. And her dark hair had an ice-blue streak running down the front, which is some kind of silly shit teenagers do to worry their parents.

She reached out and slapped Kowalski’s face, as if to get his attention.

Then she followed up with a short, shockingly hard punch to his mouth, which loosened two of his teeth.

Kowalski slapped out at her, like he was trying to kill a fly. It was suddenly very hard to see. There were three teenagers standing in front of him. He was swallowing his own blood. Blood and pale ale: not a recommended combination.

Goddamnit, what had just happened?

The three teenagers wound up for another punch. Kowalski snapped off something cheap and dirty at the middle teenager. Her lip split.

Her eyes fluttered, and her lips quivered, as if she were going to cry. Jesus, he’d just punched a little girl in the fucking face.

Then she lashed out and nailed him in the mouth again. That one did the trick. Kowalski felt two teeth roll back onto his tongue. He had big teeth.

The teenager’s face changed. Tears went bye-bye; now she was beaming like it was Christmas morning.

“Hah!” she shouted.

What the fuck was wrong with her? Kowalski thought, trying to catch his own teeth before he swallowed them.

And how did they know about this place?

How did you know about the place?” “You led us there,” the interrogator said.

“So I didn’t lose the first team in Inglewood?”

“No, you did. They were even shot at by a couple of gang-bangers. Which made for an amusing getaway interlude. People are still giving them shit about it.”

“So how did you find us?”

The interrogator paused, then smiled. “You really don’t know, do you? Ana must have hit you harder than I thought.”

Kowalski looked down at the table. His vision still wasn’t right. His perfect 20/20 vision went away the moment that blue-streaked teenager headbutted him. The bitch.

Cunt,” Vanessa said, then smashed the teenager in the head with a steel tea kettle.

The girl fell to her hands and knees, scream-cried. She sounded like a tea kettle. Kowalski followed through with a boot stomp on her back, smashing her into the jagged remnants of the Sierra Nevada.

Kowalski looked up to Vanessa, who had three sets of breasts and six nipples.

God his vision was fucked.

Think about that later. Kowalski turned and spat blood into the sink. A tooth landed on porcelain. Another tumbled down the drain.

“Shit,” he said. He’d lost some upper teeth before, never one on the bottom row. It had been a point of pride with him. A small point, but still. Motherfucker. He picked up the remaining tooth, closed it in his right fist.

The teenager on the floor was sobbing violently now, her lungs pumping hard, her fingers shaking, her eyes squeezed shut, and a blood-line of drool connecting her lower lip to the floor.

“Hey,” Vanessa said, crouching down. “Come on now. Stop it.” She reached to touch the girl’s leg.

“Wait,” Kowalski said. “She’s …”

Too late.

The teenager nailed Vanessa in the tits with her boot, sending her backwards across the kitchen. She crashed into the table, one end of which flipped up and hit her in the back of the head.

It would have been funny if it hadn’t looked so painful.

The teenager sprung to her feet, never mind that the act of pushing her palms against the bottle shards cut them deeper. She still was an absolute mess, all drool and blood and tears, but she looked deliriously happy.

Vanessa moaned and struggled to catch her breath. Her fingers clawed at the linoleum as if there were some kind of painkiller hidden beneath.

“You’re sensitive there, I can feel it,” the girl said, then saw a corkscrew on the kitchen counter. Kowalski had bought it at Vons along with the pinot noir. The teenager considered it quickly; decided it would do.

She reached out for it.

Kowalski wrapped his right arm around her neck and squeezed.

This was Kowalski’s signature move. He likened himself to the trash monster from Star Wars-, once he had you locked in, there was little you could use outside the power of the motherfucking Force to free yourself.

Unfortunately, the teenager was quick. She already had the corkscrew in her hand.

The Motherfucking Force vs. $3.99 corkscrew from Vons over on Sunset.

She sliced his cheek. Kowalski tilted his head back, squeezed harder. She whipped around, caught him on a love handle. The sharp point tore his flesh. Fuck, she was a squirmy thing.

He continued squeezing.

By the time the teenager was unconscious, Kowalski had puncture wounds and gashes in his leg, back, face, and forearm. As well as his right love handle.

He let her drop to the kitchen floor, then sat down to collect his thoughts and take stock of his injuries. Which were fairly numerous, for what was essentially twenty seconds of wild slashing violence. He ran his tongue around his mouth, feeling if anything else was loose.

Across the room, Vanessa pushed herself up on her arms.

“I fooking wish you carried a gun,” she said.

“I wish I carried dental insurance,” Kowalski said. He opened his right fist and looked down at his bloodied tooth.

Vanessa reached out and found the towel. Kowalski realized that the free show was over, and he hadn’t any time to fully appreciate it.

Who was he kidding. He wouldn’t have allowed himself to, anyway.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I won’t be bringing the girls out to play anytime soon.” She rewrapped the towel around her torso.

“We have to get to San Diego. Now.”

“Figured that.”

They were silent as they quickly gathered their things.

Haven’t figured it out yet, have you?” The interrogator was loving this. Possibly as much as the idea of using his little knife. What was that anyway? Something he took from the kitchen at home? Something his wife ordered at a Pampered Chef party?

“Yeah,” Kowalski said. “I figured it out. The first team pushed us to a specific car rental place. You had someone there waiting. You tagged the Taurus with a homing device.”

The interrogator shook his head, made a tsk-tsk sound. “And she said you were the smartest operative she ever worked with.”

He didn’t have to say who. “She” was enough to wedge the blade under his armor.

“Then again,” the interrogator continued, “she’s no longer with us.”

Kowalski said nothing.

“In answer to your theory: No, we did not bug the Taurus. We had something else.”

Kowalski said nothing.

And then it came to him. Oh, of fucking course. How stupid can one man be? Maybe he had been knocked in the brains one too many times.

He’d known it had happened. He just didn’t know it had happened so early.

“The Surgeon certainly thought the device came in handy.”

The Surgeon watched the targets take the stairs down from the apartment. They faded in and out of view. That was okay. He also had them on his handheld tracker. Two pulsing red dots, making their way slowly across a grid. No way of losing them.

So he was more or less relaxing, smoking a Pall Mall, something he had a hard time doing practically anywhere in L.A. In this empty apartment, though, it was okay. Maybe a rental agent would detect a faint hint of smoke, but by then, he’d be long gone.

He only expected to be here a few more minutes, actually.

