Time of Attack

CHAPTER 1

Jericho Quinn wished he was on a motorcycle. The mess dress uniform, the tie, the crowds of wedding guests he didn’t know, all left him with the urge to step away for air. He could put on a good face for a short time, socialize, tell polite stories. He was, after all, an officer and a gentleman trained on the very grounds of this hallowed institution. But it didn’t take long before such talk grew thin and he found himself longing for that quiet place inside his helmet — on a long ride. It really didn’t matter where.

Gunnery Sergeant Jacques Thibodaux stepped up beside him, dipping a Marine Corps high-and-tight toward Quinn’s ex-wife’s date. Air Force Captain Gary Lavin strutted around like a peacock, giving advice to anyone who would listen about all on which he was an expert, which, according to him, was everything under the Colorado sun. Kim appeared to agree.

Jericho couldn’t help wincing every time the man opened his mouth.

“You know, ‘Because he needed killin’ ain’t a valid defense in court,” Thibodaux grunted. His voice was steeped in a gumbo-thick Cajun rhythm. Huge shoulders threw Quinn and much of the real estate around him into shadows. A black patch covered an injured eye, courtesy of flying shrapnel from a gunfight in a Bolivian jungle just weeks before.

Both men were OGAs — Other Governmental Agents, detailed from their regular assignments to report directly to the president’s national security advisor. Quinn with Air Force OSI, Jacques from the Marine Corps.

Quinn chuckled. “Whatever. He’s Kim’s business.” He nodded at Thibodaux’s patch to move the subject away from his ex-wife’s love life. “How’s the eye?”

“It is what it is.” Thibodaux shrugged. “Doc says getting my vision back is still touch and go. I don’t really mind, though.” He gave Quinn a sly wink with his good eye. “Camille likes it when I wear the patch to bed. She says it’s like wrestlin’ with a James Bond villain.”

“You’ve been waiting all day to tell me that, haven’t you?” Quinn said.

“Maybe.” The big man laughed. “Speakin’ of wrestling with villains, how’s your baby brother? Is our pretty little Russian friend still takin’ care of him?”

“He’ll be in the hospital for the next week or so.” Quinn’s younger brother, Bo, had been wounded in the same gunfight where Jacques injured his eye. “And yes, the boss worked it out with State so she can stay in the States for a while. But, her allegiance is to mother Russia. She’ll likely slip away someday soon when Bo’s heart is healthy enough to break.”

Prone to fits of pensive philosophy, the big Cajun turned to gaze across the concrete deck at the bride and groom. He shook his head. “Damn women, they get us all, later or sooner. If you’re single, they sneak up at you when you ain’t lookin’ and convince you you’ll just die if you don’t marry ’em. If you are married, then one comes along, sneaks up at you, and does her level best to make you single. They do it just for giggles, I expect.”

Quinn scoffed, looking at the Marine’s raven-haired wife, where she sat on the concrete wall with a blanket across her shoulder, nursing her baby, Henry — which Jacques pronounced closer to Ornery. Somehow, between Thibodaux’s repeated deployments to the Middle East, he’d found the time to father seven sons. Each of the older six now wore a black eye patch to show solidarity for his daddy.

“I don’t know,” Quinn said, “you seem pretty settled.”

“Oh, I am, l’ami.” Jacques gave a somber nod. “And Camille’s pretty good with a knife, if I ever decide I ain’t.”

“So,” Quinn mused, half interested, half placating his friend’s desire to philosophize about females. “You think a woman will be the end of me?”

The Cajun smacked Quinn on the back with a roaring laugh. “You kiddin’ me, beb? You’re here with the hottest jolie fille at the party, meantime you still broodin’ over your ex. You’re damn right it’ll be a woman to bring you down.”

A thousand meters to the west, the sweet hint of peppermint and gun oil hung in a deadly cloud among the shadowed boughs of a thick juniper. Not so tall as to stand out from its surrounding neighbors, the tree stood on a swell of earth across Academy Drive, with a perfect firing lane to the concrete deck in front of the cadet chapel.

A young Japanese woman settled among the branches, her almond eye behind a powerful Leupold scope. Strong legs entwined gnarled limbs, boots against the peeling bark of the trunk. Braced but relaxed, she melded into the lines and shadows of the tree like a leopardess in the relative comfort of her hide. Thick black hair hung across the oval features of her face like a sniper veil, parting to fall around each side of the .338 Lapua rifle. She was still years from thirty, but the flint-hard look in her eyes overshadowed her youthfulness. She’d learned to mask the hardness, but if anyone with discernment looked at her long enough, the age of her experience showed through. Two men had questioned her — each during an intimate moment when she’d let her guard down. She’d answered each in turn with a dagger to the throat.

She was dressed as a tourist, and her green long-sleeve T-shirt and dark jeans were tight enough that anyone from the Security Police would not think to look at anything else. An hour before, she’d batted her eyes at the baby-faced airman as she’d come through the North Gate of the Academy, shoulders relaxed with the full knowledge that if he tried to search her vehicle she’d kill him before he got to the trunk.

Of course, he had smiled and waved her through.

Once on base, she’d parked in the lot at the Academy Visitors Center beside a van belonging to a group of elderly tourists. She’d carried the three pieces of the custom rifle — barrel and action, Kevlar stock, and 3X12 mil-dot scope — in a flowered green case meant for a tennis racket. It was the weekend, and, for all anyone on campus knew, she was a female cadet out to enjoy the warm weather. Once off the trail, the earth tones of her clothing made it easy to disappear into the leafy undergrowth that surrounded the Academy.

If anyone happened on her now that she had the rifle assembled, there would be no doubt as to what she was and what she intended to do. But that would not happen. She was well hidden. Her mission would be over in a matter of moments. She would pull the trigger and then melt into the traffic on Interstate 25 before the echo of the gunshot died against the mountains.

The young woman sucked on the peppermint, letting it click against her teeth as she played the scope’s graduated crosshairs across the wedding party. She let them rest on the gaunt lines of Quinn’s jaw, just forward of his ear. He was handsome enough, with the rugged, predatory look she preferred in her men. The scope was strong enough she could tell that he needed to shave. His movements were smooth, as if every one had been choreographed and practiced many times. It would be such a shame to kill him.

She let the crosshairs drop to settle over his bow tie. From this distance the 250-grain spitzer ballistic-tip bullet would drop enough to hit him center chest. But, it was not yet time for that. She nudged the scope to the left. There were other ways to destroy a man’s heart.

Quinn’s seven-year-old daughter, Mattie, skipped across the concrete deck, rescuing him from further philosophy discussions with Thibodaux. He leaned forward, shoulder locked so she could hang on his forearm and do pull-ups. Despite acting as human jungle gym, the dark blue lines of Quinn’s mess dress uniform were straight and razor creased. His shoulder boards — bearing the silver bars of a captain — his jump wings, and the three rows of miniature service medals on his chest were all perfect. Even the blue satin bow tie remained neat and snug, though he longed to rip the damned thing off and would at the first opportunity. Sometimes he thought he might hate neckties more than he hated terrorists.

The apple of Quinn’s eye, Mattie had the face of her mother but with his dark hair. She’d also been cursed with his boundless energy and lust for adventure. From the time the wedding ceremony ended hardly a moment had gone by before she started begging to carry his ceremonial Air Force saber. He’d been able to calm the little dynamo for the time being with gymnastics and prevent her from hacking away at the guests with the sword.

Kim, Mattie’s mother and Quinn’s ex-wife, looked on with pursed lips, as if she had a bug trapped behind her teeth. It was warm for January in Colorado and a slight breeze tousled her blond hair. She was beautiful when she wasn’t angry, which sadly was seldom the case. Her date didn’t seem to make her happy. He was an Air Force Academy classmate of Quinn’s. It stood to reason she’d end up with the guy. Gary Lavin had been sniffing around her since Quinn had taken her to the ring dance their junior year at USAFA. Apart from being a world-class know-it-all, Lavin was dull as uncooked oatmeal by Quinn’s standards. Maybe that’s what Kim was looking for all along — dullness — some-thing Quinn had never been able to give her.

Jericho couldn’t really blame her for bringing a date. They’d been divorced for years. She could see whoever she wanted to see. He certainly did. Jacques was right. He was with the most beautiful woman at the wedding — a fact that probably had a great deal to do with Kim’s sour expression.

Veronica “Ronnie” Garcia had received permission to take a long weekend break from CIA training at Camp Peary to attend the wedding with him. Of Cuban and Russian descent, she was a tall but rounded woman — as her father had put it, on the athletic side of zaftig. The curves and swells of her coffee-and-cream skin filled her bright yellow dress with a sort of snug innocence, as if she was unaware of how alluring she actually was.

“I think you and your papa could go on like this all day,” Garcia said, laughing an honest, abandoned laugh at Mattie and her pull-ups.

“That we could,” Quinn said. He glanced over his shoulder at the steps leading from the angular white spires of the cadet chapel where Steve and Connie Brun stood in mess-dress tux and radiant white gown for their last few photographs. Other wedding guests, including Major Brett Moore — the B-1 bomber pilot who’d rescued Quinn from the Bolivian jungle just weeks before — mingled at the base of the steps behind the photographer. Some wore civilian clothes, but enough were in uniform to leave no doubt that Connie had entered not only the Brun family, but the United States Air Force family as well. Everyone chatted and laughed, watching the couple in the sunshine. The weather along Colorado’s Front Range had given the bride a perfect wedding gift with unseasonable temperatures in the high fifties.

Quinn was glad for the warmth but wished they would hurry with the photos so he could go somewhere and get rid of his tie.

Kim took a step closer, clearing her throat the way she did when she was about to lay down one of her immutable laws. For a small woman, she could pronounce edicts like Queen Victoria.

“You’re rumpling your clothes, Mattie.” She put a hand out to take the little girl by the arm. “Come on. Let’s get you straightened up.” Both wore soft, robin’s-egg blue dresses that reminded Quinn of photos from all the Easters he’d missed.

Ronnie sidled up to pull on the ends of Quinn’s bow tie while Kim helped Mattie with the sash on her dress. Gary Lavin stood by, fidgeting. He’d chased away all the guests and could find no more victims to share in his vast knowledge.

Thibodaux sauntered back up with two of his seven boys, complete with their eye patches, swinging on a massive arm.

“Y’all go play with your brothers.” He shook them off, grinning at Quinn. “Hey, l’ami,” he said in an easy Louisiana drawl. “I’ll deny it if you quote me to another Marine, but you Chair Force boys manage to be pretty STRAC here at the Wild Blue U.”

Ronnie Garcia nodded, fluttering thick lashes that shone in the light like a hummingbird’s wing. She ran the tip of a long finger over Quinn’s shoulder boards. “Strategic, Tough, and Ready Around the Clock, that’s Jericho.”

“Is that what STRAC stands for?” Thibodaux snorted. He kept his voice low so Mattie couldn’t hear him. “I thought it meant Shit, The Russians Are Comin’…”

The Japanese woman behind the rifle was tempted to shoot the big Cajun in his good eye. He was Quinn’s friend, so his death would suit the purposes of her employer nicely. On the other hand, the new bride made a tempting target, fairly glowing in her white dress under the midwinter sun. A splash of red might make for a nice complement.

The woman swung the rifle a fraction of an inch. Perhaps the ex-wife. All reports indicated Quinn still worshipped the woman, though she would have little to do with him. That fact alone made her a less than desirable choice. Such a woman was better left alive to add to his misery.

The crosshairs hovered over Garcia — beautiful Veronica, with her curvy hips and full breasts. Her body alone was enough to make her a target. The sniper allowed herself the hint of a smile. I ought to send you a bullet, she thought. If only to get you out of the way. It would be a favor to all others of our sex. But no, that was not quite right, either. She and Quinn were a couple, but girlfriends came and went. Garcia’s death might not cause the magnitude of emotion that was needed…

She’d saved the most likely for last.

Godlike, the sniper watched little Mattie swing on her papa’s outstretched arm. There was an undeniable bond between a father and his precious daughter. The woman holding the rifle knew that from experience. Her own father had taught her how to kill a man when she was much younger than Mattie Quinn.

Target acquired, she took note of a light crosswind coming from her left, estimating it at less than five knots. She adjusted her windage and elevation for the drift and drop that would affect the 250-grain bullet during its quick journey of 3,900 feet. She parked the peppermint next to her back teeth and slowed her breathing — allowing her mind to clear. Buddhists called it mu-shin or no thought. Inhaling slowly, she released half, then held it. The picture in the scope came into crisp focus. All else around her fell away.

Jericho Quinn and his precious little girl threw their heads back in laughter as the trigger broke with a crisp snap. The powerful rifle bucked in the woman’s hands. Quinn would live for a few hours more, but in the space of his next heartbeat, he would be done with such laughter forever.

CHAPTER 2

“It really is time to go,” Kim said, her voice an exasperated sigh.

Mattie gathered the hem of her dress for another giant leap into her father’s arms.

“Listen to Mom, kiddo,” Quinn said, his arms still outstretched, ready for Mattie’s last leap. “I’ll see you back at the hotel.”

Kim moved closer, ready to snatch her out of the air in midjump. “Guess I have to be the bad guy—”

Quinn heard the crack of a supersonic bullet as it hissed past. He was all too familiar with the downrange pop of gunfire. Time seemed to unhinge and slow as if he were moving through life a half step faster than everyone around him. Voices, screams, the sound of running footsteps became muffled and low.

A lock of his daughter’s dark ponytail lay on the concrete walk at his feet, neatly clipped by the passing bullet while she clung to his neck.

Forcing himself to exhale, Quinn grabbed Mattie by the face with both hands, scanning her for wounds. He was rougher than he should have been. Startled, she began to cry but was otherwise fine. He shot a quick glance over his shoulder at Garcia, who nodded immediately that she was unharmed. Behind her and nearer the steps, Steve Brun had his new bride and everyone around them moving toward the opposite side of the chapel, out of the line of fire. An Air Force Special Operator like Quinn, Steve knew the drill.

Thibodaux was also well accustomed to the unique sound of bullets flying in his direction and shooed his wife and boys toward the relative safety of the cadet chapel’s lower level.

The distant pop of a rifle moaned in on the breeze, and Quinn made a subconscious mental note of the time between the bullet’s passing and the report.

He handed Mattie off to Garcia, shouting for them both to run toward the stairs as he reached for Kim’s hand. She’d dropped at the shot and lay blinking up at him as if dumbfounded. Gary Lavin stood over her, staring cow-like, still with no idea what all the fuss was about.

Quinn tried to pull Kim to her feet but she resisted.

“Jericho…” Her face had gone pale.

Quinn’s breath caught hard in his throat when he realized her leg was bent at an impossible angle, crooked at midthigh. A crimson stain crept from beneath the perfect blue fabric of her dress, blossoming against the concrete beneath her.

“Oh… Jer…” The words caught in her throat, strangled. “I’m… shot…”

Lavin offered all the help of a blank stare.

Fearful of a follow-up attack, Quinn scooped Kim up in his arms to run toward the chapel. He kept her leg as immobile as he could to keep from causing further damage, but the most important thing was to move to cover. She was so much lighter than he remembered. Blood soaked his white shirt from bow tie to cummerbund by the time they reached the cover of the concrete buttresses surrounding the lower chapel. Kim’s head and shoulders shook from fear and shock.

Thibodaux had drawn his pistol and stood at the end of the lower walkway outside the chapel, alert for secondary threats. He subscribed to Quinn’s motto of See One, Think Two.

Camille Thibodaux adopted Mattie into her little clan for the moment, shielding her along with all her boys.

Major Brett Moore called base security with his calm, pilot-in-command voice to let them know about the attack and to get an ambulance rolling. Claxons sounded seconds later, warning USAFA cadets to shelter in place or move into the nearest building if they happened to be outside.

“I need your help here,” Quinn said to Garcia, forcing himself to stay calm, though he felt as if his heart was about to explode.

She nodded, returning a small Kahr pistol to the holster suspended below her bra. She knelt on the concrete and pressed the palm of her hand where Quinn directed, high on Kim’s thigh, next to her groin, putting pressure on the femoral artery.

Pushing back a rising panic, Quinn peeled off his uniform waistcoat and stuffed it under Kim’s legs. She moaned, her head falling to one side on the cold concrete walk.

“Her pulse is over the top,” Garcia whispered.

“Stay with me, Kimmie.” Quinn yanked up the hem of her dress, tracing the arcing fountain of blood back to its source midway up her thigh. The entry wound was relatively small, roughly the size of his thumb, but high-speed bullets are made to tumble when they hit bone, and this one had done its job perfectly. Striking Kim’s femur roughly four inches above the knee, it had bounced end over end in an upward line, literally mowing away bone and muscle. Much of her thigh was an unrecognizable piece of burger.

Fumbling through blood, bone, and flesh, Quinn pushed the fact that he was working on his high school sweetheart out of his mind. The femoral artery was fairly easy to locate. It was the diameter of a wooden pencil and arcing fountains of blood at each pulse of Kim’s weakening heart. But getting a hold on it amid the mess of snot-slick gore so he could stop the bleeding was another matter entirely. Had it been completely severed, she might have bled out before he’d gotten her to cover. Even nicked as it was, her life expectancy could be measured in seconds.

Quinn moved Ronnie’s hand down to the wound and used a wadded piece of Kim’s dress to apply direct pressure over the bleeder. He yanked off his tie with bloody hands and ripped away his shirt. Using his teeth, he tore away a long strip of cloth to use as a tourniquet, smearing his face in red during the process. Field medicine was a grisly business. Looping the cloth around her thigh, he pulled it snug well above the wound, remembering the tactical medic’s mantra High or Die.

Kim gave a rattling cough. Wincing. Pain had finally worked its way through the initial shock. “You’re welcome.” She forced a grin, peering at him through dazed eyes. “You’ve wanted to get out of that tie all day.”

“Good girl,” Jericho said. His heart was a stone in his throat. “Keep talking to me.” He pulled the cloth tight, knotting it, and then glanced at Lavin, who stood over them wringing his hands.

“Get me a stick or something to tighten this.”

Lavin looked up and down the concrete walkway but didn’t move. “I… I don’t see any sticks.”

Quinn spied a cheap fountain pen in the man’s breast pocket and stood long enough to snatch it away. Lavin flinched, apparently thinking Quinn had meant to hit him.

Using the pen as a windlass, Quinn twisted the tourniquet as tight as he dared before tucking it under the knot to hold in place. He cursed for not having the pocket trauma kit he carried with him ninety-nine percent of the time. The trim lines of the mess dress tuxedo left him little room to conceal a pistol, let alone the wallet of QuickClot and bandages. Out of habit, he noted the time he’d applied the tourniquet.

Ronnie stayed where she was, leaning over Kim with both hands pressing the blood-soaked cloth into the wound cavity.

Brett Moore’s comforting voice came from behind him.

“Ambulance is three minutes out,” he said, taking off his jacket and motioning to Lavin to do the same so Quinn could use them as blankets for Kim, who now shook uncontrollably.

Three minutes. Quinn’s eyes flashed up at Moore. He wondered if she had that long.

“No more shots,” Moore offered. “That’s good.”

“Jer,” Kim moaned, licking her lips. “You would not believe how thirsty I am…”

Quinn put two fingers to her neck. Her pulse was rapid and shallow as her heart struggled to send what blood she had left to her brain.

Steve Brun trotted up with his wife. They’d been on the other side of the cadet chapel when the sniper fired, and it had taken them a few moments to find out Kim was a casualty. Steve had continued as a Combat Rescue Officer, or CRO, after Quinn had moved on to OSI. Connie was an ER nurse. It was natural for them to come running when they found out Kim was wounded, no matter the danger.

Connie smoothed the skirts of her wedding gown beneath her knees and knelt next to Quinn while Steve made his way to the opposite side.

“Should I move?” Ronnie asked. A line of blood ran down her chin.

“No, sweetie,” Connie said, calm as if she was up to her elbows in bloody messes every day. “Go ahead and keep that pressure on for now.” She touched the knotted cloth squeezing the flesh of Kim’s thigh. “Tourniquet looks good,” she said, seemingly oblivious to the red line wicking up the white taffeta of her dress as she assessed the wound. It was good to have friends that didn’t run off screaming at the sight of such trauma.

She put a hand to Kim’s neck, feeling for a pulse. Avoiding Quinn’s eyes, she looked at her husband with a flash of pity.

Kim coughed again, weaker now. “Mattie…”

Quinn patted the back of her hand, nodding back tears.

Veins in his neck knotted in anger and sorrow. “You’re going to be fine.” The words caught hard in his throat. “Just hang on. The ambulance will be here in a few seconds.”

Kim’s eyes fluttered. She seemed to gather herself up, focusing all the will she had left on this single demand. “Let me talk to Mattie.” Her head fell back against the folded uniforms with an audible thud. Her breathing slowed.

Quinn waved at Camille, who watched from halfway down the chapel walkway. The Thibodaux boys and Mattie were gathered around her like a brood of chicks. Mattie broke away as if released from the starting block. She was young, but even at the tender age of seven she had a tougher constitution than many men Quinn knew.

She knelt beside her mother without an apparent second thought over all the blood. Kim kissed her cheek, straining to whisper something in her ear. Mattie nodded. Tears dripped down on her mother’s face.