Maybe just sixty seconds.

A quick phone call (fuck the Internet; The Surgeon was old school) had revealed that Lee Michaels owned the third garage on the left. The garages were positively Stone Age: just a box of concrete wedged into a muddy hill with corrugated steel doors. It was enough to accommodate most midsized vehicles. Like a Ford Taurus.

Even the most primitive of garages, however, have a door handle.

The trap was so easy to set. Just put The Stuff in your right-hand pocket, grab a stack of supermarket circulars, walk up to the apartment gate, give ‘em a circular, then on the way back quickly put on some gloves and coat The Stuff on the handle.

The Stuff was great. Mr. Brown loved working with it every chance he got.

The Stuff killed on contact with skin. Not right away, but within fifteen to twenty minutes. Knocked you unconscious. For good.

The Stuff was completely untraceable. Not even the CIA knew about The Stuff. Not this Stuff.

So Mr. Brown staked out an apartment across the way and smoked while he waited. Lie also tore open a packet of mint pastilles, and he scooped a handful into his mouth between cigarettes. It fought the nicotine breath. Women were so picky about that.

Maybe after this he’d go down to Sunset and try to get himself a date.

The great thing about the garages was that they were so narrow. Only one person could squeeze in at a time. The thing to do was worm your way into the driver’s seat, back the car out, then have your passenger lower the garage door for you before hopping in.

That meant two people touching the garage door handle. The driver. And the passenger.

Oh, and here they were, heading to the garage, thinking they were about to make a clean getaway.

Yep.

The Surgeon was mildly surprised that Ms. Montgomery had failed to take them out herself. She was usually good. He hoped she wasn’t dead.

But then again, it was nice to strut his Stuff, too.

Kwalski reached for the garage door.

“Wait,” Vanessa said.

“Nobody’s hiding in the garage,” he said. “I rigged it. If this had been opened in the last few hours, I would have known.”

“Rigged it with what? A piece of tape up in the corner?”

Kowalski didn’t say anything, because that was precisely how he’d rigged it. A piece of tape, up in the corner. It was still there.

“I’ll open it quick,” he said. “We jump if there’s an explosion.”

Vanessa looked at him. “Bollocks.” She reached down, grabbed the handle, and yanked the door upward. It rattled as it moved along the rusty tracks and settled into place above her head.

No explosions.

No gunfire.

No nothing.

Kowalski gave her a See? look.

“Well, go on then,” she said.

One down,” mumbled the Surgeon. He helped himself to more mint pastilles.

But there was a problem now. The girl was good as dead, but the male target—this Kowalski—was squeezing himself in alongside the car, making his way to the driver’s seat. Which meant he wouldn’t touch the garage door handle at all.

It was a good thing he’d prepared a secondary device.

This was even more ingenious. It was a strip of clear tape, running across the length of the garage, about six inches away from the outside of the door.

The tape was pressure-sensitive. Step on it—hell, stomp on it, hard as you can—and nothing. Just an ordinary piece of electrician’s tape. But roll the approximate weight of an automobile over the tape, and watch out.

Ka-Boomsville.

You can do all the forensic analysis you want, and all you’d find is a blown back tire that somehow, incredibly, sparked the gas tank, resulting in catastrophic combustion. That would be your best guess, anyhow. The tape would have long burned up into nothingness. You’d have nothing to analyze.

The Surgeon watched the male target start the car. Popped a mint.

Then he hit the remote control that activated the tape.

Kowalski started the car. He didn’t like this feeling. Jittery. Nerves on edge. Things moving too fast. Being forced out of his safe house—the safest place he knew—in less than an hour. Compromised. This wasn’t like CI-6. They weren’t usually this sharp. He thought he’d have more time to prepare. A week would have been nice.

Worst of all, he still had beers left up in Lee’s place. God, that pissed him off.

Kowalski reached for the gear shift. His hand missed. On the second try, he found it.

There was a fluttering in his stomach. He was almost never sick to his stomach.

Kowalski sighed, then turned off the ignition. Stepped out of the car, feeling the blood rush out of his head. Squeezed himself alongside the Taurus.

“I need you to drive,” he said.

He threw the keys to the redhead.

She caught them, no problem. “I don’t know how to drive in America.”

“We’ll be on the 5 the whole time. Just stick to a lane. You’ll be fine.”

“To be perfectly frank, I don’t know how to drive. Like, at all.”

“Piece of cake. Just stay between the white lines.”

This was a lie, and Vanessa looked like she knew it. But there wasn’t much choice. The nausea was full on now, and the dizzy feeling refused to go away, no matter how much Kowalski controlled his breathing. It was going to take some effort to stay conscious in the passenger seat, let alone the driver’s seat.

Vanessa slid alongside the car, hopped behind the wheel, and turned the ignition. Kowalski stepped back. If she makes it out of the garage in one piece, I’ll consider it a good omen.

She put the Taurus in reverse and backed out of the garage.

The Surgeon braced himself.

He had a vision of the blast taking his target’s head off, bouncing it against the window here, leaving a smudge of burned flesh and a smear of blood.

Yep.

Vanessa managed to avoid running over Kowalski. She pulled up alongside him, hammered the brake.

The Taurus rocked on its suspension.

“Getting in then?” she asked.

What the fuck?!

He saw it. The car ran over the tape. Right over the tape.

His devices had never failed before.

Never.

It was a good thing he’d brought along a tertiary device.

Kowalski had just snapped his seat belt—hey, she admitted she didn’t know how to drive—when this tubby, balding guy came stumbling out of the doorway, gun in hand. Running towards them. Aiming for them.

“Go,” Kowalski said. “Go now.”

Tubby fired once. The windshield cracked. Vanessa screamed.

“Gas pedal,” Kowalski said. “Gun it.”

She gunned it. The car shot backwards ten feet before she pushed the brake with both feet. The Taurus rocked. Tubby aimed again.

Kowalski plucked the cigarette lighter from the dash.

Tubby fired.

The shot went high.

Vanessa pushed the accelerator. The engine screamed.

“Put it in drive,” Kowalski said, then opened his door and winged the cigarette lighter at Tubby’s head. It nailed him in the mouth. Which was okay, but Kowalski had been aiming for his eyes. Tabby’s lips trembled, like he was fighting a sneeze. Kowalski reached down, grabbed the gear shift, said, “Brake, now!” and Vanessa did, and then he slid it into drive, and was about to tell her, “Gas!” but she was already there, slamming it.