Across Academy Drive, the young Japanese woman had settled back into position quickly after the concussion of the shot. She flicked at the peppermint with the tip of her tongue as she watched Quinn’s ex-wife collapse through the reticle of her scope. She shrugged. That was the way of things. Much could happen in the 1.3 seconds it took for the 250-grain bullet to travel from the muzzle to its intended target. She’d heard accounts of birds flying into the path of oncoming projectiles, of strange winds, and targets bending to tie their shoe or pick a flower at exactly the right moment to prolong their miserable lives.

It did not matter that Kimberly Quinn was not her original objective. The choice had been left up to her, so no one need ever know. The death of his ex-wife would move Quinn in the direction he needed to go. That’s what was important.

While Quinn and his friends flapped around like headless geese, the sniper was already on the move. She left the rifle resting in the crook of the tree. Though not the most common caliber, 338 Lapua rifles were well known in the community of professional shooters. Trying to trace this one would send the authorities down a dozen different rabbit trails. The serial numbers had been removed and the woman had taken great care to see there was nothing that could be used to obtain her fingerprints or DNA. They would think the rifle was a grand evidence coup and waste time comparing ballistics to hundreds of other shootings in FBI and Interpol databases. In truth, the rifle’s maiden voyage had been this one. While the authorities racked their brains for a connection to other crimes, the woman who pulled the trigger would melt back into the black mist from which she had emerged.

Dropping lithely from the branches of the juniper, she brushed off her hands and took one last look at her surroundings to be sure she hadn’t left anything unintentional behind. A group of German couples touring the Academy met her on the paved trail when she stepped out of the brush. It couldn’t be helped. None of them were under sixty. If they were questioned, they would describe her as a cute little Asian girl, out for a walk in the woods.

Two minutes later saw her at the North Gate. She threw a wide smile at the security police officer, who waved her on as he tried to decipher all the traffic on his radio.

She crossed the bridge over Interstate 25, then turned north, toward the Denver airport. There was a certain liquid nature to things such as this. She would have to hurry if she wanted to stay ahead of the torrent without getting washed away.

Three uniformed paramedics hustled down the steps with a folded stretcher. Heavy boots echoed off the concrete tunnel, but they looked like angels backlit by the bright sunlight at the mouth of the stairs.

Only then did Ronnie and Quinn step back.

Quinn held Mattie’s hand while Ronnie knelt beside the sobbing child. Camille swooped in and took the little girl in strong arms.

“I’ve got this one,” she whispered to Jericho. “Don’t you worry about her.”

The lead paramedic, grim-faced and quiet, used a plastic injection gun to insert a thick needle into the bone below the knee on Kim’s good leg. Once he had the needle set, he started IO fluids while the others strapped Kim to the expanded stretcher. None of them smiled.

Quinn trotted up the steps beside the rescue personnel, holding Kim’s hand. Her skin was cold now, her fingers slack. A red stain soaked the sheet at the site of her wound, but her chest still rose and fell. Quinn focused on that.

Thibodaux, Garcia, and the Bruns surrounded them in a mobile perimeter, eyes scanning the surrounding buildings and rolling hills.

Panting with emotion, Quinn held up his hand, knifelike, and pointed across Academy Drive while the paramedics got Kim situated in the waiting ambulance.

His voice was frayed with despair. He needed something to do, anything besides thinking about Kim’s chances. He’d seen too many wounds like this.

“Jacques,” he said. “Let the SPs know the shot came from over there. I’d say less than fifteen hundred meters from the sound of the report. I want to know when they find anything.”

“You got it, l’ami,” the big Cajun said.

Garcia touched his shoulder, letting her fingers slide off slowly. “You go take care of her. We’ll check it out over there.”

“We’re ready to go, sir.” A burley paramedic with slicked black hair waved Quinn inside. “It’s a good idea if you ride along.”

Quinn looked out the window of the ambulance as they pulled away, watching the thick line of cedar trees on the hills across Academy Drive. He ground his teeth. The trauma of working on Kim had knocked his tactics for a loop.

He pulled the cell phone from his pocket and pushed Thibodaux’s number.

The big Cajun picked up immediately. “Talk to me, beb.”

“It’s only been minutes, Jacques,” Quinn said. “There’s a good chance the shooter hasn’t made it off the campus.”

“Way ahead of you,” the Cajun said. “Security Police just arrived. They’re lockin’ down the gates as we speak.”

Quinn hung up, torn between the urge to run down the person who’d shot Kim and the responsibility to stay by her side. He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. Her eyes were closed and the oxygen mask covered her face, but he felt her give him a weak squeeze in return.

“Dammit!” The heavyset paramedic watching the monitor wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of an arm.

“What?” Quinn held his breath.

Kim’s hand fell away.

CHAPTER 3

Rick Bedford’s eyes snapped open. He groaned and smacked his lips, trying to figure out where he was. The sheets were soft and free of dirt, and the room was a comfortable temperature — sensations he found completely foreign to recent experience. It took a few seconds for reality to seep back into his addled brain and bring the realization that there was a naked woman clinging to him under those soft sheets.

He sighed, letting his body relax again. The smell of his bride so close now after such a long absence was balm for his wounded soul.

His arm tingled from the weight of her head on his shoulder. Muscles cramped in his leg where her thigh draped across his, damp, sweating from skin-to-skin contact. He didn’t care and would have happily drifted back to blissful sleep. Still, he didn’t want to have his arm amputated.

“Sorry,” he whispered, lifting Marta’s hand. He sighed again as her body slid away from his.

“It’s all right.” From the sound of her voice, Bedford could tell she’d been awake for some time — probably never even gone to sleep. “The girls will be home from Kendra’s anytime now.” She smiled, hair mussed from the nap — and other things. “They’re pretty smart teenagers, so I should have a shower before they get home.”

“I’ve been gone the better part of a year.” Rick laughed. “If they’re all that smart, having a shower won’t hide much from them.”

Marta batted her eyes. A sure sign that she wanted him to stay in bed a few minutes longer.

“I hired a new girl at work,” she said.

“Do I know her?” Bedford asked, as much to hear his wife’s voice as to learn about any new employee. He’d never really thought about it, but these little “afterward” talks were something he’d missed.

“Not unless you’ve had a pedicure in China.” Marta yawned. She threw her arms above her head in a shuddering stretch. “She just arrived in the U.S. and needed a job. Her name’s Haifa.”

“Haifa doesn’t sound Chinese.” Bedford took a long look at his wife across the pillow. He had to pee but couldn’t quite bring himself to leave her.

“She’s something else besides Chinese.” Marta shrugged. “Anyway, customers are eating up these pedicures. You should try one.”

“I thought you warned me about letting foreign women touch my feet.” Bedford swung his feet to the floor, wincing as his hip brushed across the sheets. Naked, he craned his neck to try to see what was causing him so much pain. “Whew!” he gasped, swaying like he might pass out as he moved to the closet mirror. It felt as if something had stung him right above his tailbone. “Take a look at this, sweetie. I can’t really see what it is.” He flipped on the overhead light, then turned so Marta, too, could see.

She sat up in bed, letting the sheets slide off.

“Oh, my heck, Richard.” She whispered the strongest language that ever came out of her mouth. “That’s the biggest boil I’ve ever seen. You should have Doctor Todd take a look at it.”

“Hmmm,” Bedford said, still craning to look for himself. “First you want some Chinese woman to touch my feet and now you want the man that married your sister to check out my butt.”

“This is serious, Rick.” Marta put on her best pouty face. “Abraham Lincoln’s son died from a boil.”

“It was his grandson,” Bedford corrected. “And the poor kid died from complications after doctors lanced his boil — which is exactly what your cutthroat brother-in-law will do if I go to see him.”

“You can’t see it, but I can,” Marta said. “I’m making you an appointment for tomorrow morning.” She pooched out her bottom lip as a sign that any further argument would be futile.

“Okay, okay,” he said, hobbling to the bathroom, appalled that he was beginning to move like his dairyman father. He cleared his throat to hide a cough. “Set it up. This is probably just all the crap I absorbed in Afghanistan working its way out of my system.”

He coughed again. This time it was a rattling, phlegm-filled cough that he was unable to hide. Maybe a visit to the doc wasn’t such a bad idea.

CHAPTER 4

Kim’s heart stopped twice on the frantic ride between the Academy and the hospital. The paramedic at the wheel of the ambulance bypassed the closer St. Francis in favor of the Level II trauma center at Penrose Hospital just off I-25, south of the Academy. By the time they crashed through the ER doors with her strapped to the gurney, Kim had lost roughly a third of the blood in her body.

Emergency room staff had pushed her straight through to surgery. Quinn found himself scraped off as she went through the stark double doors. He couldn’t help wondering if that was the last look he’d ever have of her, covered with bloody sheets and surrounded by stone-faced medical personnel.

She’d been in there for hours and Quinn had yet to bring himself to sit down. Instead, he paced, staring out the windows and beating himself up, oblivious to the fact that he wore only his dress blue slacks and a blood-soaked T-shirt that made him look like he’d been on the receiving end of a messy appendectomy. He could focus on nothing.

An orderly brought him a towel, and Quinn did the best he could to wipe Kim’s blood off his hands and face. There was little he could do about the sodden T-shirt.

At the far end of the room, a young couple huddled together under the buzzing television, waiting for their child to get out of some procedure. The woman shot furtive glances at Quinn and whispered repeatedly to her husband. After a short time, the man walked slowly toward Quinn.

Breathing heavily, with no intention of getting into a long conversation over his present circumstances, Quinn wheeled with the beginnings of a snarling grimace.

The man stopped, then held out his jacket on tentative hands. “Here,” he said simply. “Take this. You need it more than I do.”

Quinn forced a half smile as he accepted the fleece. No matter how much he’d scrubbed with the towel, Kim’s blood still rimmed his fingernails and stained the back of his hands.

“Thank you,” he said.

“No worries,” the man said over his shoulder, already retreating toward the safety of his wife.

Quinn shrugged on the jacket and zipped it up to cover the blood. He was thankful that he’d met one of the rare, decent people in the world who didn’t feel compelled to dish out advice. He looked up at the sound of a chime. Measured relief washed over him as Thibodaux and Ronnie got off the elevator with two men. OSI was a relatively small organization, especially when it came to officers. Quinn knew the detachment commander at the Academy but wasn’t familiar with either of these agents. One, an African American man in his mid-twenties, wore 5.11 khakis, a blue OSI polo, and a light cotton jacket. The other, older by a decade, had a blond goatee and wore pressed jeans. The senior man’s sport coat was tailored too close to hide the fact that he was wearing a pistol on his left side.

Garcia snaked her arm around Quinn, oblivious to the blood. They’d all been close enough to the action that each looked as though someone had taken a red paintbrush to their clothes. The stains stood out starkly against Garcia’s bright yellow dress. She snuggled next to Quinn, offering physical and moral support. He returned the gesture, arm around her waist, hand on the swell of her hip, to draw her even closer. Thibodaux raised the brow over his functional eye. Like a good partner, he said nothing, waiting instead for Quinn to fill them in about Kim’s condition on his own time.

The African American agent extended his hand. He looked fresh out of the OSI Basic in Glynco. “Mr. Quinn,” he said, shaking Jericho’s hand. The formal title of Mister when addressing an agent who was an officer allowed OSI personnel, whether they were enlisted, officers, or civilian, to leave everyone’s rank a mystery in the event their investigation led them to question a superior. “I’m Special Agent Torrance, Field Investigations Squadron here at the Academy. This is—”

“Mike DeKirk, FBI,” the agent in the sport coat said, cutting him off. He had a strong Texas accent, which put a frown on Thibodaux’s face as soon as he heard it. Texans had a way of ruffling the Cajun’s feathers.

Jericho shook their hands. “Thanks for coming so fast.” He glanced up at Thibodaux, filling him in. “They’ve had her in surgery for a while now. I’m still not sure what’s going on. Is Camille still okay to watch Mattie?”

“No worries, l’ami,” the Cajun said. “She can drop off the boys with the Bruns and bring Mattie over when you give the word.”

Jericho nodded. “I’m sure Kim will want to see her as soon as she wakes up.” If she wakes up… He pushed the thought out of his mind.

DeKirk cleared his throat. “I hate to interrupt, but as you know, time is of the essence in these cases. Is there anything you can tell us that might help find who did this?”

Quinn took a deep breath, started to say something, then changed his mind. “I really wish I could.”

“Nothing at all?” DeKirk pressed — as any good investigator would. “Does your wife have anyone that might want to hurt her?”

Quinn shook his head.

“I know it’s difficult,” DeKirk shrugged. “But I need you to think. Anyone at all, jealous boyfriends — maybe any of your old girlfriends—”

Agent Torrance shook his head. “Might not be the best time to worry with that,” he said, nudging DeKirk.

“And how about you, Mr. Quinn?” DeKirk said. For some reason, Mister sounded much less polite when it came from the FBI agent’s mouth. “You have any enemies?”

“I’m sure I have a few,” Quinn said.

“Care to go into any detail?” DeKirk shrugged. “This shooter was a professional. You need to tell me what you know.”

“Listen,” Quinn said evenly, keeping his voice low so the young couple across the room couldn’t hear. “I know you’re just doing your job, DeKirk. Believe me, I want to catch whoever did this worse than you—”

“Do you, Quinn?” DeKirk’s eyes narrowed. “Because it seems like you’re holding something back. It looks to me like you don’t give a shit if your ex-wife’s shooter gets away.”

Quinn took a deep breath, held it, gritting his teeth. Ronnie touched his arm, surely feeling he was about to explode.

“Come on.” Agent Torrance put up a hand again. “This isn’t the time or place.”

DeKirk glared at the young agent. “Don’t tell me about time and place.”

Thibodaux took a half step forward, closing on DeKirk with his intimidating height. “We all get the good cop bad cop thing,” he said, voice flat. “But you press this now, while it’s still touch and go with Kim’s surgery, and it’ll be good cop, flat-on-his-ass cop.”

Quinn counted to ten before speaking.

“I will tell you everything I know, but I’ll have to get you cleared first. Then I’ll need everything you have on this.”

“Not the way it works, Quinn,” DeKirk said, dispensing with the Mister. “You know that. In situations of terrorism, the Bureau has the ball. Somebody shot your ex. I feel for you, I honestly do, but you’re way too close to this. OSI can do a joint investigation if they want, but I seriously doubt your command will let you be part of it. Now calm down and tell me what you know.”

Quinn’s nostrils flared. The man was only doing his job. And yet Quinn felt the pressing need to hit someone, so it might as well be DeKirk.

Thibodaux snatched up a Sports Afield magazine from the lobby chair and borrowed a pen from Agent Torrance. Scrawling something quickly on the back cover, he held it up toward the FBI agent in a hand the size of a pie pan, trying to mediate. “Little suggestion here, DeKirk, why don’t you get ahold of your boss’s boss’s boss and have him give this number a call. They will verify that you should cooperate with us. That way, we won’t all have to pee on everything to mark our territory.” The big Marine gave a smug grin. “How ’bout that?”

“Whose number is this?” DeKirk eyed the magazine.

Thibodaux shrugged. “Ask your boss.”

“I thought you were just Air Force OSI,” DeKirk scoffed.

“I am,” Quinn said.

Fuming, the agent whipped out his cell phone as if it were a weapon. He ripped the back page off the magazine and stepped away to make his call just as a tall man in green hospital scrubs walked through the double doors from surgery.

He wore a black cloth surgeon’s cap imprinted with red chili peppers. A mask hung around his neck and paper booties from the OR still covered his shoes.

Quinn felt his heart in his throat when the surgeon smiled a noncommittal smile. It was closemouthed, but hopeful — certainly not the smile of someone with horrific news.

Ronnie Garcia reached to take Quinn’s hand in hers, squeezing it tight.

“She’s stable,” the doctor said. “It’ll be a few minutes before they get her settled in recovery. She’ll be groggy but you can see her.”

Relief and guilt washed over Quinn. “Thank you, Doctor,” he said.

“There are some issues we need to discuss.” The surgeon folded long fingers together at his lap. “She lost a lot of blood.” His eyes shot sideways, almost imperceptibly. It was just for a moment, but Quinn saw it and braced himself for what was about to come next.

“The bullet was moving extremely fast when it hit her,” the surgeon continued. “There was a massive amount of hydrostatic damage to the nerves and surrounding tissue. Rounds like this tend to tumble.” He shook his head as if recalling the damage — impassive, clinical. “We tried our best, but there was no way to save her leg.”

Quinn’s mouth hung open, stunned. He nodded stupidly but said nothing. What could he say? Kim’s nightmares for him had now fallen on her.

“If it helps,” the surgeon went on, his voice calm and earnest without a hint of condescension, “I’m an old Air Force surgeon and I’ve seen hundreds of wounds like this one. I could have had an OR table set up right beside her when she was shot and we still wouldn’t have been able to save that leg.”

He put a hand on Quinn’s shoulder. “Son, you had about three minutes out there to keep her from bleeding to death. You did a hell of a job. I’ll get her set up with a good rehab and prosthetics guy, a friend of mine. He can work miracles.”

Special Agent Torrance cleared his throat as the surgeon walked away. DeKirk stood next to him, seething like a smoldering coal. Apparently the phone call had done the trick, but he wasn’t happy about it.

Agent Torrance spoke first. “We don’t have much yet, sir, but you get all we have.”

Quinn said nothing. The last thing he wanted to do was turn this into a turf war.

“The shooter abandoned the rifle in a tree that looks like the shooting platform,” Torrance went on. “A heavy-barreled Remington 700 MLR in .338 Lapua.”

“Hmmm.” Quinn mulled the information over. It was no wonder Kim had lost her leg. MLR stood for Medium Long Range rifle. The .338 Lapua had been purpose-built as a sniper round, capable of sending a 250-grain bullet downrange at a thousand meters per second.

“Looks to have some custom work done on it,” the young OSI agent said. “But nothing outside the realm of what a neighborhood gunsmith could do.”

“I’m sure you won’t find any prints,” Quinn said. “It takes a professional to make a shot like that.”

“My thoughts exactly,” DeKirk said, finally calm enough to join the conversation. “We interviewed a bunch of German tourists at the Visitors Center who said they saw an Asian woman walk down the trail from the woods near where we found the sniper rifle. They describe her as small but strong looking, maybe in her mid-twenties. One guy said she had”—he consulted his notebook—“den bösen Blick.”

Torrance nodded. “I did a Google search. It means ‘evil eye.’ Anyway, a quick review of the security tapes looks like she knew where the cameras were. We have her walking down the trail and through the Visitors Center lot, but she never lets us get a view of her face. She must have parked in a spot without a camera, because we lose track of her after that.”

“What about cameras at the exits?” Quinn asked.

Torrance smiled. “That’s where we got something. Seven minutes after Major Moore called in the shooting, a white Hyundai Santa Fe left through the North Gate with an Asian female behind the wheel. She had a ball cap pulled down low so we didn’t get much of a shot of her face, but the LP comes back to a rental company out of Colorado Springs. The clerk there says it was rented by someone named”—he consulted his notes—“Roku Yamamoto.”

“Hmmph.” Thibodaux scoffed. “That’s fittin’. Isoroku Yamamoto planned the attack on Pearl Harbor.”

“Anyway,” DeKirk said, unimpressed by the Cajun’s knowledge of history. “I put a BOLO out on the car. I have Colorado State Patrol scouring the highways north and south of here. Denver and Cheyenne airports are on alert as well. But I gotta tell you, trying to locate someone when our only description is ‘Asian female’ gives us pretty grim odds.” He narrowed his eyes at Quinn. “So, what I really hope is that you can give me something else to go on. You know of any Japanese women who’d want to hurt you?”

Quinn shook his head. “No,” he said honestly, but stopped there.

“Look,” DeKirk forced a tight smile. “Believe me, I understand the whole ‘need to know’ thing. Hell, I’m with the FBI. The Bureau practically invented the shutout. But I’m not one of the counterintel spooks. Someone attempts to assassinate a civilian on a military installation, so it falls to me to investigate. I happen to be a damn good investigator — and all I want to do is catch this person. Here’s my card. If you find yourself in a spot where you can help me do it, give me a call. Otherwise… these guys can fill you in on the damn little we know.” He shrugged. “I hope your ex gets better soon.”

Torrance gave Quinn his card as well, noting his cell number written on the back. “Call if you need anything, sir. I’ll have my reports in I2MS today, so you’ll have access to everything I do.”

Quinn shook hands with both men. They were just doing their jobs. DeKirk, keeping up the FBI tradition of trying to run the entire show, and Torrance, the dutiful subordinate.

Quinn turned to Garcia and Thibodaux after the elevator doors closed on the other two agents. The Marine’s dark uniform hid most of his stains, but Garcia’s sunshine yellow dress showed broad swatches of red, like a Jackson Pollock painting.

Quinn closed his eyes, trying to gather his thoughts. “What else did you see out there?”

“No tracks good enough to follow,” Thibodaux said, shooting a glance at Garcia. “The kid here noticed something, though.”

“It’s probably nothing.” Ronnie shrugged. “But I could have sworn I smelled peppermint around the tree where the shooter left the rifle.”

“Peppermint,” Quinn mused, making a mental note. “Sucking on a breath mint’s not like a professional assassin. .”

Thibodaux’s eyebrow crawled above his black patch. “Maybe she was aimin’ at you and missed. That ain’t very professional.”