The Taurus rocketed forward, smashed into Tubby.

“Go!” Kowalski said.

Tubby was airborne.

The Taurus raced down the hill.

The Surgeon tried one last time to shoot the girl in the face, but by this time he was tumbling through the air. He squeezed the trigger, but the bullet went wild.

Way wild.

Right into the ground.

Right into a strip of clear electrical tape, running parallel to the front of the third garage.

Walk on it, stomp on it… nothing. You need something with the mass of a motor vehicle to set it off, when charged properly.

Of course, charged or not, there’s something else that will set it off.

A speeding bullet.

Yeah, that’d do it nicely.

So before The Surgeon was even able to crash into the ground, the explosion blew him back and upwards into the air, flipping him head over heels at least twice before he crashed through the very window he’d been looking through a minute ago.

And in that way, one little bit of the Surgeon’s vision came true. For a fraction of a section, burnt flesh was smeared against the glass, along with a little bit of blood.

Then the glass shattered, and through it came the Surgeon.

That guy just blew up,” Vanessa said.

“Drive,” Kowalski said.

“Why did he blow up?”

“Just drive.”

“Michael.”

“What?”

“Why did that guy blow up?”

“Drive!”

“Jaysus.” She sighed.

“Now a left,” Kowalski said.

The blast woke Ana. Her eyes fluttered open, and quickly she realized she was drowning in a sea of pain. Delicious pain. Pain she could use. Just as soon as she stood up.

Oh.

She couldn’t.

One of the two fucktards, either the cripple with the missing teeth or the naked bitch, had smashed in one of her kneecaps. Perhaps the most sensitive part of the human anatomy, aside from the sexual organs or the eyes. Physical trauma applied to the kneecap was immediately crippling, engulfing the pain centers of the brain to the point of overload.

Thus, a source of overwhelming power.

Ana wouldn’t need to walk. She could crawl on her elbows and one remaining knee and smite those who had done this to her. Smite them with their own pain.

She sat up.

Or tried to, at least.

But her arms were pinned above her. Handcuffed around the base of a toilet.

No no no no.

This meant that the pain would have to stay within her, with no chance of release. And that was unacceptable. Because there was one thing Ana could not handle for long, and that was pain. Especially pain of this magnitude.

Ana screamed and cried and begged for release.

Any kind of release.

Oh how it HURT!

Kowalski had to take a piss. But he’d be damned if he let the interrogator know that.

He considered just letting it go, right here, right onto the concrete floor, the body-temperature liquid splattering the interrogator’s shoes.

“Tell me,” Kowalski, “how you found her.”

“She came to us,” the interrogator said.

“What, she had your address?”

“Hang on, now. We’re off track here. I’m supposed to be asking you questions. You know the deal. You don’t answer, I slice pieces off you and put them over there.” He pointed to a metal bucket, which had been placed in the corner. “You continue to be stubborn, I get to feed you those pieces.”

“I’m answering your questions.”

“I know. You suck.”

The interrogator played with the paper cover of his little Pampered Chef knife.

“Well, go on. San Diego.”

“San Diego,” Kowalski repeated.

“San Diego.”

“SAN DIEGO!” Kowalski shouted.

The whole drive down to San Diego, they had no idea. No idea that a third assassin had wiped the garage door handle clean, disabled the explosive tape. Just to fuck with The Surgeon. (Arrogant prick.)

No idea she was tracking them now, with a handheld device, courtesy of CI-6.

She was called many things. Assassin. Killer. Psycho.

But what she really got off on was her CI-6 nickname:

Bonesaw.

It just sounded painful. And she liked that.

Her specialty was the odd, seemingly random killings you hear about on the news every once in a while. Those freaky serial killings. Sure, there was media attention. Once in a while, even a movie option. That was the point. Cops and reporters went hunting for a lone madman. They never thought it was the government.

Bonesaw liked that, too.

Oh, she had a real girly name once—Monica McCue. Ugh. Poke the back of her throat, make her gag. She never felt like a Monica McCue. Since she was a little girl, she’d always felt like a … well, a bone saw.

It was rare they let her do her thing. Which was why she took it upon herself to push The Surgeon out of the way.

She wanted to show them what she could do. She had a whole bunch of new ideas. Sitting around last night, she jotted something like forty-two of them down in her notebook.

Ways to kill people.

That morning Bonesaw got up, stepped into the brilliant California sunshine, and narrowed it down to a half dozen ideas. She sipped some iced coffee, bit her lip hard thinking about those ideas. A little blood got in the coffee. Gave it a little salty kick. She liked that. And that decided it for her.

She’d bring a box of syringes with her. She’d have to stuff the box with cotton, because she didn’t want them rattling around in her backpack. The cotton would come in handy anyway.

They’re not going to stop, are they?”

Kowalski looked at her. The multiple of hers. He definitely had a concussion. Even turning his eyes made him want to vomit. So he turned his whole head. Watched the trees and buildings and clouds and vehicles whiz by the driver’s side window. That made him even more nauseous.

“They sent two,” he said, “so there’s probably a third on the way. It’s never just two. Either one is enough, or they order double backups.”

“I mean after.”

“After what?”

“After we go public.”

“Depends on what you have in San Diego.”

Vanessa had told him that before she quit the lab in Dublin, she’d dumped as much as she could into a USB key. She was fairly sure she saw Excel files. Which probably meant financial transactions. If they could financially tie the Proximity nanovirus to CI-6, the fuckers would sink under the weight. Nobody could survive scrutiny like that, no matter how secret or buried.

You try bankrolling something that winds up infecting most of North America—and, like, can kill on demand via satellite. See how far your career goes then. It’s not exactly something you can hide on your résumé.

Kowalski had held off on rushing to San Diego. Bolting there right away would have raised eyebrows, he thought.

Now it didn’t seem like it fucking mattered.

But he hadn’t lied. CI-6 was predictable. They wouldn’t have just sent two killers. What was strange, however, was that they usually tried to make it look like an accident. The first one—random home invasion. He got it. But this second killer just charged at them with a gun. I mean, where the hell was the finesse in that?

Maybe the third killer would be just as obvious.

He hoped.

“I just keep going south on 5?”

“Wake me up when you see signs for Solana Beach.”

“If I don’t get us into a massive collision.”

“Wake me up if that happens, too.”