Quinn’s head spun at a sudden realization, remembering how Mattie jumped just before Kim fell, how her ponytail had been neatly clipped away by the bullet. “The shot wasn’t for Kim. It was for Mattie.” Quinn reached in the pocket of his uniform slacks and pulled out the lock of dark hair. He swayed on his feet, dizzy, letting adrenaline overwhelm him for the first time since the attack. He fell back, collapsing in one of the waiting-room chairs.

Ronnie sat beside him. Strong thigh pressed alongside his, she stroked the back of his hand.

Thibodaux hunkered down in front of him so they were face-to-face. “Who would do that? Who’s out there that would kill your little girl but leave you alive?”

Quinn sat very still, remembering his confrontation with a handful of Japanese punks while he’d been following Hartman Drake. A plan began to form in his mind. With every breath, his strength and resolve returned. At length he stood, letting Garcia’s hand slide away.

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “But the Speaker of the House will. I’ve been wanting to talk to him for some time now.”

“What are you thinking, l’ami?” Thibodaux stood as well.

“I’m going to call Palmer and find out where Hartman Drake is, then I’ll book the first flight there after I get Kim settled.”

“We’ll come with.” Thibodaux gave a somber nod. “You better change clothes first. You look like you been choppin’ off zombie heads.”

“It’s better if I do this alone.”

“The hell you say.” Thibodaux frowned. “You were half a breath away from ripping that FBI guy’s head off — and, it pains me to say it, but he’s one of us. The way you’re feelin’, ain’t nobody gonna blame you for showing some emotion. But the last thing you ought to do is go in by yourself. You need a wingman.” He looked at Garcia. “And woman.”

“This is liable to be bad,” Quinn said. “I can’t risk getting you two involved.”

“For a guy who speaks umpteen languages you can be pretty dense, Chair Force. It’s because things might get bad that you need us along.”

“No,” Quinn said.

He took a tight breath through his nose, staring into space. In defensive tactics they called it a thousand-yard stare. It was almost always the precursor to a fight.

“Okay.” Jacques threw up his hands. “I’ve seen that look before. You get like this and you can’t even get out of your own way. There’s no arguing with you. Even if I happen to be right and you happen to know it…”

A redheaded nurse with a soft smile and a voice to match came in to tell them Kim was awake enough for Jericho to see her. He followed her through the swinging doors.

Left behind, Ronnie Garcia’s heart tightened as if gripped by a fist. She found it difficult to draw a full breath as Quinn disappeared through the double doors toward the recovery room. She cursed herself for what she was thinking — blaming Kim for getting shot and ruining a perfectly good weekend. Garcia knew it was moronic to wish that she had been the one to take the bullet so Quinn would be worried about her instead. But that was the way her mind worked. Love sucked.

She turned to Thibodaux, who’d become a great confidant. His jaw was still set from the run-in with Jericho. He was right to be upset, too. Quinn was out of his head with worry and guilt, but too bullheaded to accept help, even from his closest friends. For all his gruff, gunnery sergeant exterior, Thibodaux had a wife and flock of small boys who made certain he kept a nurturing side alive.

“You know,” Ronnie whispered, “right after the wedding, Kim swore to me she would fight to get Jericho back.”

“That’s weird,” Thibodaux said, raising his good eye and nodding slowly as if he knew it was not weird at all. “I thought she wanted to be shed of him and his danger-man lifestyle for good. Maybe this latest little fais do do will clinch her mind.”

“It’ll clinch her mind all right.” Ronnie sniffed, feeling a good cry coming on. “And Jericho’s, too.” She breathed through her mouth in a vain attempt to hold back tears. Her Cuban accent came on stronger when she got emotional. “Oh, Jacques, you know this is probably the one and only thing she could do that would get him to choose her over me. She’ll need him. There’s no way he can resist that.”

Thibodaux put a hand on her shoulder and drew her into his chest, dwarfing her in a big, brotherly squeeze. “He’s acting the stupid SOB right now, cher,” he said. “But let’s have a little faith in our man Jericho. He’ll do the right thing.”

Garcia let herself go, sobbing in the safety of Jacques’s massive embrace. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

CHAPTER 5

The stress of having her mother shot was bad enough, but Quinn suspected there was more to Mattie’s tears than that. She was a smart girl, well beyond her seven years. When she replayed the events in her mind, it would not be too much for her to figure out that the bullet that took her mother’s leg was really meant for her.

Quinn longed to stay with them, to hold Mattie in his lap and pat her back and tell her everything would be all right. But that was a lie. Nothing would be all right unless he went out and made it so.

Kim motioned him closer. He put a hand on her forehead, smoothing her hair, then bent down with his ear to her lips.

“You need to get out of here,” she whispered. The oxygen cannulas gave her already soft voice a pitiful, nasal tone that twisted a knife in Quinn’s gut.

He stood up, trying to gauge her emotion from the look on her face. It was impossible.

“Just try and get some sleep,” he said. “We’ll make some decisions soon enough.”

Kim’s chest began to jerk with sobs, oblivious to Mattie’s crying.

“Jer… icho.” Her voice caught in her throat between breaths. “They… shot me…”

Quinn caressed the top of her head.

“And I’ll find out who, Kim—”

“You… need to get… out of here,” she groaned.

“I will,” he said, trying to soothe her with his voice though he was anything but calm inside. “Soon enough.”

She gave a minute shake of her head. “You don’t understand, Jer…” She swallowed hard, panting to catch her breath. Her voice climbed with each word. “I’m not giving you permission… I’m telling you to go. I… don’t want you here!”

He would have rather she’d shot him.

Nodding, he hugged a weeping Mattie.

Kim reached and caught the tail of the borrowed fleece jacket as he turned to go.

“Jericho.”

“Yes?”

Oddly, Kim, who had boiled over with fear and anger just moments before, smiled.

“I don’t know… exactly what it is you do.” She sighed. “But whatever it is, I trust you to go do it well.”

She gave his hand a squeeze. It was the worst possible thing she could say, the thing that would cut him the most. He’d grown used to angry. He could prepare himself for angry. Trust was too much to handle.

Quinn left a cadre of a half dozen OSI agents from Buckley, Peterson, and the Denver Joint Terrorism Task Force to look after Mattie and Kim. All of them appeared happy to help, closing the protective ranks around the OSI family.

Quinn called Winfield Palmer in the car on the drive back to the Marriott. Still on the books with OSI at the Headquarters Detachment in Quantico, his detail as an OGA gave him certain access to the highest levels of government, but it had also made his family a target.

Palmer answered on the second ring.

“I heard,” he said, not waiting for Quinn to brief him. With the national security advisor, conversations often leaned heavily toward the one-sided if he had all the information he wanted. “How’s Kim?”

“Minus a leg,” Jericho said through clenched teeth. “But she’ll live. I’m pretty sure the shooter was trying to kill my daughter.”

“Reports say an Asian female?”

Quinn could hear computer keys clicking in the background over the car’s speaker. He didn’t believe in multitasking, but you didn’t get to Palmer’s level without being a champion at rapid transitioning back and forth between several tasks.

“Yeah, I’m thinking Japanese,” Quinn said, glancing over his shoulder to take the right lane as his exit approached. “And that’s about all we have. Remember I told you I followed Hartman Drake to that meeting with a woman at the docks in Old Town?”

“How could I forget?” Palmer scoffed. “You brought me a couple of severed fingers as a memento.”

“That’s right,” Quinn said. “Japanese fingers.” Quinn had cut them off during a fight with the guards standing between him and the clandestine meeting — and broken Yawaraka-te, his ancient Japanese killing dagger, in the process. “Drake is a part of this. He has to be.”

“Maybe.” Palmer tapped away at his computer. “I really should relieve you. You know that, don’t you, Quinn?”

Quinn’s jaw clenched. “You’ll have to put me in prison to keep me off of this,” he said.

“I know.” Palmer sighed. His keyboard still clicked in the background. “That’s why I’m not even trying. It would just piss us both off. Listen, I smell something bigger than a simple vendetta.”

“Me too.” Quinn took the exit to Garden of the Gods Road, toward his hotel. “No organization is going to waste a well-placed asset like Drake on some little operation.”

“Interesting connection,” Palmer said. “If we’re right and Drake was working with Doctor Badeeb—”

“I’m sure of it,” Quinn said, cutting Palmer off.

“At any rate,” Palmer went on, “PSIA says they’re catching an inordinate amount of chatter linked to several terrorist groups in Pakistan.” PSIA or kanchsa-ch—the Public Security Intelligence Agency — was one of the agencies within the Japanese government that dealt with counterespionage and threats to national security. “Not much of a leap to connect Drake to the Japanese woman to this chatter with Lashkar i Taiba and other bad actors.”

“You get no argument from me,” Quinn said, nodding to himself as he pulled into the parking lot and turned off the ignition. “I thought I was going to have to convince you.”

“We need to make a plan on this, Jericho,” Palmer said. “I know you’re going to talk to Drake, but let’s do it the right way.”

“Understood.”

“My version of the right way. Not yours.”

Quinn ignored the counsel. “Congress is on a recess, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Palmer said. “Drake is in Las Vegas, presumably blowing off some steam after all the budget debates. Capitol Police say he’s staying at Caesars Palace for one more night but will be back in his office tomorrow.”

No sir, Quinn thought, taking a deep breath. He won’t.

CHAPTER 6

Shimoyama Takako sat on a flat cushion with her stockinged feet dangling near the heat lamp in the small, pit-like cutout under a low Japanese table. Her home was spacious by Japanese standards, with a full sixteen tatami mats in her living room alone — nearly five hundred square feet.

It was here that she conducted her business, dressed in a traditional cotton yukata robe of gray and white, and seated at the traditional warming table with an embroidered quilt draped over her lap. A black Beretta pistol lay at the top corner of the table, angled just so, always within easy reach. Directly in front of her, a small notebook was held open by a delicate ivory fountain pen. Shimoyama pushed gold-framed reading glasses back on her nose, large for a Japanese woman, and pushed SEND on her cell phone.

She was tall, with hips that had grown somewhat broader than she would have liked over the years. Strong, almost mannish shoulders from decades of physical training made it difficult to find a yukata that fit correctly. She had all her clothing custom tailored, preferring the older methods and styles that pleased the man she loved, or at least had pleased him at one time.

Now, with graying hair dyed black, a powdered face, and the hydraulic maladies of age wrenching at her joints, she doubted there was much she could do that would please him.

Still, such things couldn’t be helped, and it was not in her nature to let him go without some sort of a fight.

Breathing deeply, rhythmically, she took up the ivory pen and consulted the notebook, while the phone rang.

“Yes,” the voice on the other end answered. There was no polite hello in the greeting, only demands.

She introduced herself, using her best Arabic.

“As-salam alaykum.” Peace be unto you.

“Do not even try,” he snapped. “It is not given for a believer to answer such a greeting by an infidel. Your pronunciation is so bad you could be wishing me death.”

Shimoyama sighed to herself. So much for pleasantries.

“Why do I not deal with your superior?” The voice clicked and popped with educated Punjabi English. It was the voice Shimoyama heard in her mind when she’d read Rudyard Kipling in school — before her life had turned so upside down.

“He has asked that I keep you informed,” she said. Accustomed to a more formal structure in matters with superiors, subordinates, and even victims, Shimoyama grimaced at the abrupt nature of this man. She much preferred dealing with others who understood the niceties of simply being Japanese. Even feudal samurai had been polite in their brutality when they struck down someone of lower class.

Kiri-sute-gomen, they would say: I kill you, I discard you, I am sorry.

Had it been up to Shimoyama, she would not have accepted this assignment — no matter how much it paid. These men were devils, erratic in their behavior, completely unrefined.

Nevertheless, the job had been accepted, and now honor demanded it be done well. Honor — reputation — was everything.

“We are on schedule,” she said.

“Good.” The voice on the other end had an aggravated whine to it, like a gearbox winding down. “And, the business in Colorado?”

“The first phase is complete,” Shimoyama said. She placed a small check in the column of her notebook. It was important to keep track of the items on which she’d briefed her superiors and clients. “Our friend is on the way to see to the next portion of her assignment.”

“Very well,” the man said. The voice grew more distant, as if he was engaged in something else as he spoke.

“I must point out.” Shimoyama hesitated. “This does not come without some degree of risk…”

“We are aware of the risk.” The man inhaled sharply. “You would do well to focus on your own tasks rather than worry over something you know little about.”

“Of course,” Shimoyama demurred. “I only hope to be of the most assistance possible. If you will recall, we have more than one asset in place. That alone makes for—”

“Recall?” the man said, taking a long, nasal breath. “I will tell you what I recall. I recall hearing of some nonsense in Virginia that very nearly brought the Black Mist into the light of day.”

Shimoyama recoiled at the mention of the organization’s name. Black Mist. Kuroi kiri, in Japanese. No one associated with it would ever dare speak the title aloud and certainly not on the phone.

“I remember that incident very well.” She glanced down at the inflamed nub on her left hand, where her pinkie finger should have been. The skin was raw and just beginning to heal over the bone at her first joint. Her right hand bore a similar nubbin, though this one was well healed and from long ago. She had run out of little fingers. The next time, penance would be nonexistent.

The three bodyguards she had taken with her to the United States — her only son and his friends — had been sorely lacking for such a task. It was she who had underestimated the possibility for conflict during her meeting with Hartman Drake. She knew full well that her son could be erratic, but she’d not comprehended how bizarre he could be and how such behavior would come so close to ruining everything. He’d paid the ultimate price. It was fortunate indeed that she had escaped such an error with her own life.

“I am sure you do remember it,” the man said, his words clicking like a train on a track. “And I do not particularly care. Frankly, the only thing that interests me is Jericho Quinn’s death. Is that too difficult to understand?”

“No, but I must—”

“See to it then.” The man cut her off, apparently bored with her report. “Call again when you have more information.”

Shimoyama dropped the cell phone on the table. She knew the line was dead. Qasim Ranjhani was not a man for good-byes.

CHAPTER 7

Quinn showered quickly at the hotel, taking just enough time to scrub Kim’s blood from his hands and chest where it had soaked through his shirt. He’d shaved for the wedding, but his black beard had already started to form a shadow over his copper complexion — a look that, along with his flawless Arabic, allowed him to blend in in many areas of the world without anyone suspecting he was an American agent.

He pulled on a dark blue polo, khakis, and a pair of well-worn Lowa Renegades that fit more like sneakers than boots. He wanted to be ready in the event he had to run. Press-checking his Kimber 10mm out of habit to make certain he had a round in the chamber, he slid it into the Comp-Tac holster inside the waistband of his slacks and snugged down his belt. A small .22-caliber Beretta with a micro suppressor hung in a leather shoulder holster under his left armpit. Light for any serious work, the diminutive .22 had a specific niche in the world of deadly weapons — it was extremely quiet. Quieter still was the seven-inch blade of the CRKT Hissatsu fighting knife he carried.

His Aerostich Transit Leather motorcycle jacket did double duty, covering the weapons and adding a layer of ballistic armor installed by the national security advisor’s special team at DARPA known as the Shop.

Quinn threw the rest of his clothes and gear in a bag for Garcia to pick up, and made it to the Denver airport in time to hop the afternoon Southwest flight to Las Vegas. He wasn’t allowed to sleep on the plane since he was armed, but wouldn’t have been able to anyway. Closing his eyes when surrounded by a hundred strangers had never been something Quinn could bring himself to do. Reading was out of the question since the shooting, so he sat and stared at the seatback in front of him, letting his mind drift and his body metabolize the residual adrenaline.

The flight squawked onto the tarmac at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport just under two hours later. Quinn’s cabbie was a talkative Romanian named Tiberius who gabbed about his large family and the tremendous opportunities offered by the “U.S. of A.” nonstop during the fifteen-minute ride to the Strip. Quinn gave him a good tip, which, of course the patriotic jabbering had been intended to induce, and got out of the cab in front of the Bellagio, down the boulevard from Caesars Palace so there would be no record of him being dropped off there.

Once Tiberius was safely on his way, Quinn walked into the Bellagio’s spacious lobby and turned right under the kaleidoscope of flowers that hung like an inverted glass garden from the ceiling. Walking easily but with purpose, he could feel the eyes of countless security cameras on his back as he cut this way and that to make his way through the maze of tourists. He counted at least a half dozen different languages from all nationalities — many of them Chinese. Glancing up at one of the small black domes on the ceiling above, he remembered the line from the movie Ocean’s Eleven—someone was “always watching” at the Bellagio.

He popped out to flashing neon lights on the north side of the casino and breathed a sigh of relief to be back outside again, even if it meant leaving the crowded hotel for a crowded street.

It was warm, even for Vegas in the winter, though the sun had been down for nearly an hour. Taillights flashed and dimmed on stop-and-go traffic that backed up Flamingo Road all the way to the Las Vegas Strip. Quinn was able to trot between a bumper-to-bumper phalanx of two black stretch limos, a canary yellow Ferrari, and a pearl white Hummer to reach the great cluster of bone white buildings that made up Caesars Palace Casino and Forum Shops.

Looking for any one guest who happened to be staying at a hotel as large as Caesars Palace would normally require a good deal of time and a large surveillance team, but Quinn had an inside man — Adam Norton, of Drake’s Capitol Police protective detail the year before. Officer Norton had pulled Drake’s dead wife from the Potomac River and had a strong suspicion that she’d been murdered. He knew the Speaker’s tastes along with his secrets. Of course, he’d been summarily kicked off the detail shortly after the incident, but Quinn had kept in contact with him for just this sort of event.

As Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hartman Drake was allocated a small protective detail of Capitol Police officers when he traveled. According to Norton, he liked to keep them at a distance during his visits to Vegas so he could spend time with a certain Puerto Rican escort he’d taken up with since his wife had been killed. In the world of dignitary protection, there was often a sort of cat-and-mouse game played by the protector and protectee. People wanted and needed space — but it was that space that could get them killed. It was the detail leader’s job to figure out just how much space was possible to give and still keep the protectee safe from harm or embarrassment.

Quinn made his way through the entry off Flamingo Road, past the bellmen and row of perky clerks at the Diamond VIP check-in desk. He strolled through the Palace casino like a tourist, eyes peeled for Drake. Norton had said the Speaker had a thing for blackjack, and since this was his last evening in Vegas, Quinn assumed that he’d be at the high-stakes tables.

Failing to find Drake anywhere in the Palace section of the enormous gambling complex, Quinn ducked down a narrow, dimly lit hall of dark paneling and crushed velvet cocktail tables, passing under the bulbous wooden breasts of Cleopatra’s barge that hung over the walkway. The din of the crowds and rattling ping of slot machines grew louder as he neared the Forum casino floor.

Quinn’s gut knotted when he finally saw the Speaker. He thought of Kim, of all the blood, and of Mattie, the sniper’s intended target. Pausing to take a slow breath, he pushed any notion of instant revenge to the back of his mind and studied the situation. Palmer was right. There was much more to this than a simple assassination. Otherwise, Quinn knew he would have been the target.

Hartman Drake was seated at the nearest blackjack table, a fat cigar clenched between his teeth. Extremely fit, the Speaker spent several hours each day in the House gym and picked his clothing to show off broad shoulders and a narrow waist. He wore faded blue jeans and a tailored white shirt. Absent his trademark bow tie, it was open at the collar. A gold Rolex hung from the cuff of a navy blue blazer. Behind a cloud of cigar smoke, a derisive smile smeared across his mouth. He was winning.

Quinn kept walking toward the sports book lounge. He ordered a Bacardi and Coke from a roving waitress and watched the Hispanic woman pressed in close beside Drake. She was young, maybe twenty-two, with expressively dark eyes and a wide mouth, heavily covered in crimson lipstick. Gray tights clung like a second skin to slender legs. A bloodred minidress hung off petite shoulders. Her manicured hand, matching her lipstick and the dress, rested on a cocked hip.

Twenty feet away a blond Capitol Police officer with the earnest look of an Iowa farm boy loitered beside the bank of slot machines. A light golf jacket and khaki slacks helped him blend in some with the crowd of gamblers, but the flesh-tone earpiece and clear pigtail radio wire that disappeared at the back of his collar were dead giveaways. The slight bulge on the right side of his jacket would be his Glock. Pale blue eyes looked over the casino floor with mixture of boredom and disgust.

A second agent, older, with an air of experience, sat at a small table near the Forum entrance, nursing a cup of coffee while he watched the crowd.

Quinn’s source said no one on the detail cared much for Drake. They were, however, honor bound to protect him and would give their lives to do so. But in order for them to do that, the protectee had to cooperate in at least some respects.

The Hispanic escort’s hand moved across Drake’s shoulder, caressing, but urging him to hurry. He gave an annoyed shrug, brushing her away. She let her hand drop and dug her toe into the carpet. The four-inch stiletto heel arced impatiently back and forth.

She was getting bored.

Quinn smiled within himself. This was going to be easier than he’d imagined. He knew Drake was staying in the Augustus Tower, but had no idea which floor or what room. He couldn’t very well ask the protective detail, and that same detail would make it nearly impossible to follow the Speaker without hurting one of the good guys.

But now he wouldn’t have to follow the Speaker. He could follow the escort. It was a good bet the call girl had a room nearby, probably on a different floor, so he could sneak away from his detail without having to go very far. She’d leave first — and since Drake was winning, he’d let her.

CHAPTER 8

Quinn left the rum and Coke untouched along with a ten-dollar bill and a nod at the waitress. Wanting to stay ahead of Drake’s date, he walked quickly back under Cleopatra’s wooden cleavage, through the Palace casino, and around the corner to Diamond VIP registration. Thankfully, there was no line. He badged the girl with a Croatian accent behind the desk, explaining that he was conducting a routine advance for a protective operation on an Air Force three-star general. She was professional enough that she didn’t mention the Capitol Police detail already on site.

“The general is very averse to the media,” Quinn said, hoping she’d afford him the same restraint when she spoke with any other protective agents.

“Of course, sir.” The girl, whose name was Cetina, gave a conspiratorial nod and pointed to a map on the marble counter. “We have three vacant suites at the moment. I can get security to show you any or all of them if you wish.”

Quinn took a deep breath, feeling a twinge of guilt for lying to this sweet girl. “That won’t be necessary,” he said. “I just need to take a few photos of stairwells, fire escapes, and whatnot. We’re still in early stages.”

“Very well.” Cetina slid a key card across the counter. “This will give you access to the elevators around the corner.” She smiled, a splash of freckles accenting the pink skin of a button nose. “Be careful taking photos of our guests. Like your general, most are not very fond of publicity.”

Quinn made it around to catch the elevator in time to see a flash of red as Drake’s buxom escort passed the restrooms down the hall, coming toward him. She was alone.

Quinn got on the elevator without looking back and punched the button for the twenty-seventh and the forty-sixth floors to make certain the car would continue up when he got back on. He stepped off immediately at twenty-five, but held the door and watched the floor numbers above the adjacent elevator, which surely contained Drake’s date. They flashed past him and on to thirty-nine before stopping. Quinn stepped back on and inserted the card again. He made it to thirty-nine as the red dress disappeared into her room, four doors down from the elevator.

What happened in Vegas did indeed stay in Vegas, often for a great length of time, recorded digitally on cameras in virtually every casino, lobby, and hallway. Thankfully, guest floors were not places where the casinos lost money, so Quinn knew it was unlikely a live set of eyes would be focused on the particular cameras watching the thirty-ninth floor.

Quinn smiled broadly as he gave a knock on the door. The woman opened almost immediately, tilting her head sideways when she saw it wasn’t Hartman Drake.

Quinn held up his room key. “I think you dropped this,” he said. When she turned instinctively to look at the desk where she’d put her own key, he shouldered his way in, pinning her arms and putting a hand over her mouth before she could scream. The door clicked shut behind them as she began to rake his shins with her feet.

Over the years Quinn had dealt with more than a handful of women involved in prostitution. The reasons they got into such work were as varied as their hair color and descriptions. Some were sad sacks. Some did it because they wanted to make a lot of money fast, but nearly all of them shared at least one particular trait. They were almost impossible to intimidate. Unlike most men in modern America, the vast majority of hookers had been punched in the face, many times. They knew what it felt like, and they also knew it took more than a smack to kill them.

“Police!” Quinn hissed in the woman’s ear. He arched his back to make it harder for her to get at his legs with the hard edges of her pedaling high heels.

Her body arched with him, trying to get away, but she stopped kicking.

Quinn moved his hand away from her mouth, careful not to let her bite him. He prepared to slap it back down if she began to scream.

“I knew it. Secret Service,” she spat. “That bastard told me it was okay. He said I wouldn’t get in any trouble.”

Quinn didn’t correct her. In the minds of the American public, the Secret Service protected everyone. For all he knew, Drake had told her just that. Instead, he took a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket and snapped them around the woman’s wrists, behind her back. Knowing Drake could arrive at any moment, he gave her a quick pat-down for hidden weapons. The tight dress left little room to hide anything, but Quinn had seen firsthand how Veronica Garcia could secret a pistol away under some pretty flimsy bits of cloth.

The call girl’s mouth hung open when he spun her around and set her on the bed. A flicker of terror sparked in her brown eyes. Her lower lip trembled slightly. The handcuffs and the dawning reality of her situation had finally staggered her confidence.

“You don’t look like no Secret Service agent I ever saw.”

“How well do you know your client?” Quinn said.

Apparently satisfied Quinn didn’t mean to rape her or beat her to death, the woman fell back onto the bed, looking up at the ceiling with a tired groan. “I don’t know, seven, eight months. My friend says to me, ‘Dolores, you should meet this guy. He’s some big shot in politics and he pays very well.’ ”

“Does he talk to you?” Quinn kept an eye on the door.

“Hell, yes he talks to me,” Dolores said. “He won’t shut up. Mostly about himself and how buff he looks. I think he only hires me so he’s got somebody to brag to.”

“Anything else?”

“Every man I know gonna brag some.” She rolled sideways a little to take the pressure off her wrists. Her face remained passive as if she was used to being handcuffed and thrown on a bed. “Drake, he brags a hell of a lot more than most. Like he can’t help himself, you know. Says he’s gonna be the most powerful man in the world someday. He’s always going on about how he could save the world or destroy it if he wanted to, just like God himself.” She blinked up at Quinn. “No shit, I ain’t lyin’. He actually says stuff like that.”

Quinn took her by the arm and helped situate her in a more comfortable position against the headboard. “Did he say how he might save or destroy the world?”

She batted her eyelashes and stuck out her bottom lip, pouting. “I don’t suppose you could loosen these cuffs a little?”

“Maybe in a minute,” Quinn said. “Did Drake ever give you any specifics?”

The pout vanished. “To be honest, I usually just tuned him out. If you guys knew the things that go through a woman’s mind while you’re breathing in our ears—”

“But you heard something.”

“He talked about the Bible all the time,” Dolores said. “You know, all that whirlwind, fire, and pestilence crap and how he would be a modern-day Moses.”

“What else,” Quinn prodded every time she fell silent.

“No kidding, I really did tune him out.” She shrugged, eyes wandering around the room trying to find something more interesting than this conversation. “You can ask him. My meter’s running and he don’t like to pay me to just sit here in the room, if you know what I mean. He’ll sneak away from his agents pretty soon.” She looked up at Quinn, dark eyes shifting to the pistol that was now visible under his open jacket. Her voice was strangely detached, as if she’d seen this sort of thing many times before. “Are you gonna kill him?”

Quinn shook his head. “No,” he said.

Not right away, he thought.

CHAPTER 9

Dolores said she had no great love lost for Drake. She swore she would cooperate but didn’t have much else to give in the way of helpful information.

The far end of the suite was a sunken living area with plush sectional couches to match gold drapes. A glass coffee table and long oak chest of drawers with a big-screen television rounded out the décor. Quinn left Dolores in handcuffs and sat her on the far couch so she could lean against the corner with her back to the door.

“You know what they call handcuffs in Spanish?” she asked, settling in against the cushions.

“No idea,” Quinn said. He spoke five languages but Spanish wasn’t one of them.

“Esposas.” She winked thick, heavily mascaraed lashes. “It is the same word for wife. Fitting, don’t you think?”

Quinn didn’t answer. He’d have to check that one with Garcia. He set the television to a home shopping channel and turned up the volume.

“You don’t have to worry about the noise, baby,” Dolores said. “The ladies who clean on this floor are used to me making a lot of racket. I give them a nice tip when I leave.”

“Good to know,” Quinn said, stuffing half a wadded washcloth in the hooker’s mouth. She accepted it with little more than a roll of her eyes.

A sudden rattle at the door, followed by the electronic whir of the lock, sent Quinn around the corner between the wall and the plush king bed. From here he had a clear view of Dolores and would be in the perfect spot to ambush Drake when he walked down the small entry hall past the bathroom.

He popped his neck from side to side, letting his shoulders hang loose and ready to move. He’d waited over a year for a chance to have a few minutes alone with Hartman Drake. The picture of Kim, lying on the concrete covered with blood, flashed before his eyes. Quinn pushed thoughts of revenge down in the dark recesses of his gut. It would be so easy to end this man here and now. Beating him to death would bring a certain closure if not real satisfaction, but there were still too many questions that had to be answered.

Quinn held his breath.

“Honey, I’m home!” Drake clapped his hands, stepping out of his shoes as he came through the door. Quinn heard the jingle of a belt buckle before the man even made it down the short hallway. “Let’s get this show on the—”

Fighting was rarely something Quinn took lightly. Underestimating an opponent could cost the battle, or worse, your life. But in this case Drake did half the work for him. His arms were occupied with shrugging off his sport jacket when he came around the corner, while his ankles were effectively hobbled by the puddle of loose slacks at his feet.

Well muscled, Hartman Drake was no one to toy with even when hampered by his pants. A snap-kick to his unprotected groin bent him double and put his chin in a perfect line with Quinn’s uppercut. Quinn was on him in an instant, slapping him hard across the ear to keep him stunned.

Pressing the advantage of momentum, Quinn rushed in, pummeling Drake with blow after blow to the ribs, driving the wind from his body and shocking his heart. With no time to collect his thoughts or regain his bearings, Drake could do little but give a halfhearted attempt to ward off the assault. Ten seconds from the time he’d walked into the room, warm in the knowledge he would have some quality time with sweet little Dolores, Hartman Drake found himself nauseated, dizzy, and half-deaf.

Quinn caught the Speaker’s wrist and wrenched it backward, feeling a satisfying crunch as tendons stretched and tore. Dolores half turned on the couch to watch the show and looked on with an interested sparkle in her eye. Quinn used three zip cuffs from the lining of his jacket to hog-tie Drake and leave him lolling, facedown, on the bed. With his target incapacitated for the moment, Quinn took the protesting Dolores by the arm and dragged her into the bathroom. She managed to spit out the washrag on the way.

“Whoa!” she said, wide-eyed. “You’re pretty damn good at what you do. Can I please watch? I’ll be quiet as a mouse, I swear.”

“Safer for you if you don’t hear this,” Quinn said, checking her cuffs. He took another zip tie from his jacket and fastened her to the sink before turning on the faucet in the tub for background noise. Stuffing the washcloth back in her mouth, he shut the door.

With Dolores stowed out of the way, Quinn sat on the bed beside a blinking, wide-eyed Drake. “Now,” he whispered, “you and I have some things to talk about.”

“Do you even know who I am?” Drake mumbled, his face smashed against the bed linens.

Quinn grabbed him by the hair and lifted his head. He looked the man over, as if considering how to carve a piece of meat, then let his head fall back to the mattress. “Let’s see what I know… I know you’re the kind of trash that kicked out three of your wife’s teeth and then held her underwater until she drowned. Yeah, I’d say I’m probably one of the handful of people in this country who actually does know who you are. What I need to know is who is pulling your strings.”

A flash of panic crossed Drake’s eyes. “There are a bunch of Capitol Police guys looking for me right now…” His words slurred against the bed with a line of drool.

“I’m going to ask you this once.” Quinn’s voice was barely audible above Drake’s whimpering. “Who shot at my family?”

Drake began to sob uncontrollably, flinging his head from side to side. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Seriously… I am…” He panted, as if trying to catch his breath. “I am the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. My name is Hartman Dra—”

Quinn slipped into Arabic. “Who is the Japanese woman that was sent to shoot at me?”

Drake rolled his lips, pressing them together in a tight line as if to keep himself from talking. “Mister,” he finally said, trying to regain some of his bravado, “you have no idea what a shitload of troub—”

Quinn cuffed him on the back of the head, then drew the suppressed .22 from the shoulder holster under his Transit jacket. “As you wish,” he said, pressing the weapon to Drake’s temple. Without another word he turned the pistol slightly and fired a round into the mattress. Drake flinched at the shot. The spent casing ejected and landed in his ear, causing him to howl as if he’d been splashed with molten lava.

“I know you worked for Doctor Badeeb,” Quinn said, still in Arabic. He leaned in for effect. “And I know you tried to kill my little girl.”

“Please, I can’t understand what you’re saying,” Drake yowled. “I don’t speak Arabic…”

Quinn sighed. His voice grew calmer, almost sweet. “Perhaps you will not mind if I shoot you in your foot.”

Drake flinched at the words, doing the best he could to move his trussed feet out of the line of fire.

“You understand me perfectly,” Quinn spat. He flicked the pistol a fraction of an inch to put a round in the sole of Drake’s foot.

The .22-caliber bullet punched completely through, snapping tiny bones and spraying the sheets with a fine mist of blood.

“Okay! Okay! Stop!” Spittle spewed from Drake’s mouth. “Don’t shoot me anymore! But stop speaking Arabic. Badeeb was Pakistani. I barely understand Arabic.” He turned his head sideways, cheek against the mattress, sobbing through clenched eyelids. He nodded in defeat. “What do you want to know?”

Quinn leaned in, whispering. “What was killing her supposed to do to me, exactly? Make me lay down and die?”

“Seriously…” He panted, trying to catch his breath. “I don’t know anything about that…”

“I need a name, Drake,” Quinn said, his voice an acid whisper. “I don’t care about you or your failed attempt at the White House. I want to know who shot at my daughter.”

Drake looked up, puzzled. “Shot at?” He panted. “She missed?”

“Who is she?” Quinn aimed the little .22 at Drake’s other foot.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Drake screamed, wincing at the pain it brought his battered ribs. “What’ll you do with me if I tell you?”

Quinn jerked him sideways to get his full attention. “You should be more worried about what I’ll do if you don’t.”

“You don’t understand…” Drake began to hyperventilate. “These people are cruel. Capable of things you can’t even imagine.”

“Oh, I can imagine a lot.”

Drake started to sob again. “I have to have assurances.”

“You—”

Quinn froze as an electronic whir came from down the hall. Someone else with a key was at the door.

“Ahhh.” Drake sniffed, then rolled up on his side with his ear toward the door. His conceited swagger bloomed across his slobbering mouth along with the courage of a man who thought he was about to be rescued. “That’ll be my Capitol Police guys coming to shoot you in the face.”

Quinn grabbed Drake by his collar and dragged him off the mattress to the floor. At that same moment a slender man wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt popped around the corner from the hallway, blazing away as if he had unlimited ammunition. At least two rounds hit Drake as Quinn pulled him down.

At first, Quinn thought the newcomer might be Dolores’s pimp, but the Browning pistol the newcomer carried was nearly a thousand bucks without the suppressor — much too professional for a man lording over a string of prostitutes, even in Vegas. The man took another shot at Drake’s bare feet where they trailed past the end of the bed, obliterating a big toe in the process.

Quinn fired back with the Beretta, sending the attacker into retreat down the hallway. He got a fleeting glimpse of a face under the gray hood and guessed the man to be Pakistani.

Firing with the suppressed .22 didn’t exactly provide a show of overwhelming force, so Quinn swapped the diminutive Beretta for the Kimber 10mm tucked inside his waistband. During the heat of battle, people hit with a silenced weapon often didn’t realize they’d been shot. The big bang provided the signal to drive that point home.

Kimber in hand, Quinn prepared himself for the onslaught of police and federal agents that would rain down on him as soon as he fired the booming gun with no suppressor. No amount of tipping would keep the housekeepers from calling security once he started shooting.

A sudden thud, followed by a surprised grunt, came from the hallway. The door slammed and Dolores’s husky voice came tentatively down the hall.

“It’s me, baby,” she whispered. “Don’t shoot, okay. You good in there?”

“I’m good,” Quinn said. He kept the Kimber trained toward the voice. “What happened?”

“He’s run off.” Dolores peeked her head around the corner. Her hands were still cuffed behind her back. “I smacked him with the bathroom door. He didn’t know I was in there so I think it scared him.”

“Just curious,” Quinn said, standing, but still eyeing the door, “how’d you get out of the flex cuffs hooked to the sink?”

“Oh.” Dolores shrugged. “You gotta learn to loosen up when you search women. Be a little more thorough. We got… places, you know.”

Drake moaned at Quinn’s feet. “That son of a bitch tried to kill me…”

Dolores sat on the bed, bouncing on the edge of the mattress while she stared down at the bloody mess that had been her date. “I think he did more than try,” she said.

Drake looked up at Quinn, anger flashing in his eyes. “You have no idea what hell I’m going to unleash on you…”

“Apparently, I’m not the only enemy you have.” Quinn leaned in closer to make sure Drake heard correctly. “But I’m the one close enough to kill you. Now, who is the Japanese woman?”

Drake smiled through his pain. Blood smeared his teeth. He coughed. “… I’m the most powerful man in the world…”

“The woman.” Quinn patted his face to keep him focused.

Drake gave a rattling chuckle. “Powerful… until they killed me…” His head lolled, eyes rolling back to show their whites.

Quinn jumped to his feet and pushed his way past a dumbfounded Dolores. “I’ll leave the handcuffs on you so the police will know you weren’t involved in this. Stay with him.”

“What do I tell them?” she shouted down the hallway.

Quinn yelled over his shoulder as he ran. “Tell them I’m going after the man who killed the Speaker of the House.”

CHAPTER 10

Quinn slid the Kimber back in the holster under his jacket as he sprinted toward the elevators, ready to draw again at the first sign of a threat. He took the first elevator going down to the lobby, smiling at an elderly couple who were already on board. They stood well back from him, as if plastered to the wall, wanting to be as far away as possible during their ride. It wasn’t until he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror that Quinn realized a smear of Drake’s blood was splashed across his cheek and ran down like a tear under his left eye.

Assuming he was on camera anyway, Quinn shrugged it off and stepped into the Augustus Tower lobby when the doors finally opened. He scanned the knots of milling hotel guests that stood here and there, looking for some sign of irregularity.

Frightened or violent people left a sort of wake behind them when they ran. Not everyone recognized it for what it was, but some did, even if subconsciously. Quinn saw two older men, each wearing Vietnam Veteran caps, staring down the hallway toward the casino. Veterans, men who had seen close conflict, would sense people who were out of the ordinary. Following their gaze, Quinn trotted past the two men, nodding in salute as he went by.

By the time he reached the Palace casino floor, the man in the hoodie had gone. But the invisible wake remained. Most of the hotel patrons were ambivalent, happy to stay blissfully unaware. But a handful of people here and there craned their heads to look toward the door. A bellman stood by his stand, his back to the casino, gazing out the window as if watching something. Two uniformed security guards walked toward the front exit, intent on making sure someone had left the premises.

Very likely a man in a gray hoodie.

Quinn picked up his pace, leaving his own wake of watchers. He ran past the bellman and pushed his way out the front door into the covered portico and valet parking.

The blast of chilly night air was a pleasant reprieve from the stuffy, bottled atmosphere of the casino. The sun had long since set, but the lights of the Vegas Strip danced and exploded in a blinding rainbow of colors and hues. Quinn had to slow for a moment and let his eyes adjust. There was always a chance the man would be waiting for him outside, behind a potted shrub or around any corner. He had the smell of a runner though, so Quinn chased, hoping his instincts were correct. By the time he knew better, it would be too late.

Quinn jogged past the line of sparkling black limousines and assorted Prius cabs parked along the circular drive. The man in the hoodie was nowhere to be seen, but a turbaned Sikh beside the lead cab brushed the seat of his pants as if he’d been knocked over before Quinn came on the scene and was just regaining his feet. The Sikh stared past the fountains and statuary, muttering angry words under his breath.

Quinn followed the cabbie’s gaze and broke into a full run, sprinting across the concrete plaza under heroic statues of muscular horses and Roman gods. Arms pumping, he slid to a stop as he reached the pedestrian bridge that crossed above Las Vegas Boulevard. He scanned the rivers of people flowing north and south, leaning over the bolstered concrete edge to check both sides of the Strip. He’d nearly given up when he caught a glimpse of gray, heading north between the palms and boxwood hedges in front of the garishly lit Flamingo casino. The hoodie bounced with a particular bobbing walk and moved a half step faster than the crowd.

Quinn bolted across the bridge, dodging and ducking his way through tourists, beggars, and con men. Half sliding, half running down the escalator to the street below, he sprinted north the moment his feet hit the pavement.

Evening brought a heightened activity to the Strip. Tourists stood and gawked at the lights, the buildings, and each other. Huge parties of all ethnicities and nationalities moved in great herds, blocking sidewalks in search of the perfect cheap buffet. Greasy men and sad-looking women wearing matching T-shirts lurked at every corner and chokepoint, snapping business cards for strip clubs to everyone who met their tired eyes. Bands of motorcycles, from Harleys to Hayabusas, blatted and growled at each stoplight. Stretch limos, Hummers, and every sports car conceivable jammed Las Vegas Boulevard, bumper to expensive bumper.

About the time Quinn got to the Imperial, he saw the hooded man flag down a cab. Though traffic was stop-and-go, if the cab took the left lane, the hooded man would be gone before Quinn could sprint to it and drag him out. Two college-age boys slouched on the curb in front of the Rockhouse Bar. One wore a green Windbreaker, the other, a mustachioed UNLV sweatshirt. The objects of their attention were a couple of working girls. The boys were trying to convince the ladies they were old enough not to be jailbait. A Ducati Hypermotard and a Kawasaki Ninja stood parked along the curb behind them.

Thankfully, the boy in the sweatshirt was brain-addled by the short skirt and long legs of the two hookers. He’d backed his Ducati into the curb and left the keys in the ignition.

Quinn took one last look at the bobbing gray head of the hooded shooter as the cab rolled passed Harrah’s a block away. Quinn was fast, but the shooter had too much of a lead. Following on foot was not going to work.

Without slowing his stride, Quinn threw a leg over the red Ducati and brought the engine roaring to life. Bikes rumbled by incessantly on the Strip, and by the time the kid in the UNLV shirt tore his eyes away from the girls to look behind him, Quinn was halfway down the block.