Now it’s time for the interesting part,” said the interrogator. “Come on, on your feet.”

“What?” Kowalski asked.

“Pain time. Remember? The bucket? Little pieces of you on the menu?”

“Hey, I’m telling you everything.”

The interrogator smiled. “I know you’re not telling me everything. And I know you’re not just going to sit here and piss away the only card you have left. Not this easy.”

The word “piss” reminded Kowalski. He wouldn’t be able to keep his bladder on clampdown too much longer. He needed to get this moving.

“So c’mon then,” the interrogator said, pushing his chair back. “Let’s get you on the hook the easy way, okay? You’ll want to save your strength for the main event.”

“You want to know what was on the USB key? I’ll tell you. I’ll even write it out for you.”

The interrogator stood up, looked down at the tiny knife in his hand, then back up at Kowalski.

“You know, this isn’t fucking fair. They told me you’d be impossible to break. Can’t you just play along?”

“What can I say? One look at you, and I’m ready to spill everything.”

Kowalski locked his eyes on one of the surveillance cameras. “The man who authorized the purchase of Proximity was a spook named David Murphy. First payment was sent July 12, bank routing number 4987B …”

“Oh you’re no fun at all,” the interrogator said.

Nobody tried to kill them outside the Westin Horton Plaza. Nobody flinched when they went to the front desk and asked for a package for “Mary Kate.” Nobody tried to stab them in the elevator. Nobody was hiding in their closets or in the shower. Nobody even noticed when Kowalski filched an Apple iBook from a portly dude in a black T-shirt.

Once they were inside their room, Vanessa decided she needed another shower.

“Got to wash the boot print off my tits.”

Kowalski couldn’t argue with that. He wished he could wash the boot print off his skull, but it seemed to be permanently stamped there. Once he knew what was on this USB, maybe he’d have the luxury of some real sleep in the near future.

“Anybody breaks in and tries to kill us,” she said, “just knock on the door three times.”

“Enjoy your shower.”

Kowalski suspected she went in there just to be alone, and to cry. She showered a lot.

He used to do that, too. Right after Katie.

He fired up the computer and looked for Excel files. There was a lot of junk on this USB key. All he needed was a name he recognized. Come on, come on. Give me something to work with, baby.

Something pinched his neck.

“Ow,” he said, and reached up to feel his neck. Or at least, he thought he did. But his hands remained frozen over the keyboard.

“Shhhh, now,” said a voice at his ear.

Oh fuck.

Hello, third killer.

The shower water pummeling tile made for nice, soothing white noise in the background. The voice, which was female, was almost as soothing.

“I put a needle in your spinal cord. You’re paralyzed from the neck down. I’m going to push it in a little further now, and that will freeze everything else. You might be able to blink. But that’s iffy.”

“Wait…”

She did.

He was lucky. He still could blink. That was something.

The woman set him up in a chair in the corner so he faced the rest of the room. He heard the ripping of tape. She was probably using some to keep the needle in his neck in place. As if he could someone how blink hard enough to make it wobble and fall out of his spinal cord.

She leaned over him as she worked. Her tits were in his face. She smelled faintly of rubbing alcohol.

She crouched down in front of him. “I’ve been asking myself, who would be the victim? I think it has to be the redhead. You’re the one with the scarier background. She’s only been killing for a short while.”

How do you know about her? he wanted to ask.

Of course he couldn’t.

She reached into a backpack which was by her feet. Kowalski hadn’t know it was there. Shit, he hadn’t even known she was there. Where didn’t he check? The drapes? Fuck. He was better than this. It had to be the concussion.

Yeah, sure, blame the concussion.

Admit it. You’ve gotten sloppy, monster.

Otherwise, you wouldn’t have received the concussion in the first place.

“Guy like you,” she continued, “killer virus in your blood … It could make anyone snap.”

She showed him a white cardboard box, raised her eyebrows. She was actually strikingly beautiful. Even when she opened the lid and showed him what was inside.

Many, many syringes.

“You freaked out, Kowalski. You thought you could save her. One vial of blood at a time. If you could take enough blood out of her veins, you could help her get rid of the virus. Isn’t that right? You kept drawing more and more and more blood until she fell asleep. You stuck the full syringes on the wall over there, and you made the shape of a heart, because you know, during these past few months, you’ve fallen in love with her. And that’s why you’re trying to cure her. Because you love her, Kowalski. You love her don’t you?”

Sloppy, sloppy monster.

“And then you’re going to realize that your cure isn’t going to work, because she’s lost too much blood now, and she’s gone. And the only thing left to do is sit here in this chair and slice your own throat with a shaving razor. You’re a trained professional. You know exactly how deep to cut.”

Inside the bathroom, the shower water turned off.

“Of course, that’s after you cut off her head,” she whispered.

Kowalski had heard stories about these types of CI-6 killers. Pain freaks loved to work with nervous systems, either numbing them to the point of paralysis or exposing them to agony so extreme that few human beings could process it. They were smart people. They had to be. But they were also fucking nuts.

He watched her position her back to the bathroom wall, syringe in her hand, ready to strike Vanessa the moment she emerged. She’d know exactly where to plunge the needle, too, to paralyze her instantly.

And then she’d start drawing blood.

The bathroom door opened. Steam flowed out of the doorway. Vanessa liked her showers hot.

The pain freak winked at Kowalski.

And then something white and round whipped around the corner and smashed the pain freak in the face.

Vanessa emerged, toilet seat in hand, and gave her another mad powerful whack.

The syringe tumbled out of the pain freak’s hand and stuck itself in the carpet. She followed right behind it. As she fell, Kowalski could see that part of her face had been destroyed. He’d be the last man to see her look so good.

Vanessa was completely dry, wrapped in a towel. She hadn’t even stepped into the shower. It had all been a ruse.

“Been curious about something,” she said.

Kowalski blinked.

“You’re a professional killer. Why don’t you carry any fooking guns?”

There was nothing Kowalski could do, except blink twice.

Which he hoped sounded like, “Bite me.”

It took a little while for Vanessa to figure it all out. She was all like, What the hell is wrong with you? Why aren’t you moving?

Kowalski gestured with his eyes best he could. Look. Look at the back of my neck. See all that tape? No, no. Back. There. Finally Vanessa got the clue, looked behind his head. “Jaysus,” she said. There was a little more one-sided back-and-forth, with Vanessa finally instituting a blink once for yes, twice for no system, and asking questions like, “Are you paralyzed?” and “Is that needle why you’re paralyzed?” and finally, at long last, “Do you want me to pull the needle out?” FUCKING YES, Kowalski wanted to yell, I’d like you to pull the fucking needle out of my neck. Such a move could paralyze him permanently. But that would be fine. He could always blink until Vanessa realized he wanted to be mercy-killed.

“Don’t move,” she said, leaning over him, and then realized what she said.

She started laughing.

“Sorry.”

There were a few harrowing moments there at the beginning, and Kowalski honestly thought he would be paralyzed for life. But sensation came back, and with it, a dull throbbing pain in pretty much every part of his body that featured nerve endings.

“Is she dead?” he asked, when he could.

“Not yet.”

“Good. Grab that box of syringes.”

You left our three operatives alive,” said the interrogator. “Why was that?”

“Three?”

“Yes. Three.”

“What about the guy who blew up?” Kowalski asked.

“He made it, too. He’ll probably have a surgery every couple of days until he dies, which may not be too far off in the future. And Ana’s not happy about her kneecap. Nor, Bonesaw, about her face. But my point is, you didn’t go back to finish the job. That’s not the Kowalski we know. What’s the deal?”

Kowalski thought about it. What did it matter if he told him?

“Vanessa lost her taste for killing,” he said.

“Oh really.”

It was true. Vanessa Reardon may have flown across the United States, killing men for the sin of trying to pick her up, but somehow, she’d compartmentalized it. She hadn’t been Vanessa Reardon then. She had been Kelly Dolores White, and she had been created by Matthew Silver, a man who’d tried to fuck, marry, and then finally, kill her. Kelly White was capable of murder because that was what she knew from birth.

But now, ever since Silver’s brains had been splattered all over the side of Pennsylvania Hospital in downtown Philly, Kelly White had been fading away. Vanessa Reardon had been coming back. And she was more than a little horrified about what had happened while she’d been gone.

“So it bothered her to kill people,” the interrogator said, “who had been sent to kill her.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Then explain one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“The seventeen people she killed in Mexico.”

Rosarito was the only place that made any sense. It was not too far over the border, and it was a familiar enough place for Kowalski. He’d spent seven months here in 1995, recuperating from injuries after a field op had gone to shit. It was a fine place to put your mind and body back together. He had rented a small house south of Rosarito proper, right on the beach, for pennies. There were very few ways in, so you could easily see enemies coming. There were enough tourists around, so you never stuck out.

Kowalski also had a box of plastic-wrapped weapons buried near his old rental house. Right on the beach. Unless someone had dug it up since then.

Most importandy, Kowalski knew a good cheap Mexican dentist who might be able to put his remaining tooth back in his mouth.

He wasn’t ready to give that up just yet.

They crossed the border at dusk. There were no problems, especially since they’d traded the car with the cracked windshield in for a less conspicuous vehicle. It was another beige Ford Taurus. Vanessa said she’d just gotten the hang of it, and it would worry her to change it up.

Just over the border she announced she was famished. Kowalski told her they’d be sitting down to real Mexican food in under thirty minutes, but she asked him for a dollar anyway and bought a bag of fried bread from a kid on the street. She regretted the purchase after taking a bite. She dumped the rest in a compartment between the driver and passenger seats.

Roads in Mexico were much more challenging than 1-5 south. Painted lanes? Yeah. Sure. And then there were the potholes the size of kiddie swimming pools.

“Fooking hell,” she said. “This is worse than L.A.”

And it had been a while for Kowalski, so he was a little confused as to which road would take them down to Rosarito. Had they moved the roads since then?

Maybe it was his concussion. Or being paralyzed.

The darkness didn’t help, either.

After a while it seemed like they were seeing the same gas stations and shuttered buildings and nonsensical road signs. Kowalski wanted to close his eyes. That wasn’t going to happen. Not for a while, anyway.

Until he finally saw the sign for Fox Studios Baja.

James Cameron had built this massive tank down here for Titanic, and since then a bunch of movies involving large bodies of water had been shot here, too. Kowalski had been gone before they built the thing, but he visited enough times to know he was close.

“We’re here,” he said.

“Thank Christ,” she said. “I’m starving.”

“First we have to go to the beach.”

“What?”

“You were the one complaining about my lack of fooking guns.”

The little cluster of houses was still there. Only now there was a guard at top of the road leading down to the beach. Vanessa flirted with him best she could while Kowalski crept down to his old house, which was occupied, of course. He made his way to the spot on his hands and knees, and was grateful that nobody had decided to install a cement patio over the spot. The box was three feet down. The tops of his fingers were raw by the time they brushed against the dark green metal. There was no sound in the house. Just the sound of his own breathing and the waves crashing on the shore.

He thought about taking the whole box, but that might be tough to check in to a hotel. So he grabbed a few essentials.

A 9mm Luger.

A 9mm Beretta Brigadier, for Vanessa.

Boxes of ammo for both.

And finally, an M-79 40mm grenade launcher, along with some high-explosive rounds and shotguns rounds (20 ought buck). For those close-call getaways.

He stuffed the guns in his pants, ammo in his pockets, then re-buried the box, slung the M-79 over his shoulder, and crab-walked out of there.

Vanessa left the road guard incredibly confused yet undeniably aroused.

“There’s a hotel and restaurant up the road,” Kowalski said. “Maybe ten minutes.”

“You said something similar when we crossed the border.”

Kowalski reached into his pants, pulled out the Beretta, handed it to her.

“Happy Birthday.”

“Wow,” she said.

“Just drive.”

Ten minutes north was the Rosarito Baja Resort and Cocktail Lounge, with emphasis on the last part. The place made a halfhearted attempt at being touristy, but mostly attracted tourists who didn’t give a shit about that kind of stuff. Tourists who wanted to eat cheap Mexican food and drink themselves stupid.

Kowalski left the M-79 in the trunk, but took the Luger. He told Vanessa to put the Beretta in her bag. He carried the laptop and USB with him, in the little carry bag he’d stolen along with the computer. He carried in his tooth, too.

They were ready for dinner.

The restaurant was mildly crowded. It was the late dinner, early drinking set. Outside the windows, and across an empty pool, Kowalski could see a giant patio covered by a tent. Beneath it, there was a large crowd of people square-dancing. Yeah, that’s what it was. A crowd of Asian tourists, square-dancing. That, or his concussion was getting worse.