Quinn bent low, leaning in over the handlebars, coaxing as many of the 110 horses from the Duc’s Tes-tastretta engine as he dared without spilling into traffic. Rolling on the throttle, he split the lanes, shooting between an idling panel truck that advertised HOT BABES ON CALL and a low-rider Silverado pickup.

The Hypermotard, Ducati’s version of a dirt bike for the street, was built for speed and maneuverability in all terrains, perfect for Quinn’s needs at the moment. He caught sight of the gray hoodie’s head through the back window of the cab, craning backward to see if he was being followed. Quinn pulled to the side of the road, in the shadow of a Hummer limousine.

The hoodie jumped out of the cab after less than a block and began walking again. Quinn often used the same trick to see if anyone was following him. The short ride made the drivers mad, but a good tip got them over it in a hurry.

Quinn slowed the bike to a rumbling putt, falling in with the flow of stop-and-go traffic while he watched the hoodie bob its way north with the sidewalk crowd. This man had shot Hartman Drake, likely to shut him up before he could tell Quinn anything useful. He’d had enough resources to find out what room Drake was in and the juice to get a key to that room. Had Dolores not assisted by plowing into the guy, Quinn might have thought she was involved.

Quinn veered right, nearly forced into a line of palm trees by a big-haired redhead paying more attention to her cell phone than the path of her shiny Coupe de Ville. The mere act of riding a motorcycle in such traffic brought an extra level of awareness that only added to the intensity of the chase. Not only did he have to worry about keeping the man in the hoodie in sight, or that same man turning to shoot him, but half the vehicles crammed onto the Strip seemed hell-bent on grinding him into the pavement.

“Where are you headed?” Quinn mused to himself as he leaned on the handlebars and watched the gray hoodie bob across the small service street on the other side of Denny’s and Casino Royale. The shooter continued walking in front of the Venetian, answering his cell in the flickering green glow cast by the outdoor gondola canals.

Quinn knew that phone would contain a wealth of information.

Still moving, the man in the hoodie turned to look over his shoulder while he spoke, his bob becoming more animated. Turning again, he scanned the pedestrian bridge that crossed Las Vegas Boulevard to Treasure Island, then back over his shoulder. His head on a swivel, the man’s eyes shot back and forth, looking behind him, then up at the bridge. Twenty meters back, partially hidden by the Hot Babes panel truck that had caught up with him in traffic, Quinn couldn’t hear the conversation. But he didn’t need to. Someone was telling the shooter that he was being followed, warning him.

Instinctively, Quinn began to scan the area, eyes combing the windows above. When he looked back, the man in the gray hoodie hunched his shoulders — and ran.

CHAPTER 11

Rolling on the throttle, Quinn shot around the Hot Babes panel van, squirting between traffic. His knee was just inches from the wrought-iron fence along the curb. The light changed on the street somewhere up ahead, and Quinn felt the wind from a passing side mirror graze him as a Hummer sped by.

The man in the hoodie shot a glance over his shoulder as Quinn bore down on him under the Palazzo portico. Spying the oncoming bike and certainly the look of death on Quinn’s face, the man redoubled his efforts and sprinted toward the open double doors to the hotel. Less than ten meters behind, Quinn held his breath as he sailed through the same doors and into the lobby of the Palazzo.

Crowds of milling hotel patrons scattered like quail at the machine-gun blat of the oncoming bike. The marble interior of the huge, columned rotunda seemed to shake with the captive roar.

Quinn’s target slid along the floor, squatting low to regain his traction on the slick marble.

Behind him, Quinn fared little better. He planted a foot and let off the gas to maintain some semblance of control on the torquing bike.

The man in the hoodie darted left to keep from becoming trapped by an oncoming group of Chinese tourists. Quinn gunned the throttle, drifting the rear tire in a squalling rooster tail of smoke to get the bike pointed in the right direction. Hotel patrons turned to watch what many thought was some incredible Las Vegas attraction. Some had to scramble out of the way as Quinn followed his target straight into the casino.

The shooter cut left, yanking an older man off a stool at the champagne bar before darting up the middle of the casino floor. The Ducati’s tires found easier traction on the carpet, and Quinn flicked the bike easily back and forth between casino patrons. He gained quickly on the runner, nearly catching him at the high-stakes blackjack tables. Feeling Quinn behind him, the man grabbed a cigarette girl and shoved, sending her flying into a cursing tangle of cigar tray, tiny dress, and boobs, directly into the path of the oncoming motorcycle.

Quinn jagged to the right to avoid the spitting girl, narrowly missing a row of roulette players with his knee as he fought to keep the bike on two wheels. Men in dark suits began to materialize from every pit and shadow of the casino. Some identified the man in the hoodie as part of the problem, but most converged on Quinn.

Quinn poured on the gas to keep out of the grasp of a particularly large, baldheaded pit boss who vaulted over a craps table after him.

Speeding up on a straightaway between the tables, he watched the man in the hoodie flee the casino for the lobby and jump on the escalator beside a huge, floor-to-ceiling waterfall. He bounded upward, jerking other riders to the side as he bulldozed his way past. He reached the top at the same time Quinn reached the bottom.

With a virtual army of security behind him, some in suits, some in the comically loose Italian gendarmerie blues worn by hotel security, Quinn yanked up slightly on the handlebars and goosed the Ducati into a low wheelie.

No motorcycle was purpose-built for climbing escalators, but the Hypermotard came close, making the tooth-jarring journey to the top in time for Quinn to see the runner shove his way through the protesting crowds. He brutally yanked a young girl to the ground as he ducked under the arch into the adjoining Venetian Canal Shoppes.

Quinn rolled off the gas again at the top of the stairs, planted a foot to turn the bike toward the Shoppes, then accelerated smoothly on the slick marble. It looked as though he would make it until he hit a puddle of melted milkshake, part of the wake of shoppers and food left by the fleeing man in the hoodie.

The front wheel flipped sharply left, handlebars slapping the tank. The Ducati went down hard, bucking wildly and throwing Quinn over the front. He landed on his shoulder, rolling like a bowling ball through a crowd of gawking onlookers to send them scattering in all directions.

The armor in the Transit jacket took the brunt of the impact and Quinn was on his feet in an instant, running. He reached instinctively for his waist, touching the butt of his Kimber to make certain it had survived the crash.

Humidity and the swimming-pool smell of the indoor gondola ride hit him in the face as he rounded the corner. The man with the hoodie had cut to the left of the canal, darting between the milling crowds that stood at the rail, watching the singing gondoliers and waiting for their turns for a boat ride.

Quinn scanned the area ahead, spotting an approaching wedding party that blocked the runner’s path. He cut to the right of the canal. The man in the hoodie, realizing he’d been cut off, tried to cross the small footbridge that arched over the water. Quinn met him halfway across.

Wanting to buy time away from the approaching security, Quinn crashed into the hooded gunman, hips low and rising like a football player off the line. He used the man’s energy to spin him, driving him sideways, then backward over the concrete railing of the bridge to land with a splash in the clear blue water of the gondola canal ten feet below.

The man in the hoodie hit the surface flat on his back, catching the brunt of the force. Quinn landed on top of him, hands at the throat of the hoodie. Kicking as hard as he could, he drove the man down to the bottom of the shallow water. A cloud of silver bubbles erupted from the man’s mouth as Quinn kept pushing, forcing the air from his lungs. Aware that his opponent had a gun, Quinn kept the pressure up, squeezing the man’s throat and hoping the desire to breathe would outweigh any ability to shoot.

Quinn held him under for a full minute, writhing on the bottom of the crystal blue water and surely giving the crowd above a good Vegas spectacle. They broke the surface together, the man in the hoodie choking and spewing water, gasping for air. A ring of security stood along the railing above, shouting orders but unwilling to get themselves wet now that their quarry was contained.

Quinn twisted the shooter’s arm behind his back, wrenching upward, not caring how much damage he caused. He spun the man around so he was facing away and Quinn could talk directly into his ear.

“Who sent you?” he hissed, water spraying from his mouth.

The man, a Pakistani from his accent, rattled off a vehement oath. Although Quinn didn’t understand completely, the gist of the words was clear. He wrenched the arm higher against the man’s back. Sidestepping, Quinn bent at the waist, using the man’s arm to shove his head underwater.

Along the railing, some people clapped, still thinking it was a show.

The Pakistani struggled as Quinn held him under, ignoring the shouts from the security men above. “I need a name,” Quinn said, lifting him back to a standing position.

Sputtering, the Pakistani looked up as if to speak. His body suddenly tensed, as if hit with a bolt of electricity.

“The Foo Dog,” he said under his breath, mouth hanging open. He backpedaled furiously, trying to get away.

“What?” Quinn jerked the man upright again.

A series of muffled woompfs from a suppressed pistol popped in the humid air. Quinn felt a splash across his face. The Pakistani convulsed and then went limp in his hands, a gaping wound where his forehead had been. Quinn held the body up as a shield, spinning slightly to make sure he kept the dead Pakistani between him and the shooter. Four more shots came in quick succession, riddling the Pakistani but obviously meant for Quinn.

He caught a glimpse of dark hair beyond the Venetian railing above, tucked back in a small recess beside the stone support column that led from the escalator to the Canal Shoppes.

“Hands in the air!” a voice barked from the gondola docks. Quinn looked up to see a Las Vegas Metro police officer, pistol pointed directly at him.

He let the dead man fall and raised his hands, not bothering to mention he was a federal agent. They would find that out soon enough. For a split second, he got a clear view of the woman beyond the railing. A uniformed Palazzo guard stood immediately beside her, not realizing that she was the shooter.

The law enforcement and casino security chasing Quinn had run right past. They’d left her virtually alone long enough to fire several rounds from her suppressed pistol, which was obviously now tucked under her brown leather jacket. She was compactly built, with narrow hips and long hair that hung like a thick mask over much of her perfectly oval face. Black eyes stared out from beneath the curtain of hair. An exasperated sneer hung on her small mouth.

Quinn looked away long enough to follow orders from the Vegas Metro officer, who was shouting at him to walk backward to the side of the canal.

Quinn’s heart sank when he realized how little he had to go on. Drake had told him nothing, and the Pakistani shooter had given him only two words.

Foo Dog.

These ferocious lion dogs guarded virtually every temple and shrine in Asia. The words had something to do with the woman in the archway.

When Quinn glanced back, she was gone.

CHAPTER 12

Marta Bedford woke at three in the morning to Rick’s snores. Between his frequent training with the Army and the sheriff ’s office and now his deployment, she had grown accustomed to being unaccustomed to him each time he returned. If he was gone more than a month it took her several days to get used to his movements beside her in bed and the little noises he made in his sleep.

But this time was different. He’d never been a snorer, and, though she could overlook even that, the way he moaned hurt her heart. The first night after he’d gone to see her brother to take care of the boil, she’d shaken him to make sure he was all right. Of course, he’d said he was fine. Rick Bedford wouldn’t admit pain if he drank a glass of molten lava.

She slipped out from under the covers and went into the bathroom, waiting to turn on the light until she’d pulled the door shut behind her.

Staring into the mirror, she grabbed a handful of straw-blond hair and pulled it toward the ceiling, shrunken-head fashion. Blue eyes, normally bright, stared dully back beneath drooping lids. Her face was beginning to break out like a teenager, and she was getting a sty that would soon turn her into a squinty cyclops. The girls would really get a kick out of teasing her for that. Thankfully, her mother had agreed to take her granddaughters for a few nights while Rick tried to shake whatever this was that had him down.

She grabbed two aspirin from the medicine cabinet and swallowed them with a cup of water, grimacing at the pain in her throat. If this kept up Marta would have to ask her mother to watch the shop as well as the girls.

She looked at her watch—3:15—and mulled over the idea of going to the clinic. She knew she should — but nobody, least of all a wife and working mom of two teenagers, had time for that. Besides, she’d just had her forty-year checkup and been deemed, as her brother-in-law the doc joked, fit as a thirty-nine-year-old.

What she needed was a good, long sleep.

She saw the first sore when she reached to put the aspirin back in the cabinet. Gritting her teeth, she raised her arm to look in the mirror. A swollen red boil stared back like an angry eye. Two more bumps, red but in earlier stages, dotted her armpit.

“This is going to suck,” she muttered as she dabbed at the boils, feeling the fevered tenderness and tight pink skin. She hadn’t gone in the room with Rick when he’d had his treated the day before. The whole process of lancing a boil was just too medieval for her. She’d had her own experience with it shortly after the girls were born. That one had been much lower and more intimate than Rick’s. It involved an extremely painful and incredibly embarrassing procedure she’d hoped never to repeat — lying naked from the waist down, facedown on the table, while the doctor lanced and pinched her butt cheek to drain the awful thing. She remembered vividly the dull ache in her jaw from gritting her teeth and the perfect sweat imprint of her body on the paper cover of the exam table.

By the time Marta made it back to bed, Rick sounded as if he was trying to breathe through a clogged snorkel. She rolled up next to him, ignoring her own pain, and put an ear against his chest. Something wasn’t right. She’d never heard of boils being catchy like this — but they both had them. It sounded like Rick was getting pneumonia. And now, her throat was killing her.

CHAPTER 13

Shimoyama Takako took great pleasure in the simple, Zen-like design of the things that surrounded her. She had few friends, but at least two of the girls she knew as a child had mothers who practiced ikebana, the art of flower arrangement. That was well and good, but Shimoyama had found such an art constraining. There was so much more to arrange in the world than flowers.

She knelt in front of the low table in her spacious room, palms flat against the cool lacquered top. Her notebook was open, the ivory pen forming a perfect diagonal across its pages. Her metallic cell phone case and dangling fuzzy charm lay at the tip of her fingers, faceup. The design of it all was a work of wabi sabi—art and beauty in the mundane — and set Shimoyama’s heart at ease.

Taking a quick breath, she pressed a number into the phone. Someone of less focus might be tempted to toy with the gun when they were forced to make such a nerve-racking call. Shimoyama took comfort in the simple focus of looking at the weapon.

“Ah, Auntie,” the man said on the other end of the line. Her superior was exceedingly polite, if not actually kind. He’d once called her his lover. Now, it was auntie, if only to prove she no longer held her previous position. “I hope you have good news.”

“If you have a moment,” Shimoyama said, willing her voice not to crack — from sorrow more than nerves.

“Of course, Auntie,” the man said. She imagined him as a huge spider, beckoning with one of eight whiskered legs while he grinned at her from a dark corner. “Please, go ahead.”

Shimoyama licked her lips.

“The business with our mutual friend in Las Vegas did not go as planned.”

Though the man said nothing for some time, she could feel his mood darken over the phone.

“Yes,” he said, “I have heard that very thing.”

“The Pakistani was late in his arrival,” Shimoyama said. She took some solace in the fact that the blame did not rest entirely with her people. Her employer would surely have required more than a finger if that had been the case. “I fear Quinn had a very short window of time to speak with the American.” Shimoyama crossed off another note in her book with a perfectly straight line of black ink.

“What do you intend to do about him?”

“The Pakistani?” Shimoyama nodded to herself.

“Not the Pakistani,” her employer snapped. “I am speaking of Quinn. It will please me greatly, Auntie, if he were dead before nightfall.”

“These matters are fluid,” Shimoyama said, sounding more sure of herself than she was. “But I have another contact working on that as we speak.”

“I hope so, Takako-chan,” he said. “For your sake.”

Shimoyama’s heart leaped in her breast. Not because of the threat, but because he had called her by her given name, something he had not done since he had loved her, so many years before.

CHAPTER 14

Quinn stood beside a squat Japanese lamp carved of gray stone, watching. The contest, or more correctly, the spanking that Emiko Miyagi was giving Jacques Thibodaux, did little to take his mind off Kim.

Palmer had summoned him back to D.C. after the incident in Las Vegas with the curt order to go to Miyagi’s and wait for his call. Quinn hated waiting more than he hated neckties. It made him feel like a racehorse trapped in the gates. But wait he did, at Palmer’s order, and while he waited, he trained.

They’d already run several miles as a warm-up that morning. Chasing the sun, Miyagi called it, trying to run a prescribed course through the Mount Vernon neighborhoods before the sun peaked over the tree line to the east. Quinn was in excellent shape but never turned down the opportunity to rest during one of Mrs. Miyagi’s killer workouts. Apart from being entertained by the big Cajun’s swordplay, it gave him time to breathe — and think.

Kim wouldn’t be able to travel for several more days, so she and Mattie had stayed behind in Colorado. Before he left, Jericho made certain a full complement of security from OSI and the El Paso County Sheriff ’s Department surrounded them in concentric circles of security, each layer going outward bristling with progressively heavy weapons.

Quinn’s parents had flown in and that was what really calmed him. His mother had raised two of the wildest sons in Alaska and knew how to handle herself. In truth, she’d never been a huge Kim fan, but Mattie had won her over from the first moment she saw her in the hospital. Quinn’s father, a commercial fisherman, was an aloof, quiet man. He felt the good Lord had given him a finite number of words, so he did his best not to waste any of them. He was also the toughest human being Quinn had ever met. Even tough men could be killed, but it did Quinn’s heart good to know that his father was there, watching over things.

A rattling clash of wood on wood drew Quinn’s attention back to the moment. He watched as Miyagi chased the big Marine in a tight circle over the frosted grass.

The fact that Jacques only had one good eye made no difference to Emiko or the Marine. In battle, weakness had to be overcome or it brought defeat — and both of them knew it.

It would have been a mistake to call what Miyagi taught defensive tactics. Tactics they were, but due to the nature of their jobs, much of what she taught was offensive in nature — and no one Quinn had ever met was better than taking the battle to the enemy than Emiko Miyagi.

She’d dispensed with the more traditional martial arts uniforms, reasoning that they needed to learn to fight in the same clothing they wore in everyday life. In this case, that meant khaki slacks and polo shirts. Miyagi wore a long-sleeve Under Armour shirt beneath her polo, black to match the hair she kept pulled back in a high ponytail like some sort of medieval Mongol warrior. Thibodaux’s khakis, like Quinn’s, were stained at the knees and butt from repeated contact with the ground over the last half hour. The birds were just waking up in the surrounding oaks and sycamore trees and there was enough sun to give them light, but not nearly enough to chase away the clammy cold of a Potomac morning.

The big Cajun moved forward in his attack, feet sliding through the brown grass with a lightness that belied his mountainous size. Shouting a chilling war cry that was combination Marine Corps charge and martial arts ki-ai, Thibodaux brought the wooden sword crashing down toward the tip of Emiko Miyagi’s head.

Most anyone else would have wilted at such a ferocious attack, but Miyagi turned deftly to the side. Barely five feet tall, she was a mouse to the six-foot-four Cajun. In that same instant, she raised her own wooden sword so both hands were high above her head, letting the tip fall so her blade ran diagonally down her arm and shoulder, deflecting Thibodaux’s sword along its length toward the ground. Her movements were small, no greater than they needed to be, but were filled with such surety and force that her thick ponytail swung back and forth, brushing either side of her face as she moved.

Thibodaux leaned forward a hair farther than he should have as his sword hissed downward. Quinn grimaced, feeling pity for the big Cajun. He saw what was about to happen.

Keeping a high grip, Miyagi wheeled her sword in a great arc, bringing it up, then down, directly into Thibodaux’s centerline, before he could raise his again. She stopped an inch above his forehead.

“Shit!” Jacques said, freezing in place, his sword still pointed at the ground.

“Do not fret,” Miyagi said. “You would have felt little pain had it been a live blade instead of a bokken.”

“Yeah,” Thibodaux said. “That’s just what I wanted to hear. I know it’s supposed to help our footwork, but this Louisiana boy just don’t do swords.”

“You fight mixed martial arts.” Miyagi stepped back, sword held high and back at her shoulder like a baseball player in the batting box. “Add blade work to the mix.”

Thibodaux was in fact an MMA champion, fighting under the name Daux Boy.

He bowed, conceding defeat. “Thank you for the lesson.”

Miyagi’s agate-brown eyes shifted toward Quinn. It was the only cue that it was his turn to receive more instruction. They might rest. She never did.

“Do me a favor and kick her ass,” Thibodaux said under his breath as the two men passed. The Cajun slouched beside the stone lantern, nursing his wounded pride.

“Yes, Quinn-san,” Miyagi said. “Please. Show Mr. Muscleman how it is done.” The mysterious Japanese woman had taken to Quinn right off, but for some unknown reason, she had no love lost for Jacques.

Wooden bokken in hand, Quinn circled slowly, eyes intent on Emiko Miyagi.

“The objective,” Miyagi said, always teaching, “is to feel exactly where your blade is in relation to your body at all times.”

She strode forward, cutting down at Quinn. He used the same hands-high, tip-down technique she’d employed on Jacques to deflect the blade, first from an attack to his right, then immediate follow-up cuts to his left and then his right again. Wood cracked against wood, echoing off naked trees that surrounded the training area in Miyagi’s five-acre backyard, just a stone’s throw from Mount Vernon.

Apparently satisfied that he understood that particular block and the footwork that went with it, she retreated a few steps.

“When you scratch an itch,” she continued, her breath calm though she’d just tried to beat him to death with a stick, “you do not pause to think where your hand is located. You simply know. This is what you want with the blade. Notice I do not say the handle of your sword. I speak specifically of the blade. When you know where it is at all times, you may use it more effectively.”