Their chicken enchiladas and empanadas and nachos and salsa and bottles of cold Dos Equis had just about arrived when the stranger sat down at the table with them.

She dressed like a tourist: white hoodie with stripes running down the arms, Corona over the right breast, jeans. Hair up with a clip.

Strangely enough, she was a redhead.

She gave you some Proximity tech,” Kowalski said. “Which is how you were able to track our movements so precisely.”

“Precise is the word.” He fished around in the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a small plastic unit with an LCD display.

He showed it to Kowalski. The display had a map of North America. There was a pulsating dot in the northeast corner of Pennsylvania. And another around San Diego.

“And see, I thought she came right for us.”

“She had the blonde’s DNA, from the lab back in Dublin. We gave her yours.” He looked down at the device. “Funny how Vanessa’s still registers, even though she’s dead.”

“Yeah. Funny. So how did she find you?”

“She didn’t,” the interrogator said. “She tried to make contact with your, um, ex-girlfriend after she’d been removed from her post. We intercepted the message. We made contact. We brought her in. She told us what we needed to know.”

“And then you just let her come after us?”

“Well, not exactly. She kind of fucked us over on that. We wanted you alive. She went out there to punish you.”

“Right.”

“Which brings us to the point of our meeting, Michael. We need to know where she is now. And you were the last person to see her, according to the hotel staff—right before your little blonde friend went on her second killing spree.”

“Listen—”

“Hang on now. Don’t just blurt it all out. Think it over. Because the moment you tell us, and we verify, you’re a dead man.”

“Look, she’s—”

“Shhh now. Shhhhh. Don’t you want a little more life? Or the chance that we’ll keep you alive until you tell us?” He played with the small knife in his hands.

Kowalski smiled. “You forgot what I told you.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re the one who’s going to die. Every fucking last one you.”

You killed my brother,” the stranger said, then reached over and helped herself to a sip of Kowalski’s beer.

Which was the only thing he’d planned on eating. His teeth were too messed up to chew a steak or even a taco, and he hated burritos. So it was pretty much beer—and later, when he found the right guy, some painkillers—on the menu. He’d ordered food so Vanessa wouldn’t feel self-conscious.

“That’s my beer,” Kowalski said. “Who was your brother?”

“You knew him as Matthew Silver,” she said. “He was lusting after this one for a while. He used to e-mail me about her.” She turned to glare at Vanessa. “My brother made you sound like a real prude. Couldn’t you have done the world a favor, spotted him a handjob?”

“Your brother was a whiny little bitch,” Vanessa said.

“Look at us. We could be sisters.”

“Died like one, too.”

“Ladies, ladies,” Kowalski said, pretending to play peacemaker, but actually reaching down into his trouser pocket for the Luger. He wrapped his hand around the grip.

The strange redhead, meanwhile put a black purse on the table and opened it.

Here we go.

Kowalski was ready to shoot her through his pants, if need be. A messy gut shot, but it would stop her.

But the stranger wasn’t going for a weapon. Rather, a small plastic box with an LCD screen. There was a digital map of North America on it. And right at the top of Baja California, approximately right where they’d sat down to a hot Mexican meal and two cold beers, were two pulsing dots.

“I helped my brother create Proximity,” she said. “It’s something we’d joked about at Georgia Tech. It got real a year ago. I was his silent partner.”

“Got a name, little sister?” Kowalski asked. This might be her. The financial link they’d been searching for.

She smiled. “Let’s see. We’ve got a Silver. And it was Kelly White, wasn’t it? So call me Ms. Black.”

“I am not going to call you Ms. Black. That’s ridiculous.”

“Lucia, then.”

Kowalski scanned his memory. Lucia, Lucia, Lucia … Was the name anywhere in those Excel files? Not that it mattered, really. They would subdue this one, make her talk. She would tell them everything they needed to know. He was rusty, but he still had some moves. He knew how to make it hurt.

“After I heard what happened,” Lucia said, “I flew to my brother’s lab. There was enough to piece together the story. As well as a tracking device.”

She showed them the little plastic box again.

“How can we help you, Lucia?” Kowalski asked.

“I wanted to meet you in Los Angeles, but you were busy. I didn’t know they’d try to send someone to kill you so quickly.”

“We’re here now. What do you want?”

“Not here. Some place quiet.”

Some place quiet was an empty banquet room down a tiled hallway that featured a giant oil painting of a bull that had been stabbed with three lances. Kowalski kicked out the door stop. With a pneumatic hiss, the door closed behind him.

Kowalski gave Vanessa a look, and they both pulled their guns on Lucia.

He had no idea if Vanessa even knew how to use a gun. But the intimidation factor had to be a bonus.

They both aimed for her head.

“I’m unarmed,” Lucia said.

“Of course you are,” Kowalski said.

Lucia quickly pressed a series of buttons her little plastic box. “Mr. Kowalski, you’re going to want to back up right about now.” Lucia moved closer to Vanessa.

“Hey,” Vanessa said. “Stop.”

Something beeped.

“Or what? You’ll shoot? You won’t shoot me. Because if you do, you’ll have no way of reversing what I’ve just done to you.”

“What did you do?” Kowalski asked.

She turned and raised her eyebrows. “Mr. Kowalski, really, back up. At least ten feet.”

And now maybe it was the concussion, or the sip of beer he’d had, or a delayed reaction the paralyzing needle prick from the gorgeous pain freak in San Diego … but Kowalski’s head really started to throb badly. Worse with every beat of his pulse. Like there was something expanding in his brain, trying to push his eyes out of their sockets from within.

“Fuck,” he said. He meant to step backward, but ended up tripping forward.

It got WORSE.

Holy fucking GOD.

Is this what they all went through, right before the Mary Kates ate their brains?

“Back, Mr. Kowalski. That’s the other direction. Quickly now.”

“What did you do to me!?” Vanessa screamed.

He was finally able to scoot backward, out of range. The pain seemed to diminish slightly. But he still wanted to throw up.

“I’ve reprogrammed your nanites. You’re now a killer for real now, Vanessa Reardon. Anyone comes within ten feet of you, you’ll trigger the Proximity in their bloodstream. You’ll make their brains explode.”

“You …”

Vanessa reached out, trying to touch Lucia’s shoulder.

“Me?” asked Lucia. “Honey, I’m immune. I shut down the nanites in my blood before I flew out here. Injected myself with a nanite that eats Proximity. I could drink your blood right now and be perfectly fine.”