She held her bokken low now in one hand and to her side so it trailed behind as if she was dragging it. She stood straight, hips loose and ready to move.

Quinn held his blade upward, a mirror image of hers. It was a technique she’d taught them called tsuki no kage or moon shadow, where the opponents mimic each other’s movements, looking for an opening.

Eyes fixed on each other, the two circled slowly, feet shuffling in the dead grass of winter in Miyagi’s walled retreat. She’d been training both men for a year and a half now, knocking off rough edges and filling in blanks left by traditional instructors.

The life of a hunter-killer had taught Quinn to be a natural skeptic, but he’d learned enough from this five-foot-tall, 115-pound enigma that if she said she could teach him how to fly, he would put his faith in her and jump off the roof. He had, of course, been beaten over the course of his fighting career, but not nearly so often and with as much consistency as Miyagi had been able to do it.

Thibodaux pointed out after one of their sessions that a hundred pounds of the woman was badass muscle — and fifteen was fighting heart.

Miyagi advanced without warning, bringing her sword around to thrust at his belly.

Quinn stepped to the side, seizing the opportunity to bring his blade down in an attack of his own now that she had committed herself.

Instead of countering, Miyagi continued her forward attack, striding past so she was directly behind Quinn. His sword hissed by her, missing by a fraction of an inch. He raised his arms to attack again as he turned, but he felt her spin behind him, grabbing his shoulders with both hands to swing her feet and legs upward and under his raised armpit. Her thighs clamped around his neck, muscular buttocks in the air. Her body hung straight down in front of him. He tried to raise his blade, but she swatted it away. With Miyagi inside his guard, there was little he could do with the cumbersome long sword. She bore down with her thighs, squeezing as he spun to throw her before she cut off all the blood to his brain. A half breath later, her wooden dagger touched the ribs under his heart.

He tapped her back to let her know he realized she had won. Her rump would have been more convenient, but he thought she might have used the dagger to greater effect had he tapped her there. She relaxed her legs and dropped to the grass, rolling to her feet with her wooden sword still in one hand, a wooden dagger in the other.

“Please remember,” she said as she stood, “just because you hold a sword, does not mean it is the only weapon you can use to win the battle.” Her voice was calm, absent the breathlessness even Quinn felt after such a bout.

Quinn bowed and walked over to Thibodaux to grab a drink from his water bottle.

“I told you to kick her ass”—the Cajun frowned—“not let her strangle you with it.”

The morning held on to its chill but Miyagi and both men were bathed in sweat.

She kept them going from the moment they arrived back at her house. Most of the training occurred on the five acres of traditional Japanese garden that was tucked in the hardwood forests behind the house, all of it surrounded by high walls of imposing gray stone.

After sparring and prior to yoga, Miyagi had changed into black tights and long-sleeve leotard of the same color. The men wore loose T-shirts and running shorts.

Inverted now in a yoga headstand, Miyagi craned her neck to look up at her two charges, brown eyes glinting in approval when they landed on Quinn but going dark when they fell on Thibodaux. Neither man was sure how old she was. She had the force of will common to mature women, a teacher who’d learned much in all her years, but her smooth complexion and physical vigor suggested she was much younger. When they sparred, Quinn guessed she was in her mid-thirties. When she spoke of strategy and combat philosophy, he thought she might very well have been a contemporary of Miyamoto Musashi, the sixteenth-century Japanese swordsman.

Emiko Miyagi had a way of tailoring each workout to coax out the last drop of sweat. Swimming, running, sparring, more running, and more sparring generally took up at least two hours before she settled in to her favorite pastime of contorting their bodies into complicated and often painful yoga positions.

It would, she assured them, train their bodies and minds to be more resilient and aware. Quinn had to admit that he seemed to heal a little faster since he’d taken up the training.

Generally, the yoga portion of their morning saw her leading them through a vinyasa—or series of poses that flowed from one to the other on measured breaths. But, above all other poses, Miyagi preferred a variation on sirsasana, a headstand on her forearms with her back arched and knees bent so her feet were poised directly above her head. Thibodaux called it the Evil Scorpion and groused about it to no end, coming close, but never quite getting it right.

Inverted like Miyagi and Thibodaux, Quinn should have been clearing his mind. Instead, he let it wander.

So far, Winfield Palmer had avoided talking to him. There was no doubt the national security advisor was upset. Quinn had screwed up and become embroiled with local authorities. The Speaker of the House was in serious condition — though his wounds were far less serious than Quinn had supposed — and Palmer had been forced to call Vegas Metro PD and the governor of Nevada in order to smooth their seriously ruffled feathers.

“Very well,” Miyagi whispered, pulling Quinn out of his thoughts and signaling the end to the morning torture.

Bending gracefully at the waist, she lowered her feet to the grass and stood before the two men, waiting for them to do the same. She arched her back, looking up toward the sky so the dark corner of a hidden tattoo peeked above the scoop neck of her leotard. The mysterious ink had been at the center of many a discussion led by Thibodaux in late-night camps in various corners of the world. Neither man could tell what it was, only catching glimpses during workouts — and neither wanted to be caught staring at this badass woman’s chest. Quinn never would hazard a guess. Thibodaux, keeping his thought process streamlined, decided it was an evil scorpion — just like the yoga pose he couldn’t do.

“Thank you for your work.” She bowed deeply in turn to each man. Her voice held only the slightest hint of a Japanese accent. “Quinn-san,” she added, turning toward him. “Mr. Palmer would like to have a word with you on the telephone, but he won’t be available for another twenty minutes. May I suggest you both take advantage of the traditional bath while you wait.”

“I got a school thing with the kids,” Thibodaux said, situating his eye patch. “Camille insists I go when I’m anywhere near home.”

“As you wish,” Miyagi said.

Quinn sighed at the thought of a long soak. The prospect of a traditional Japanese bath sounded inviting. Mrs. Miyagi had allowed him to use it before, and he found the wood-fired cedar tub a cure-all for many ills physical and mental. What he did not look forward to was the talk with Palmer. The national security advisor had been unavailable since the incident in Las Vegas. Quinn, accustomed to direct access to his boss, had felt cut off and even a little betrayed at the isolation. Now, after the emotional dust had settled and he was able to see what a scene he’d made on who knew how many cameras, he was certain the conversation would be even more one-sided than usual.

CHAPTER 15

Both Quinn and Thibodaux had lived at Emiko Miyagi’s home for a time when they’d first been tapped by Winfield Palmer to work as Other Governmental Agents. Quinn was familiar with the layout as well as the woman’s love for the austere when it came to furnishings. Though the outer brick façade of the home had changed little over the two centuries since it had been built, the interior had been completely gutted and replaced with tatami grass mats, white pine beams, and sliding paper doors.

The bath area was off to the side of the rear patio and — as all traditional baths — located far from the toilet. It was enclosed in a ten-by-ten cedar room with benches and hooks along the inside wall like a pool house. A sliding cedar door led from a lower alcove that contained a shelf stacked with folded white towels used to both wash and dry. Quinn left his running shoes in a small wooden cubby above the floor.

Japanese baths were often social locations, a place to share gossip as well as to clean oneself. Two cedar stools were situated under a row of water spigots, low and easy to reach when seated. The round tub beside the spigots was built from cedar slats and resembled an oversize barrel that had been cut in half. At nearly six feet across, it dominated the steamy room.

Stripping naked, Quinn left his sweats and T-shirt on a cedar shelf over one of the benches inside the sliding door. The faint hint of smoke from an oak fire drifted through the humid air, mingling with the smells of soap and scorched minerals from pipes that heated the near scalding water. Quinn sat in front of the spigots with a bar of soap and a wooden bowl. The stool was small, like something meant for a child, but it got the job done. Though a long soak was traditional, it was customary to scrub until your skin was pink before entering the tub, leaving the water clean enough for the next person to use as well.

Quinn finished washing and fed a length of split oak into the wood-fired heater box. He’d just slipped into the steaming water when his phone rang on the bleached wooden table next to the tub.

Winfield Palmer began talking as soon as Quinn picked up the call.

“I gotta ask,” Palmer began his rant. “Do you have any idea what kind of a shit storm you’ve ignited with your little stunt? Every news outlet in the country is filing Freedom of Information Act requests for the casino security camera footage that shows you trying to drown a man before someone else blows his brains out.”

“As far as they know it was a man who shot the Speaker of the House,” Quinn said, half to himself. He was not the type to try very hard to explain his actions. He slid down so only his head and the shoulders were above the surface.

“One of the men who shot Drake,” Palmer said, as if he had the winning card. “And a lot of good you did. Thanks to you, Drake is back at his residence and demanding answers.”

“He’s out of the hospital?” Quinn sat back up in the water, wiping beads of perspiration out of his face. This was news.

“Yes,” Palmer said. “Shot twice in the chest, but neither bullet got close to anything vital. He did lose a toe in the shootout and, oddly enough, he also had a small-caliber wound through the bottom of his foot. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

Quinn chose his words carefully. “Do you remember when we met?” he asked.

“Of course,” Palmer said, momentarily stumped by the sudden question during his tongue-lashing.

“Your sister’s boy had been kidnapped in Iraq. I was sent in to get him back and… take care of things.”

“I said I remember,” Palmer snapped. “What’s your point?”

“You and I both know Hartman Drake murdered his wife. We know he was intimately connected to a terrorist organization that tried to kill the president and the VP. Someone connected to this man tried to shoot my little girl and ended up nearly killing my wife. You said it yourself before I went to Vegas. There is something bigger than an attempt on my family going on here. You are strategy, I’m tactics. I get that. But if all this had happened to someone else, you would have sent me.” Quinn plowed ahead, not giving Palmer a chance to speak.

“Point taken,” Palmer said.

“What are we going to do about Drake?”

“I’m working on that,” Palmer said. “He’s become a media darling again — attacked twice by terrorists and survived. The conspiracy blogs have fuzzy photos of you in Vegas from a half dozen tourists’ smartphones. Some call you a government agent; others have branded you one of the terrorists.”

“I can’t help that now,” Quinn said. “But I can find this Japanese girl and get some answers from her.” He kept the Foo Dog information to himself for the moment.

“All right,” Palmer snapped. “Just do us all a favor and keep your head down. Listen, I’ve got to go. We have some kind of plague outbreak in southern Utah. That’s not too far from Vegas. You don’t have anything to do with it, do you?”

“I do not,” Quinn said, feeling worse than he had before the call. “I’d better let you get to it.”

He reached over the edge of the tub and dropped the phone on the wooden table beside his towel before letting his back slide down the slick cedar boards of the tub. The slightest movement brought prickling pain in the near scalding water. He welcomed the feeling, hoping the heat and sweat would purge his body and his mind.

He closed his eyes and breathed in the heavy scent of the oak fire and mineral odor of steam. A whisper-like rustling at the sliding door caused them to flick open.

He sat up straighter, ignoring the burn at his movement, and wiped a hand across his face when he saw the form of Emiko Miyagi through the cloudy haze. She stood in front of the curtains that blocked the doorway as if waiting for permission to enter her own bath.

Quinn wasn’t uncomfortable with his own nudity. Miyagi had seen him naked before, when she and Thibodaux had rescued him from three of Doctor Badeeb’s men. But there was something oddly out of place about this visit. Japanese baths were often communal, but in the year and a half since he’d known her, Miyagi had drawn a strict line between teacher and student, remaining ever aloof and distinct.

She tilted her head to one side, studying the situation before she committed herself by stepping fully into the room. Dark hair fell in damp strands, dripping against the indigo cloth of a cotton summer kimono, known as a yukata. It was printed with large white chrysanthemums as big as a fist. A bright red sash wrapped around her narrow waist. Her face was flushed, presumably from a hot shower of her own before she was to enter the bath.

“I apologize.” Quinn grabbed his towel from the nearby table and started to get out of the tub. “You expected me to be finished with my bath by now.”

Miyagi raised her hand to stop him.

“It is quite all right, Quinn-san,” she said. Her voice was soft and matter of fact, as if she did not want to mar the contemplative mood of the bath. “Please, wait a moment longer if you do not mind.”

Jericho settled back into the water.

“I…” She paused, taking a tiny step forward, her hands clasped at her waist. The wet hair and bright kimono made her look girlish, more feminine and fragile than he knew her to actually be. “In light of all that has happened…” She nodded, moving forward again. Her steps were small, constrained by the tight kimono. “… I feel that I must tell you a story.”

She stood a mere two feet from the tub now, close enough that Quinn could see the slight tremor in her lips.

“I believe it will explain much that you need to know.” Her hands moved behind her back. “But it will also produce many questions. It is a story of youth and heartbreak — of violence and death.”

Quinn, who was surprised by little in the world, let his mouth fall open when Miyagi drew away the red sash and let the kimono slip from her shoulders and fall to the floor.

Completely nude, she gave a shuddering sigh, fragile, and completely out of her normal character.

“It is a story of my tattoo.”

CHAPTER 16

The cell phone in the breast pocket of Governor Lee McKeon’s camelhair blazer began to vibrate the moment he cut into his French toast at the Sassy Onion. He considered ignoring it. His breakfast mate, the president of Willamette University, had a lot of powerful and, more important, wealthy friends who were potential political backers. It wouldn’t do to snub him by answering a cell phone.

“Go ahead and take that, Lee,” the bow tie — wearing academic said around a mouthful of bread and syrup. “I’m sure it’s important gubernatorial business.” It was he who’d insisted they have the French toast. What else would one order for breakfast at the Sassy Onion?

McKeon thanked him for his understanding and answered without getting up, though he knew that would severely hamper his side of the conversation. Since the call was international, it would likely be monitored by one of the alphabet-soup government agencies anyway. The phone was a burner, purchased at a convenience store in Portland. Ranjhani would have a similar device that he’d picked up in Lahore. Everyone expected a governor to have more than one phone, so even his aides didn’t give him a second look.

“Yes,” McKeon said.

“Peace be unto you,” Qasim Ranjhani said.

“And to you,” McKeon said in English.

“Can you talk?”

“Yes, for a moment,” McKeon said.

“Very well,” Ranjhani gave a long nasal breath. “I believe we should meet to discuss a few options.”

“I’m not sure that is advisable,” the governor said. “There are a lot of delicate issues with that project.” Though it was no secret that his biological father hailed from the subcontinent, the last thing McKeon needed was for some photo of him with an unknown Pakistani to end up on the Internet. Americans loved to showcase their minority candidates as long as they associated with the correct sort of people.

“As you wish,” Ranjhani said. “Your father would be very proud of you, you know. We are going to change the course of history.”

“I look forward to it.”

Governor McKeon ended the call. His hand shook as he cut into the French toast. He tried to keep up his side of the conversation with the university president, but all he could think about were the words Qasim Ranjhani had spoken. The course of history would indeed make a sharp bend and he, Lee McKeon, would be at the forefront. McKeon smiled as he swallowed the sweet toast and syrup. He would be a good son, and, Allah willing, see his father’s plan to the glorious finish.

CHAPTER 17

Doctor Todd Elton peeled off blue nitrile gloves, using the thumb of one to pull off the other so they ended up in a neat, self-contained ball without the outside of either ever touching his skin. He let them fall into the red infectious-materials bag lining the bin in the corner, then scrubbed his hands in the exam room sink.

A serious runner with seven marathons under his belt, Elton was slender with a mischievous glint in his eyes and the deep dimples of someone who smiled in his sleep.

He did not remove his protective glasses — meant to keep any errant fluids out of his eyes — and spoke over his shoulder while he washed. His scrubbing and speaking were more animated than usual.

“Well, okay, Mrs. Johnson,” he said, working the Betadine soap into a thick lather all the way up to his elbows. “Sorry about causing you so much pain there.” He pushed his glasses back with his shoulder, hoping his patient didn’t notice the sweat beading on his forehead.

Draining a boil on an elderly woman’s neck was not unknown to him in his nineteen years of medical practice — but treating so many people for the same such sores in one day was like something out of a horror movie. Surely this was a record. And no boil he’d ever treated had a sore throat associated with it. He had already lanced three boils for his brother-in-law and then sent him home with a prescription for a steroid inhaler that the doctor hoped would ease his labored breathing. A half hour before Mrs. Johnson arrived, Bedford’s army buddy, R.J., had come in with six of the cursed little boils. And that had just been the beginning.

“It’s okay, Doctor Todd.” The sweet little woman coughed into a crumpled white tissue. She weighed less than a hundred pounds and couldn’t have been five feet tall from her bunioned feet to the top of her perfectly quaffed silver-blue hair. “I’ve felt worse pains, I suppose.” She gave a tremulous chuckle. “Though I can’t remember when at this very moment.”

Elton dried his hands on a paper towel and then looked down at the red bag filled with medical lances and gauze covered with blood and gore. It was a struggle to resist the urge to keep scrubbing his hands until they were raw.

He turned to face his patient, keeping a good distance between them. “We’ll get you a prescription for some antibiotics. I’m going to go ahead and treat you for MRSA, just in case you’ve got one of the nastier bugs. The culture will take about three—”

Brandy, his PA, knocked on the door and then opened it without waiting for an answer. Her purple scrubs were visible through the narrow crack.

“Can I see you a moment, Doctor?”

Elton forced a smile, relieved to have an excuse to escape the confines of the exam room. “I’ll just be a minute, Mrs. Johnson.”

The old woman gave a polite nod and he pulled the door shut behind him.

Brandy’s round face was ashen. “There are two more in the waiting room now.”

“Seriously?” Elton stared blankly at the wall. “That makes—”

“Your brother-in-law came in yesterday. You’ve done nine already since we opened. Four more have come in over the last twenty minutes.” Brandy rolled full lips into a white line. “This is just too weird.”

The doctor gave an exhausted sigh. “I’ll give Public Health a call…” As lead physician at both the Kane County Hospital and Clinic it was his responsibility to ensure all necessary protocols were followed when it came to the outbreak of a contagious disease — something he’d never had to face in his small, southern Utah town.

Brandy followed close behind as Elton made his way down the bright hall to his office, as if she were afraid to be left alone. Donita, the records clerk, glanced up as they passed her office. A worried half grin crossed her face. Everyone could tell this was no ordinary day at the clinic.

The public health hotline picked up on the second ring. Instead of helping him with his problem, the harried woman on the other end said she would need to transfer him. A half second later, someone from the Centers for Disease Control answered.

He put his hand over the receiver and looked at Brandy. “Odd,” he whispered. “They’ve transferred me to the CDC.” He turned back to his conversation. “Yes, this is Todd Elton in Kanab, Utah… No, K… A… N… Yes, Kanab. Anyway, I’m a family practice physician and…” He took a deep breath. “We have a bit of a situation I’d like to run by you—” He nodded, though talking on the phone and the woman on the other end had no idea he was nodding. She asked a series of questions, callback numbers, physical address, number of people involved, all likely off a predetermined checklist kept beside the hotline telephone.

“Yes,” Elton answered at length. “Well, it’s an acute outbreak of feverish boils around the groin, armpit, and neck. There’s been one male patient but it generally appears to be affecting women… Yes, fourteen total so far… Yes, I’m running cultures—”

He sat silently for a moment, listening, perfectly still but for his eyes that kept darting between Brandy and his desk.

Elton shook his head, grimacing at Brandy as if he’d just heard something odd. “Yes,” he said. “As a matter of fact one of the patients is a soldier. All right, I understand.”

He hung up. “Get this,” he said, taking a deep breath, “they were already working on it.”

“How’d they know about us?” Brandy crinkled her forehead.

“Not us,” Elton said. “I guess there are cases popping up in other places.”

Brandy caught her breath. “What other places?”

“I was talking to a government agency.” Elton chuckled, trying to relieve the tension he felt in his gut. “She was not extremely forthcoming with that information.”

“What are we supposed to do?”

Elton toyed with the notepad where he’d written the number for CDC. “The lady said she’d call right back. But I get the feeling they are sending someone to take over.”

CHAPTER 18

The tiny edge of the hidden tattoo that had plagued Quinn and Thibodaux for the last year and a half was actually the beginning of a design that covered virtually every inch of Miyagi’s torso.

Brilliant splashes of black, orange, pink, and green started at her shoulders like cap sleeves and worked their way down. An orange carp, or koi, covered much of her back, swimming beneath fallen pink cherry blossoms. The image of a gaudily made-up courtesan adorned the ribs and hip of her left side, completely covering her buttock and thigh. The opposite side of her body was graced by the goddess Kwannon, who faced inward, as if staring into her soul.

Her upper chest around her collarbone and a four-inch line of flesh running down the center of her body remained un-inked, making it possible for her to wear shirts open at the neck and even her workout leotards without revealing the presence of a tattoo. Only the tiniest black outline of a cherry blossom sometimes peeked out on the swell of her breast.

Her head bowed demurely, chin pressed against her chest, Emiko brought her leg over the side of the tub in a movement that reminded Quinn of ballet. The steam parted as her foot pierced the surface. Water shimmered like quicksilver, lapping at the taut muscles of her belly, just below her navel.

She stood perfectly still.

The musky scent of her body drifting over the superheated water made Quinn feel as though he’d been drugged. He found it impossible to tear his eyes away. Apparently wanting him to look, she kept her hands at her waist, turning in a slow revolution before she settled into the bath. Only her head and shoulders were left exposed.

Her body was the canvas for an incredibly intricate work of art. The fact that Quinn had known her for so long without any idea such a thing was there only added to the mystery.