Great, Kowalski thought. Like brother, like sister.

“Unfortunately for you,” she continued, “most of the continent has been infected by now. Including, I’d guess, all of the people in this hotel.”

Vanessa shuddered, dropped her Beretta. Kowalski doubted she even realized it. If it was possible for a human being to fold up inside herself and disappear, Vanessa was doing it now.

“You’re a killer, Vanessa. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Kowalski picked up his Luger and aimed it at Lucia’s chest.

Of course, there was no way he could pull the trigger.

That’s just sick,” the interrogator said, then exhaled a short burst of air. “Wow.”

“Isn’t it, though?”

“I mean, Jesus. I’m a guy who makes his living carving out people’s assholes with a knife. But even that strikes me as going too far. Even for revenge.”

The interrogator played with his knife a little more, then seemed to have a bit of a revelation.

“Oh … I get it now. She didn’t really mean to kill those seventeen people, did she? They were collateral damage.”

“You could say that.”

“Man, that is wicked cold. I have got to meet this Lucia chick.”

“You’d make a nice couple. Anyway, can I finish? I really have to take a leak, and we’re almost at the end.”

The interrogator put his little knife on the table then spread his hands. “By all means.”

Kowalski leaned forward to finish his story.

“By the time I stood up, Vanessa was gone. She ran out of the room. So did Lucia, cackling the whole way. My head was a wreck. It took a lot of effort to stand up. I made it out to the parking lot, but the car was already gone. Vanessa took it. I didn’t have much to go on. She didn’t know the roads down there. She could have gone anywhere.

“I hotwired a car and went looking anyway. My vision was shot, and it was night. But I kept driving.

“A couple of hours later I saw a body by the side of the road. It was an old woman. I pulled the car over and got out. It looked like her head had been run over with a truck tire. But I knew that wasn’t what happened. I’d seen that kind of gushing head wound before. Vanessa had been here. She’d killed that woman because she got too close.

“An hour later, I found two more bodies. It was a little shore town that didn’t even have a name. I can only imagine that Vanessa had pulled in there because it looked dark, and maybe had beach access. She probably thought she could go to the beach and be alone and try to figure this out.

“I drove into the town and got out, and there were bodies everywhere. This is probably where you found most of the victims. Must have been a party that let out…something. I don’t know. A couple of kids were gibbering in Spanish about pelirrojo, pelirrojo. Redhead.

“I ask them what happened. They told me about a crazy woman with wild hair who kept telling them to stay back, stay back. Shouting at them. Waving her arms. Trying to run away. But still, people approached, wanting to help help her. They would only make it a few steps before dropping to their knees.

“‘Ella es laplagaV the kids shouted. She is the plague.

“I kept driving but didn’t find her. It was almost morning. She could anywhere. So I went back to the hotel, hoping she’d make her way back eventually. Once she had a chance to calm down.

“And yeah, I know that was ridiculous. The last thing she’d want was to come near me.

“I hadn’t even checked into the hotel. So I waited in the lobby, drinking Diet Coke to keep myself awake.

“A couple of hours later, after the sun came up, she had me paged. I picked up the hotel’s house phone.

“She told me she was at a pay phone somewhere, not to bother looking for her. She told me she was tired of killing. Of being a monster. There was nowhere left to go, she said. I told her to calm down, that I’d help her. We’d figure it out, just like we did in Philadelphia. She told me I was sweet, but no. There was no way out. Not out of this.

“She thanked me for saving her.

“She thanked me for trying.

“She thanked me for the Beretta.

“And then I heard a gun crack. I dropped the phone. A while later, I called you guys to turn myself in.”

The interrogator stood up and started clapping. “Bravo,” he said. “Bra-fucking-vo.” He turned to a camera on the ceiling. “Did you get that on tape? I mean, cut it right now and submit it to the Academy. That is fucking Oscar-caliber material.”

The interrogator walked around to Kowalski’s side of the table, then leaned in close to his ear. “Two things, buddy boy. You said she dropped the gun in the banquet room. Hard to blow your brains out with a gun you don’t have.”

Then he grabbed Kowalski’s chin and used his thumb to pull down his bottom lip, exposing his lower teeth.

“And you’ve got all your teeth. When did you have time to see a dentist?”

Kowalski twisted his head away.

The interrogator looked practically orgasmic. “It’s pain time, Mikey boy.”

The next minute was what Kowalski expected. The guards came back into the room, handcuffed him, then dragged him back to the gleaming meat hook. They lifted him up, looped the links of the handcuffs over the hook, then let him drop. The cuffs cut into his wrists. Meanwhile, the interrogator had retrieved his knife. The blade caught some of the fluorescent lights in the room. It glistened.

The interrogator approached. Kowalski was hanging high enough so that his nipples were at eye level with the interrogator.

“Let me ask once more for the record,” he said.

“Sure,” Kowalski said.

“Where’s Lucia Black?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes!”

The interrogator moved in with the knife. Predictably, he immediately started trying to spread Kowalski’s legs. Going for the anal cavity. The interrogator gestured to the guards. “Grab a leg, each of you.”

This was going to hurt.

Not the anal cavity.

His mouth.

Specifically, pushing the tooth out of his gumline again.

It was going to really hurt.

The interrogator had been right. Kowalski had been spinning him a line of bullshit, ever since the stuff about the banquet room, after Lucia Black had announced she’d reprogrammed Proximity.

Sadly, that last part was true.

Vanessa had been turned into a walking, talking killing machine.

But what Kowalski hadn’t mentioned was that he’d grabbed Lucia before she could run away.

Vanessa had bolted, yes. She had driven away and inadvertently killed seventeen people. Many of them American tourists. It was not pretty. Kowalski wasn’t going to lie to himself.

He couldn’t imagine the horrors taking place in her mind.

She was still shell-shocked over the adulterers she’d slaughtered.

But instead of searching for Vanessa, Kowalski had attacked the problem at the root. He took Lucia Black and applied his signature move: arm around her neck until she was unconscious.

She woke up an hour later, strapped to a dentist’s chair.

A chair belonging to Kowalski’s Mexican dentist friend, who was just gearing up for a long tequila-fueled night.

Kowalski told him not to worry. He’d take it from here.

First he kissed Lucia. Deeply.

He wanted to get those Proximity-eating nanites into his own system.