Miyagi kept her face down, toward the water. Her wet hair hung in a sort of protective curtain, concealing her eyes but not her emotions.

“Many servicemen get tattoos,” she said, finally breaking the silence. “I have often wondered at the fact that you do not have any.”

“I’ve thought about it,” Quinn said, surprised at how dry his mouth was. “But I started working outside the wire, posing as an Arab, early in my career, so it seemed advisable to keep my skin unidentifiable.”

“That is a good choice,” she said. “One that will hopefully keep your skin intact as well.” Her chest shook with a nervous chuckle. “I think Americans would consider my tattoo hideous, no?”

“It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks,” Quinn said. His voice was throaty and hoarse. He opened his mouth, but could not think of another worthwhile word to say.

Miyagi looked up, her eyes probing to know what he thought of her. “Do you know how we begin a tale of long ago in Japan?”

Quinn gave a quiet nod. “Of course. Mukashi, mukashi—once upon a time…”

The tiniest of smiles parted Miyagi’s lips. She was close enough that Quinn could almost feel her breath across the water. She trembled slightly as she spoke. Her shoulders, which had always been so powerful during their lessons, softened and seemed to melt into the water. She tilted her head, ebony hair trailing the surface of the bath.

“Well then,” she whispered. Steam swirled around her face. “Mukashi, mukashi, when I was a little girl, my father was a yakuza underboss, second only to the oyabun. My father was a powerful man, respected by his peers and the many men who worked for him. His name was Yamada Senzo and he was an expert at kendo and tameshigiri.” She looked at Quinn to see if he understood. “Do you know tameshigiri?”

Quinn nodded. He’d practiced the art of cutting with a functional Japanese sword — some of his targets considerably more realistic than others.

Miyagi continued her story. “You may know that the yakuza were originally gamblers. Even the name ya-ku-za comes from the term for eight-nine-three, a losing hand in a Japanese card game. Some call them rogues and thieves, but to my father’s mind, the yakuza had an ancient samurai ethic. He trained me in all things according to the martial way from the time I was old enough to walk. We were very close, he and I.

“Unfortunately, when I was thirteen years of age, he became very ill. Wicked men, men who had sworn oaths to support him, schemed instead behind his back and took everything he had. In his weakness, he could not fight them. He died a broken man, leaving my mother overwhelmed with crushing debt. There was nothing she could do but take up house with another yakuza lieutenant.”

Miyagi looked up suddenly, pained eyes locked on Quinn. Tendons knotted along her delicate neck. The tip of her tongue quivered against her lips. “It is here, when I began life on the street, that my story, the story that is relevant to you, begins…”

CHAPTER 19

Yamada Emiko had the stomped look of a girl with a broken heart — but she knew how to fight.

“Choke! Choke! Choke!” The chant rose from the darkness in the deserted train tracks behind the vacant box factory. The empty shell of broken windows was a precursor of the economic slump that would soon strike Japan’s industry and powerful markets, but the fighting youth knew nothing of that. To them, the vacant building offered a place to hide from the crushing conformity society tried to push on them.

Locked on the gravel in a deadly embrace with her opponent, Emiko puffed her hollow cheeks and reared back, catching the other girl’s throat in the V of her bent arm. Chiyo was new to the group. Still well fed from her parent’s table, she had Emiko by thirty pounds — but that didn’t matter.

Emiko grasped her own forearm with the opposite hand, pulling tighter, her body settling in next to her opponent. Each time Chiyo moved, Emiko adjusted her grip, squeezing the life out of her like a constricting snake. One leg entwined the other girl’s ankles, keeping her from kicking free or turning around.

Chiyo gurgled, struggling to draw a breath. Her hands clawed at the arm that wrapped around her neck, trying in vain to pry it away. Emiko let her wrist nestle in next to the hollow of the other girl’s neck, as her father had taught her. She bent it just enough to drive the base of her thumb against her opponent’s carotid artery, stopping the flow of blood to her brain and putting her to sleep almost instantly.

Emiko dropped the unconscious Chiyo like a piece of garbage, then raised her hands above her head and gave a bloodcurdling scream. Victory meant money, which meant food — and maybe even a little sake.

Her peroxide-red hair was chopped as if with a pair of garden shears and stood out at different lengths in all directions. In a country that valued conformity, such a haircut on a young woman was the equivalent of spitting in the face of her elders. It did not matter to her. Emiko had no elders to spit on.

She’d cut away the neckline of her pink Hello Kitty sweatshirt in order to expose a budding cleavage. Kenichi hated for other boys to look at her that way but didn’t mind taking a peek himself. Besides, it gave him a reason to be jealous. Emiko enjoyed the feeling of being fought over, especially if muscular Kenichi with his James Dean pompadour, tight white T-shirt, and black leather jacket was the one doing the fighting.

Life had been hard enough after her father died in debt, but then her mother had taken up house with the filthy yakuza underboss, Sato, who seemed to be a lot more interested in Emiko than he was her mother.

Looking back, Emiko should have killed him, but she knew little of such things at the time.

At first she’d stayed with girlfriends from school, but when their parents discovered that she was the daughter of a dead yakuza lieutenant, they politely but firmly told her it would be best if she found somewhere else to lay her head. She’d slept in a park the first night — almost five months before — next to a crazy homeless woman who thought Emiko was a pet goat. The fact that she’d abandoned life, coupled with her ability to fight, made the bosozoku street tribes a natural place for the young girl to eventually land.

Now gaunt from malnutrition, too little sleep, and too much alcohol, her collarbones stretched against pale skin as if they wanted to escape. Her fingernails were dirty and broken. Grime ringed the cuffs of her pink sweatshirt.

Kenichi urged her to eat more, begged her to quit fighting, even promising to clean up his act and get a job as a mechanic so they could get married.

Marriage. Emiko scoffed, looking at the muscular boy across the unconscious body of her latest opponent. Marriage was too big a word to comprehend for a girl who didn’t expect to live to see her fourteenth birthday. Apart from her feelings for Kenichi, she didn’t even care.

The greasy bookie who’d set up the fight with the new girl handed Emiko her money, a measly five thousand yen — roughly twenty-five American dollars — to risk a broken neck.

“Sagara wants to see you,” the bookie grunted. He stuffed a wad of bills into the pocket of his canvas trousers that looked to have been doused in motor oil.

Kenichi’s strong arm snaked around Emiko’s shoulders, drawing her close. “Tell him she is busy tonight,” he said. “Come on, Emi-chan. I got the motorcycle fixed. Let’s go for a ride across the riv—”

The bookie gave Kenichi a hard cuff to the ear. “Idiot!” he spat. “No one tells Sagara they are busy. He will tell you if you are busy or not.”

Kenichi shucked off his leather jacket, always spoiling for a fight. Emiko had been his girlfriend long enough to know that no one could hit him in the head and get away without a beating, least of all a greasy old man.

Sagara’s acid voice barked from across the tracks, stopping the boy in midswing. He was a thick man, nearly as wide as he was tall, with a big belly and fat cheeks that pushed his eyes closed from the bottom when he smiled, which was usually at the expense of someone else’s misfortune.

“Oi!” He grunted, nodding to the slouching man at his left who held a black pistol, half hidden in the darkness. “Can I buy you two a hot meal or should I have Tomiyuki-kun put a bullet in your worthless brains?”

Kenichi spun at the new threat. Fists doubled, he stood on the balls of his feet. Emiko’s father had taught her about men like Sagara. She knew it would be bad strategy to fight such a person in face-to-face combat. He was yakuza, like her father had been — too powerful, too connected for mere teenagers to beat in an open fight.

She patted Kenichi’s arm to calm him and then put on her helpless-child voice. It was another strategy taught to her by her late father.

“Why would a powerful man such as Sagara-sama want to feed two worthless brains like ours?” She bowed low.

“Because I do not want you for your brains,” Sagara growled. “Come. I have curry rice. You can eat in the car on the way.”

It was generally easy to bribe a starving soul with meat, but Emiko stood her ground. Sagara reeked of evil. She could smell it even from across the tracks.

“If not for our brains, what then?” Emiko said. “I am no prostitute.”

Sagara roared with laughter, elbowing his man, Tomiyuki. “As if anyone would want to take your scrawny body.” He rubbed his eyes. “There are those in my organization who have noticed you when you fight. We believe it may be time to see if you are ready to move up to bigger things.”

Emiko had heard of such yakuza-sponsored events. They were still underground, but the money was said to be better — and sometimes they even arranged an apartment for their fighters to live in — so long as they kept winning.

She shot a wary glance at Kenichi, who shrugged. Curry rice was his favorite. He pitched the keys for his customized Honda to a boy named Tsuchiya, asking him to watch the bike while they were gone, then turned back to Emiko.

“What can it hurt to talk to them?” Kenichi said.

Two minutes later, Emiko was crammed in the back of the dark sedan, squeezed in between Kenichi and the leering Sagara. Streetlights flashed red and amber as they thumped along the main road going south, out of town. The lights grew more infrequent as they left the city, throwing the interior of the car into near darkness, illuminated only by the green glow of the dashboard and the red ember at the end of Sagara’s stinking cigar.

The inside of the Toyota Crown smelled like cheap aftershave and tobacco smoke. Kenichi, always looking for sources of protein so he could grow muscles like his hero Arnold Schwarzenegger, wolfed down all his curry and much of Emiko’s when she said she was finished. A familiar gnawing at her stomach pushed away hunger. Her father had called the feeling haragei, the art of the belly, and told her she should pay attention to it. These feelings would, he said, warn her of danger.

As they sped up on a long section of highway out of the city, the gnawing in her stomach grew so strong she almost cried out. In the front seat, Tomiyuki smoked one cigarette after the other while he drove. Even in the darkness of the sedan, Emiko could see the young lieutenant was missing the last joints on the pinky and ring fingers of his left hand — evidence of two fairly significant misdeeds he’d had to atone for. Sagara folded his stubby arms across a great belly and looked down at her with a squinty, condescending grin.

Emiko closed her eyes to escape the man and tried to go to sleep. She should never have gotten in that car.

She woke up sometime later to a slowing motion of the car. Her head was resting on Sagara’s shoulder. It took a moment for her to realize where she was, but as the smells and sounds came back to her, she gave a startled shudder and sat straight up. Sagara smiled down at her as if he’d never moved his squinting eyes. Kenichi was still asleep, a line of drool running from his mouth to his T-shirt. She nudged him with her foot. He woke up blinking wildly, just as startled as she had been at finding himself in an unfamiliar place.

The low rays of a morning sun crawled across the pavement in front of them, chasing a thick blanket of mist back into the tall pines that lined the road.

A stone wall, like the ones Emiko had seen around feudal castles, stood on either side of the road ahead of them. Tomiyuki slowed the Toyota as two massive wooden gates yawned open. The gates shut behind them as soon as they drove through, and Emiko found herself surrounded by manicured gardens, koi ponds, and squat stone lanterns. Arched Shinto torii gates straddled well-groomed gravel paths. Huge stone monoliths rose here and there at least fifteen feet into the air. She could see several buildings tucked back in the trees, but their dark wooden architecture made them blend in to become part of their natural surroundings.

Tomiyuki stopped the sedan and turned to his boss with a subservient nod.

Outside, a smiling man wearing a white judo gi under dark blue hakama—a type of loose, flowing pant worn by ancient samurai — waited on the newly mown grass with folded arms. A rich head of dark hair was conservatively short, like that of a Japanese businessman. Though he smiled at the new arrivals, the man’s dark eyes held the flint-hard air of one accustomed to being in complete control of his surroundings.

The man bowed deeply when Sagara approached, both hands flat against the sides of his hakama.

The yakuza boss returned the bow, rising quickly to motion Emiko forward with a flick of his thick wrist.

“Come, come,” he grunted, commanding her in low tones, as if she were a dog.

Tomiyuki gave her a rough shove from behind to hurry her up. She turned to glare at him and saw that he carried a wooden case like the one her father had used to transport his cutting swords. She shot a worried glance at Kenichi, who stretched his muscular arms skyward and yawned, still not comprehending exactly where he was.

Sagara gestured toward the man in the hakama with an open hand. “Like I told you,” he said, “you have been noticed as a possible fighter. Oda sensei is going to see what you are made of.”

Emiko found herself bowing before she realized what she was doing, transfixed by the man’s dark eyes. The other bosozoku would have laughed her out of the gang.

The man called Oda looked at her, seeming to gaze past her eyes to study the back of her skull. She squirmed awkwardly at the intrusion, feeling as if she was being physically touched.

“Are we to stay here?” she asked.

“Not so fast.” Sagara laughed. “Oda-san doesn’t just take on any student who comes along. You must be tested first.” He snapped his sausage-like fingers, summoning Tomiyuki up with the case. The yakuza soldier set the case on the ground and clicked the latches, folding it open to reveal two gleaming wakizashi, shorter versions of a samurai sword. Each was two feet long and finely appointed with intricate guards and stingray-skin handle wrappings.

Tomiyuki handed one of the swords to Sagara with both hands, holding it out in front of him as if it might bite.

The yakuza boss took the blade and passed it to Emiko. “What do you think?” he asked, giving her time to peruse the glinting steel.

“It is beautiful,” she said, her voice hushed. Indeed the sword looked to be hundreds of years old and still hummed with a life force that could not be denied.

“Good,” Sagara said, stepping back slightly. He nodded behind her. “Let’s see what you and your friend are made of.”

Emiko recoiled, lowering the blade. A rush of adrenaline surged through her and she saw a wan-faced Kenichi holding the other sword. He stood directly behind her, less than five feet away.

“I cannot fight Kenichi with a live blade.” Her words dripped with disdain. “One of us could be killed.” She made no mention of the fact that with the training she’d received at the hand of her father, the one killed would most certainly be Kenichi.

The man in the hakama watched silently, motionless.

“You have no choice,” Sagara said. He licked his lips, excited at the prospect of blood. “The two of you must fight and show us what you can do.”

“And what if I say no?” Brave, sweet Kenichi let his sword fall to the grass. “I will not fight my girlfriend.”

Sagara nodded to Tomoyuki, who stepped in behind Kenichi and put a pistol to the boy’s head.

“I am Sagara Hiroya, underboss of the Taniguchi yakuza family,” he growled. “People do not tell me no!”

Emiko moved before she thought, spinning with the sword extended at the end of an outstretched arm. The last six inches of the razor-sharp blade caught the yakuza boss under the left ear and opened his neck, throwing his fat head back like an oversized PEZ candy dispenser. A fountain of blood arced upward, painting Emiko, who was still spinning, swinging the blade toward Tomoyuki. She heard the report of the pistol that killed Kenichi but brought the wakizashi around a split second later to take Tomoyuki’s hand and then his head in the fluid motion. Drenched in blood, she took the sword in both hands and turned to face the still gurgling Sagara.

“No!” she spat, a heartbeat before something heavy struck the back of her head and her world went black.

CHAPTER 20

For a time the only sound in Miyagi’s bath was the tick of expanding metal on the woodstove. Quinn didn’t speak. Revelations like this called for silent support, not talk. The longer he looked at the tattoo, the more scars he noticed on Miyagi’s body. And the more he listened to her story, the more he realized there were some scars that went much deeper than her skin.

“I knew I could not save Kenichi.” Miyagi’s reflection rippled on the surface as she continued her story. Her tattoo seemed to dance and sway, visible in the clear water. “But I had to kill Sagara as my last act of defiance. As it happened, unbeknownst to the fat yakuza boss, that was the test that Oda had planned all along. When I awoke a few hours later, I found myself as if transported back in time. I lay covered with luxurious silk quilts with my head on a pillow filled with buckwheat chaff. Oda knelt beside me, mopping my forehead tenderly with a cool cloth. He told me he was sorry Kenichi had died but said I had done the right thing, which is to say the thing he would have done. I was to stay with him and become his student. I told him I did not want to be his student, but he explained that the choice was not mine to make. When I asked him what he would do if I told him no as I had told the fool Sagara, he merely laughed and said he fully expected me to try to kill him many times before I understood the value of my training with the Kuroi Kiri—the Black Mist.”

Miyagi rolled her lips, gathering her arms to her chest in sudden embarrassment. “The stories of an old woman are certainly a bore,” she said. “I am sorry to burden you with them, Quinn-san, but I do have my reasons.”

“First of all,” Jericho said, “I have never considered you anything close to old.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “And this conversation is far from boring.”

“The bath is hot,” she said. “Perhaps you need to get out of the tub for a time.” She swished the water so it disrupted the multihued reflection that lapped at her chest. Quinn found it incredible that he and Thibodaux had spent so many days wondering about the mysterious tattoo that was now displayed so openly before him. It was something he’d likely never be able to mention to the big Cajun — something too sacred to speak of outside the confines of the bath.

“I’m fine,” he said. “But I understand if you need to get out.”

She shook her head, apparently happy he was able to stay for a time.

Quinn nodded. “Please go on.”

“Very well.” She took a long breath, her chest rising in the water. “At first, Oda was a marvelous teacher. The Garden, as I came to call the compound in which I was being held, was much like stepping back to feudal Japan. Entire families seemed to live within the walls — gardeners, tailors, teachers, sword smiths, and artists. All sorts to keep a society running smoothly, or at least it seemed that way to a teenage girl, snatched out of the real world. Apart from the tradesmen, there were the fighters, those of us in training. We all dressed in traditional clothing — kimono, pantaloons, and woven grass slippers — and were never to be caught without our weapons. Oda sensei assured us that we were a samurai class and he was our firm but patient lord. I began to grow into a healthier weight and gained social confidence under his guiding hand. When I first arrived, Oda spent his time in the company of several different girls. His favorite, it seemed, was Takako. She was much older than I was and very beautiful. Since she was the oldest, she saw it as her duty to take care of all the girls like a kind auntie — several times causing her much sorrow and pain at the hand of Oda. The fact that he spent time with each of us did not appear to bother her, but when he began to pay particular attention to me alone Takako began to bully me during practice. She was much taller and at first had no trouble beating me. Worse than the beatings, I felt that I had lost a friend. Oda ordered her to leave me alone, and I believe she came to forgive me in her own way.

“We all knew Oda was insatiable in his lust. But the moment he had any girl alone, he had a way of making us believe there would never be anyone else.” Miyagi’s shoulders rolled forward, as if to protect her heart. She sighed. “Still, there was always a favorite, a number one, so to speak. That position had belonged to Takako until I arrived. At first, he took me. I pretended it was against my will, but I did not fight back. By the time I had been in the Garden for three months, I sought him out in the soft grass behind the shrine and gave myself to him completely. Though I knew firsthand how to kill a man and by then had done so many times, I was still young and uneducated about sex and the attendant consequences of such things.” Miyagi blushed, something Quinn had never before seen her do. “Eventually, I became pregnant. Two months before I turned sixteen, I bore him a daughter.” She shivered in spite of the steaming water, wrapping her arms around her bare chest as if suddenly aware that she had exposed more than just her physical body to Quinn. “At the time, our relationship seemed completely natural, though looking back, what he did to me could only be defined as a rape. Oda was almost thirty and I was but fourteen when he first took me. In a way, I suppose, it was just another aspect of the brutal training I received at the hand of the Black Mist.

“There were other children born in the Garden, but I wanted my daughter to be the favorite. I redoubled my efforts, working day and night to make the father of my baby proud of me. I entertained no more thoughts of leaving, and only wanted to please this man who had such a mental and physical hold over me. It was about this time that he suggested I begin my irezumi.”

She stood to display the tattoo, holding an open hand over her groin. It made Quinn smile inside that for all her toughness and martial skill, Emiko Miyagi retained a certain degree of modesty.

She used the other hand to give him a tour of the brilliantly inked tattoo, letting her fingers glide over her skin. She turned slowly, careful not to splash, displaying the dark coat of ink that covered her delicate skin like black and green armor scales. Even the backs of her knees, which must have been excruciatingly painful, were completely covered, the ink stopping just above midthigh. “I was special, he said, and should mark myself as such. He helped me pick the design. The koi fish swimming upstream signifies struggle in life. Kwannon is the goddess of mercy. The woman is a concubine from our ancient stories, transformed by an encounter with a Zen monk. It took nearly five years to get this far. Five years of agony while the tebori master stabbed me over and over again with tiny needles. Oda sensei insisted that the act of getting the tattoo in the traditional way was more important than the tattoo itself. When someone from the outside world saw it, they would know without a doubt that I was capable of enduring endless suffering.” She ran a fingertip up the curve of her left hip. The concubine was a beautiful woman. Clutching a dagger, she was dressed in the flowing gowns of a courtesan. But work on the tattoo had ceased, leaving only the concubine’s face completed. Her other features and kimono were empty black outlines, like a child’s unfinished coloring book. “It remains undone,” Emiko said, detached as if looking at a museum painting and not the brilliant ink covering her own body. “A constant reminder that my struggles are not over, and, unlike the courtesan, I am not yet myself transformed into enlightenment.”

She sank into the water with a weary sigh. “The training in the Garden was brutal — fighting at least once and sometimes three times a day. There was hardly any time for rest, but I did not care. I was as happy as I had ever been.”

Emiko looked up at Quinn and smoothed a lock of hair out of her face. Beads of sweat poised on her quivering upper lip. Tears welled in her eyes. Quinn had seen this woman endure all manner of pain, watched her reset her own dislocated finger, but he’d never before seen her cry.