Then he settled in for some real work.

Lucia resisted for a while. But by the time Kowalski was finished with the drill, she was not only ready to deactivate the nanites in Vanessa’s bloodstream and tell Kowalski how to repro-gram Proximity from her handheld, but perfectly willing to reveal the formula for Coke as well as the eleven herbs and spices in Kentucky Fried Chicken.

She spilled everything.

Even how her brother used to finger her in secret when they were kids.

Kowalski thanked her, then smothered her with a wet towel. Figured that was doing her a favor. Later, he’d cut off her head, tell them it was her. Vanessa. Their mysterious blonde, now a redhead.

The real Vanessa did call the hotel near dawn, crying and ready to end it all, even though she didn’t have a gun. Kowalski was glad she didn’t remember the grenade launcher in the trunk of the Taurus.

After Kowalski assured her she was safe, and unable to kill anyone else, they met up again. They talked. They made plans. They used Lucia’s handheld device to do a little reprogramming of their own. They figured out a way to end this, for good.

For good, at least for now.

Make them suffer a little in return.

They visited Kowalski’s dentist again, who by this point had mostly sobered up.

“You want me to do what?” he asked.

He was intoxicated enough to do it anyway.

Kowalski finally worked the tooth free, then spat it out.

The interrogator smirked. “Come on now. I haven’t even touched your face.”

Kowalski smiled. Revealing the small trigger mechanism he’d had implanted in his gum. A tiny LED in the middle of the trigger pulsed red.

Blink blink

Blink blink

The trigger would tell Proximity to reprogram the nanites in his bloodstream.

But not to kill at ten feet. Kowalski and Vanessa had discussed that, and decided it wasn’t enough. So they used Lucia’s handheld device to reprogram the distance to, oh, say, quarter of a mile. In all directions.

I’m going to let myself be captured, Kowalski had told her. And then, when Ym sure all of the rats are in one place, and I know what they know … they’re dead. Every last one of them.

The interrogator stared at Kowalski’s mouth, dumbstruck, but at the last moment he seemed to get it. Not everything, of course. Just the idea that yes, Kowalski had indeed outthought them every step of the way. And yes, they were all about to die. Every last one of them.

Kowalski depressed the trigger with his tongue.

“Good-bye,” he said.

The guards dropped first, followed by the interrogator. They were all screaming. Kowalski counted to nine in his mind, and then …

Yeah.

Twin sprays of red.

Then a third.

Kowalski swung his body back and forth until he had enough momentum to hurl himself up and slip the chain from the hook.

He landed on his feet.

First thing he did was walk to a corner and take the most satisfying leak of his life.

Then he checked out the rest of the facility.

There was one guy still alive. He represented the freaky 1 percent who remained uninfected by Proximity.

That was okay.

Kowalski gutted him with the interrogator’s Pampered Chef knife. It really was pretty fucking sharp.

Everyone else was dead.

Fortunately, his brother-in-law wasn’t among them. They must have shipped him off to a different secret prison facility. Or maybe he was already in the field. Wouldn’t surprise him. CI-6 loved to rush things.

Kowalski kept a loose count as he walked through the facility. He was into the low fifties before he stopped. A lot of dead bodies. More than he thought he’d ever see.

And all of them redheads now.

The rest was routine. A burning of the last twelve hours of surveillance video. A gathering of research files. Some borrowed clothes. Weapons. Key cards. Water. Food. The interrogator’s little knife.

Kowalski left the facility. He pushed the trigger in his gum, turning off the killer nanite effect. There was no need anymore.

It was still early morning in Pennsylvania mountain country. The air was bitter cold. Not even the sun was enough to warm you up. A rainstorm had passed through recently, so Kowalski’s borrowed boots sunk into the chilly mud a bit with every step. It felt nice to stretch his muscles like this again. Too much time in planes, in cars, on rooftops. He liked that he had a walk ahead of him.

Kowalski walked and enjoyed the cool air and thought about Vanessa. Thought about how they parted ways.

For good.

I’m not like you, she’d told him. I’m no monster. You can do this. I can’t. I mean, I did for a while. But not anymore.

I want my life back.

That’s when Kowalski kissed her, deeply, giving her what he’d stolen from Lucia. A kiss from the monster Prince Charming.

You’ve got your life back, he said.

Don’t try to find me, she said.

I won’t, he said.

After a few hours of wandering he sat down by the side of a road and opened an oatmeal bar he’d taken from the snackroom.

Yes, even secret government prisons had snackrooms.

Kowalski enjoyed a brown sugar and cinnamon oatmeal bar. It was the first real food he’d eaten in a long while. But a chunk of oat got caught between a tooth and the trigger mechanism. He tried pushing it out with his tongue; nothing doing.

He thought about what he could do with the quarter-mile shield of death that surrounded him. He could find every secret CI-6 prison in the country. He could visit all of the front companies they had, scattered around the globe. He could stop into certain offices in the U.S. Capitol Building. He could kill them all with a flip of the switch. Death with a smile. They could throw everything in the world at him. The National Guard, even. Unless they had a sniper that could work with a quarter-mile accuracy, he was unstoppable.

And maybe he should. Because CI-6 wasn’t going to stop. This facility was just an interrogation room; there were others in the organization who knew. They wouldn’t give up a weapon like Proximity.

Maybe he should keep going until they were all dead.

Kowalski took another bite of the oatmeal bar. Another piece got stuck between his teeth. He pulled out the interrogator’s Pampered Chef knife then used it to dislodge the chunks.

He could still feel it, though. So he kept using the knife, digging at his jaw. There were no mirrors out here in the country. He had to go by feel. The blade against his tender gums. Scraping. Don’t mind me, he thought. I’m just a man sitting in the middle of the Pennsylvania countryside doing a little dental surgery. The brown sugar was gone; his mouth tasted of copper pennies now. But there was still oatmeal in there. So Kowalski kept working. Strangely, as the pain enlarged, his vision grew clearer. Maybe it was the film of tears in his eyes. There was no sound except the occasional chirping of a bird, and his own heavy breathing. It focused him on the task at hand.

Eventually he realized that his chin and stolen shirt were covered in blood.

But the trigger came out, and Kowalski stared at it for a few moments, feeling the cool morning air on his fevered face, before using a rock to smash it to pieces.

Yeah, I’m a monster, he thought.

But not that big of a monster.

He wondered where Vanessa was now.