“As I said, the training was intense, so my daughter spent much of her day with her father. She was an incredibly intelligent child but, as I came to learn, also extremely cruel. One evening as I returned from the dojo I saw her attack the little boy of our cleaning woman because he had broken her favorite mirror. When I moved to stop her, Oda sensei held me back, saying the training would benefit both children. Our daughter beat the poor boy until he lay senseless on our floor. Then, before I could stop her, she took a piece of the broken mirror and sliced his face. She was five years old. .”

Emiko swallowed. Tendons knotted along her neck. Other than that, she maintained complete composure. “I watched as she treated the other children in the Garden with utter cruelty and disdain. But I was weak, and even that I overlooked because Oda sensei said she would soon grow to control herself. Then, one night, I returned from the bath earlier than usual. I heard Oda’s voice as I approached and, for some reason, stopped to listen. ‘You are a special girl,’ he told our daughter. ‘You have your mother’s gifts but none of her flaws.’ I heard her tell him she wanted a tattoo like his someday. She said I was weak and had to be destroyed. I stood outside our home, stunned to hear Oda tell our daughter that I would soon be out of the way. ‘Your mother is not like you and your papa,’ he told her, ‘she is imperfect. I assure you, her death will be quick and merciful. ’ And then, my little girl clapped her hands as if her papa had just given her a present.”

Miyagi’s chest heaved in the water as if she’d arrested a violent sob. “I was completely undone. Everything after that has melted into blurs and shadows in my memory.

“Later that night, I swallowed my disgust and made love to Oda, for I knew that he slept deepest after such things. I tried to take our daughter with me, to get her away from this horrible man before he poisoned her against me completely and turned her into a monster. She awoke when we were outside. I will never forget her face when she looked at me in the darkness of the woods beyond our home. It was as if she’d seen something that sickened her. She screamed for the guards to stop me before I could take her, then tore at my flesh with her little teeth like a wild animal. I am certain she hoped to kill me.”

Miyagi pulled back the hair from her neck and leaned forward to reveal the faint white outline of a half-moon scar below her right ear.

“I pushed the child away and she ran, screaming for her papa. For six years I had known nothing but constant battle, allowing me to hack my way through the guards and escape with little trouble — but I was already so wounded inside there was nothing worse they could have done to me with bullet or blade. I had left in my nightgown, thinking to change after we got away so as not to awaken Oda. My clothes were lost during the escape and the gown was torn away during my flight over the wall. I wondered aimlessly through the countryside, naked and covered with blood of the guards I’d killed. Lacking the will to even end my own misery, I sat down and waited to die from exposure.

“I had no idea I was even near a road. When I heard an approaching car, I got up, thinking I would run. Weakened and lost in sorrow, I could do nothing but stand there.” She laughed softly. “My hair was ratted and I was bathed in blood. Certainly, I must have looked like some mountain she-demon as the headlights of the passing car threw me into a blinding light. As it turned out, a young U.S. Army officer named Winfield Palmer was driving the car. Of all the people that could have driven by, I was blessed to have the one man at that time who would be so foolish as to pick up a naked, blood-covered, and crazed Japanese woman and put her in his car.”

She shrugged. “And the rest, as they say, is history. Eventually, Palmer-san thought he would woo me. He was young and full of virility and goodness, so I tried, I really did. But in the end, I knew such a relationship was impossible. He had seen me completely undone, emotionally exposed. There must be some intrigue in every relationship, and after he rescued me I held nothing that he did not already know. There is no possibility of mystery between the two of us. I swore never to marry anyone, especially him, who had seen beneath my skin.”

“But your name?” Quinn said, prodding her for the rest of the story she seemed to want to tell.

“Palmer-san made it possible for me to come to the U.S. He moved up in the military and in political position. I was able to use my martial skills working for him. He allowed me to take the family name of my murdered boyfriend — Kenichi Miyagi — so that everyone would assume that I was married and I would have that memory.”

“You said there was something I needed to hear in all this,” Quinn said, still trying to make the connection.

“Oda-san surely relocated his Garden to some new location after I escaped. Still, I believe the answers to your questions are in Japan,” Miyagi said. “Palmer-san may not condone it, but I will secure you a passport under a cover identity. It will be ready tomorrow along with a credit card and Virginia driver’s license. I have already arranged a contact for you once you arrive.”

“So,” Quinn said as he nodded, working through her logic, “you believe the man who trained you is behind all this?”

“Our daughter — my daughter… her name is Ran,” Miyagi said, rhyming it with the American name Ron, but with a hard R so it sounded closer to Lon. She used the tip of her index finger to trace the lines of a Chinese character on her opposite hand. A drop of bathwater ran down her palm like a tear. “It means orchid.”

“That’s a beautiful name,” Quinn said, still baffled as to where all this was going.

“I wanted her only to have a good and peaceful life, but many times, even as a tiny girl, she told me she wished to have a tattoo identical to that of her father — a komainu.”

Miyagi reached for a small towel on the wooden shelf and covered herself as she rose from the bath. Rivulets of water traced silver lines against the rippling blacks and vibrant greens and pinks on the otherworldly designs of her tattoo.

“Komainu?” Quinn wasn’t familiar with the word.

“A foo dog,” Miyagi explained. “I believe it was my daughter who shot your wife.”

CHAPTER 21

The phone didn’t have a chance to finish the first ring before Doctor Elton snatched it up.

“Kane County Clinic.”

Brandy stood with her back to the door, as if to bar entry to any of the infected patients who crowded the lobby and exam rooms.

Elton talked little and listened much, nodding, then scribbling a few notes. His chest grew tighter with each word spoken by the woman on the other end.

His eyes stopped on Brandy and he sat up straighter in the chair. “Pardon me?… Yes, I understand.”

He hung up, staring at the phone. The conversation had lasted no more than two minutes, but he felt as if he’d been run over by an ore truck.

“What?” Brandy prodded, wringing chubby hands in front of her purple scrubs. “What did they—”

A soft, but persistent knock interrupted the conversation and caused Brandy, who hated mysteries, to throw back her head in a long groan. Donita peeked tentatively through the door again.

“Doctor,” she said. “I am really, really sorry to bother you, but I think you should come out here. Your sister-in-law just came in the back way. It looks like her husband is getting worse.”

“I’d better go check on this,” Elton said, rising from his chair. Rick Bedford was a good man, a hero in Elton’s book.

Marta met him in the hallway outside the office. Rick’s arm was draped over her shoulder. “Hey, Todd. Sorry about not going through the receptionist,” she said. “We didn’t want to scare any of your other patients.”

Elton was an educated and rational man, but one look at his brother-in-law sent him into a near panic. He swallowed hard, willing himself to stay calm before showing them into the X-ray lab, the only open room.

Bedford’s army buddy had been bad, but most of his boils had been confined to his torso, arms, and hands. Rick’s face was dotted, distorted, and swollen with the awful pustulent things. His shirt hung open to the waist, revealing more of the same as if he’d been attacked by a hive of angry bees. Some of the boils had begun to weep, bringing the foul smell of infection — and that wasn’t the worst of it. Even from five feet away, it was evident that Bedford wasn’t getting enough oxygen. His normally tan face was pale and drawn. His lungs rattled as if he was breathing through wadded paper.

Though Bedford swayed on his feet, ready to pass out at any moment, he remained standing, unable to sit without pain from the boils that surely covered his buttocks and thighs. Brandy rolled in an oxygen monitor and clipped the lead to his finger. She shook her head and frowned at the results.

Elton donned a surgical mask, then pressed his stethoscope to Rick’s back. An aid was hardly necessary to hear the horrific crackling noise at each breath. He stepped to the sink, scrubbing his hands, then slathering them with alcohol gel. “I’m calling over to get you a bed next door in the hospital,” he said. “Wait right here.”

Marta held her husband’s hand. It seemed to be the only part of his body unaffected by boils.

“What is wrong with him, Todd?” she pleaded, glancing away as if she had something to say but didn’t want Brandy to hear it.

“I’m not sure. But his buddy R.J. has it as well.” Elton had known his sister-in-law for a long time, longer even than he’d known his wife. The look in her eyes said she wasn’t telling him everything. “What is it, kiddo?”

“Whatever it is, I’ve got it, too…” She raised the hem of her shirt so he could see the boils on her armpit.

“Looks like it’s going around all right.” Elton’s voice was much too strained to console her. He pitied poor Marta but couldn’t help feeling a sense of dread that he was doomed to this same fate, just from treating so many infected people. A flash of anger jumped up in his chest, but he tamped it down. It wasn’t Marta’s fault.

“Sore throat?” he asked, bringing his focus away from his fears and back to her pain.

“Like acid.” She grimaced.

“Okay,” he said, trying to sound more sure than he truly was. “Sit tight in here for just a minute. I’ll call up to the hospital and get you a room with two beds.”

Brandy followed him out, glaring as Elton shut the door behind him. Back in his office he collapsed in the desk chair and leaned back, clenching his eyes shut. Fatigue and frustration made him want to rub them, but he stopped short, thinking of the bacteria or virus or whatever this was that might somehow have found its way to his fingertips.

Brandy stood with her broad backside to the door again, staring down at him. “You do realize that your brother-in-law is in the early stages of respiratory distress. If all these people have the same thing, they’re all going to need ventilators.”

“I know.” Elton groaned.

“There’s a good chance a ventilator won’t be enough. He’s going to need ECMO.”

“I said I know.”

ECMO was Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation — a heart-lung bypass. There were risks, but in acute cases of respiratory distress, putting a patient on ECMO while the causal disease ran its course was sometimes the only option.

“Well,” Brandy chided, “if you know, then why aren’t we sending him to Salt Lake?”

Elton groaned, throwing up his hands. “CDC says we have to lock the clinic doors.”

Brandy drew back as if she’d been punched, frowning. “We can’t just kick these people out, Doctor. They’re sick.”

“Nobody’s saying to kick them out,” Elton said, his voice a tense whisper. “As of fifteen minutes ago, this clinic is under quarantine. I’ve been ordered to lock everyone in.”

CHAPTER 22

Winfield Palmer chewed on his bottom lip, his normally ruddy face more flushed than usual as he stood beside the Resolute Desk to the left of the president. It was no small matter being the best friend and confidant to the most powerful man on earth, and the National Security Advisor did not take such a calling lightly.

President Chris Clark tapped a fat Mont Blanc pen against the edge of a black leather folio, his head bowed in thought. With his chiseled good looks and Midwestern schoolboy grin, he looked as if he’d been born to the part of commander in chief.

“We’re certain we have it contained?”

“Mr. President,” Palmer said. “We are not even certain what it is. We hope we have it contained. So far, it looks as though Afton, Wyoming, and Cedar City and Kanab in Utah are the only hot spots.”

“So,” Clark said at length, looking up at his friend. “My signature effectively imprisons these people?”

“The Public Health Service Act gives the CDC authority to detain for listed illnesses and diseases,” Palmer said. “Unfortunately, boils — or whatever this happens to be — isn’t on that list.”

“Until I say it is.”

“That would be correct, Mr. President.”

Even after three years as part of the Cabinet, it sounded odd in Palmer’s ears to call his friend Mr. President. They’d roomed together at West Point and both had gone back there to teach among the unconventional thinkers of the Department of Social Sciences — Sosh, they called it. Somehow, even then, Palmer had known Chris Clark would someday be the president. He had an easygoing but self-assured air that made people want to hitch their wagons to his — walk through fire for him.

Their thirty-five-year friendship allowed them to banter easily, even argue over the finer points, and each trusted the other more than a brother. One of them just happened to be the most powerful man on the planet.

“Sorry about this, you poor schmucks.” President Clark sighed, scrawling his signature across the document with the Mont Blanc. “Boils.” He replaced the lid on the pen and dropped it on top of the folio, shuddering. “Sounds like some kind of biblical plague. We have National Guard troops en route?”

Palmer looked at his watch, nodding. “Out of Salt Lake. Lieutenant Colonel Toby Miller is in command in Wyoming. He’s got all of Star Valley cordoned off. The location makes it fairly easy and the people are cooperating so far. Colonel Rob Huber will run the show in Utah. Cedar City is right on Interstate 15, so access for us is a little easier. It’s still in the middle of nowhere. The sheriffs in both Iron and Kane Counties are being completely cooperative. Kanab — in Kane County — seems to have the most cases so far at fifteen. It is pretty small, less than seventy-five hundred. A peaceful little burg, farmland and high desert mountains, so it won’t take many. Geography helps, with only three main roads and a handful of secondaries out of town. Colonel Huber is in constant contact with the sheriff — a solid guy named Monte Young. He’s been the sheriff there for five terms, always running unopposed. His constituents trust him. Latest reports say his son-in-law is one of the sick ones.”

“That sucks,” Clark said.

“That it does, sir. But Sheriff Young appears to be up to the task. His men are on their public address system now advising citizens to practice social distancing, keeping away from each other, not going to stores, basically just staying home. Biggest problem will be foreign tourists coming and going to Zion National Park and Lake Powell, which are both nearby. Some are bound to be trapped within the perimeter, so they might have issues.”

The president leaned back in his soft leather chair. “The last thing we need is some poor kid with the Guard having to use force to keep a group of Austrian hikers under quarantine.” He shot an accusing eye at his National Security Advisor. “How was Miss’s mood this morning?”

Miss was Melissa Ryan, the fifty-two-year-old brunette bombshell who saw Palmer romantically at least three times a week — and also happened to be the Secretary of State. They were together so often, their security details often melded into one at public events, though his was Secret Service and hers was Department of State, Diplomatic Security. An incredibly savvy diplomat and media darling, Ryan was considered a favorite for president once Clark’s run was over.

“I’m sure she’s fine, Mr. President,” Palmer said, trying to look innocent. “But she’s in Mexico at the free trade summit.”

“Get her back here as soon as you can,” Clark said. “This thing has the potential to turn ugly in a heartbeat. We have any idea how it started?”

Palmer shook his head and gave the answer he most hated giving his boss. “We don’t know yet. CDC has a specialist en route from Salt Lake. So far, I’m hearing of just a few isolated cases worldwide. England has three with two university students near Bradford and a housewife in Harrogate. Italy reports one case, and there are two in Germany. The Ministry of Health in Japan says they had five cases near Kyoto several months ago. In fact, it looks like Japan had the earliest appearance of the disease. All were fatal, but they appear to have it contained with no further outbreak.”

“Have they talked border closure?”

“It’s being discussed, I’m sure,” Palmer said. “But so far, everyone is just increasing screening at immigration points.”

“Let’s pray it doesn’t come to that.” Clark’s eyes narrowed. “Shutting borders means stopping trade, and that would knock the legs out from under world markets. With the present economy we might not recover. Seems an odd coincidence that all the affected countries are friends of ours. Have we ruled out bioterrorism?”

“We have not,” Palmer said.

“I guarantee you, Win,” Clark mused, “Andrew Filson will have his ass here inside the hour, screaming at me to carpet bomb Europe, Japan, and the entire state of Utah.”

Palmer would have chuckled but for the seriousness of the situation. Secretary of Defense Andrew Filson saw a terrorist behind every tree both at home and abroad. Sadly, his hawkish fears often turned out to be warranted. The Sec Def invoked a sort of broad-target spray-and-pray strategy when it came to counterterrorism. Clark appreciated diverse thought, even encouraging healthy arguments among his Cabinet. Thankfully, he was prone to listen to more tempered ideas than Filson’s and allowed Palmer to use certain assets to handle things with a more surgical precision than carpet bombing.

“I wish I could disagree with—” Palmer’s cell phone rang. He looked at the president before answering it.

“Go ahead,” Clark said.

Palmer picked up. It was his secretary, Millie. His face blanched at her news.

“I understand,” he said, feeling the need to sit down.

“Of course. Bring it all in if you don’t mind.”

He hung up, wheels turning in his head, looking for the next move.

Clark dropped the Mont Blanc on the desk blotter and held up both hands. “So?” he asked. “Are you going to make me guess?”

“Twenty-two more plague cases have been reported to the CDC. Nine in Henderson, Nevada, and five in Mesquite, just over the border from Utah.”

“That’s fourteen.” The president frowned, obviously sensing more bad news. “What about the other eight?”

Palmer held his phone ready to dial, knowing full well who he had to call next. “The other cases are in Afghanistan, Mr. President. All of them at Bagram.”

“Shit!” Clark said, slamming the flat of his hand on the desk. “Okay, you see what’s going on with CDC and the new U.S. locations. I’ll try and keep Andrew from nuking everything in Afghanistan that’s not Bagram.”

“Very well, sir,” Palmer said. “Considering what we’re seeing over here, I suggest you give the order to quarantine the base.”

“Noted.” President Clark rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “This is really something,” he said. “Just days until I address Congress and the nation. What am I supposed to say? ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the state of the union is… infected.’ ”

“There may be one bright spot on the horizon,” Palmer said. “Japan was well ahead of us in their outbreak. Ambassador Pennington says a pharmaceutical company over there appears to be making potential inroads on a vaccine.”

CHAPTER 23

More than almost anything in the world, Isamu Watanabe wanted to be in charge. Slender and baby-faced, he went out of his way to dress in conservative suits, kept his hair short and businesslike — combed up in front, just like the boss. But it didn’t matter, none of those senior to him ever thought of him as an adult. He was tired of groveling to men like Masamoto — men who had no more good sense than a ginko nut but who had risen through the ranks simply because they had not been killed. The same age as Watanabe at thirty-two, Masamoto was still sempai—senior man. There was nothing to be done about it but be patient and hope the boss saw everyone for what they really had to offer rather than just seniority.

“You wait outside by the door while I go in,” Masamoto said, half barking the command as if he was already the boss himself. If the stubby, thickheaded yakuza was good for anything, it was as an example of what not to be.

“As you wish, but I think it would be better if we went in together,” Watanabe said, keeping his voice even, slightly subservient. “There is strength in numbers. The entire board will be present. It might not be a bad idea if there were at least two of us.”

“Maybe.” Masamoto began to rethink his plan.

Watanabe set his jaw, struggling to keep from saying what was on his mind. Yanagi Pharmaceuticals was a powerful enterprise, well established and respected. Such companies considered their honor and dignity to be sacrosanct. Anything that might prove damaging to a clean reputation could mar public confidence and hurt the bottom line. Loss of company face was to be avoided at all costs.

New national laws had made it illegal for anyone to do business with the yakuza and rendered many of their operations defunct or teetering on bankruptcy. This, however, was a tried-and-true yakuza scheme. Present the damning evidence to the board and offer them silence for a position in the company and protection money in the form of dividends. Still, it required finesse to pull such a thing off, finesse that Masamoto did not possess.

“Okay,” the senior man said. “You can come inside but wait by the door and let me do the talking.”

A petite young woman in a conservative gray skirt and matching jacket opened the door to the boardroom at precisely fifteen minutes past ten. Her hair was pulled back in a pink plastic clip. A white silk blouse was conservative and alluring at the same time.

Watanabe entered behind Masamoto and took a standing position to the left of the door as ordered. Eleven men, none under the age of fifty, sat in high-backed leather chairs around a long oak table. It was highly polished, and their dour expressions could be seen in their reflected faces on the surface of the wood. A tall man with thick white hair sat at the far end of the room, commanding the head of the table. He wore a tailored blue wool suit that accented his athletic build and a shockingly red power tie.

The man looked up from an open folder, both hands flat on the table. Dark eyes, kind and soft as those of a favorite uncle, met the gaze of the two yakuza men. Watanabe could not help chuckling to himself. This would be easier than he had thought.

Masamoto would, no doubt, assume this to be Yanagi, the owner and chairman of the company, since he sat at the head of the table. But Watanabe knew better. He’d taken the time to research Yanagi Pharmaceuticals on the Internet. The man at the head of this table was perhaps in his early sixties, but nowhere close to the company owner’s seventy-four years.

Masamoto gave his introduction, invoking the name of the boss and his organization. He kept his tone civil and his words humble, but the inference was clear. His boss had come into possession of certain photographs of a senior vice president from Yanagi Pharma engaged in a delicate situation with an underage girl in Thailand. In truth, the boss had followed the man on a business trip, gotten him drunk, and set him up. But that didn’t matter. What was important now was company reputation. Masamoto assured everyone at the table that with a seat on the board, he could keep this volatile information away from the media and stockholders.

All the men stared down at their respective stacks of paperwork, avoiding eye contact or even admission that a problem existed. The young woman in the gray business suit stood dutifully on the other side of the door, hands folded in front of her, face passive. Watanabe could not be certain, but he thought he could smell peppermint.

The man with white hair at the head of the table was anything but passive. The picture of polite behavior, he sat ramrod straight, nodding every now and again to show he was paying attention. In the middle of Masamoto’s presentation and proposal, the man took a fat tortoiseshell fountain pen from the pocket of his white shirt and made a note, as if to record some special bit of knowledge that was too precious to forget. His face appeared to glow with genuine happiness that the yakuza men and come to pay him a visit. Watanabe felt himself leaning forward, wanting to be closer to the man, to bask in his kindness.

At length, Masamoto reached the end of his practiced speech. He bowed, pushing the incriminating photos toward the head of the table.

The white-haired man sat still for a long moment, smiling and blinking kind eyes. Then, in the space of one of those blinks, the eyes grew flint-hard. One instant he was a kindly gray-haired uncle, the next, a seething, anger-filled mountain devil.

Focusing on Masamoto as if to set him on fire, the man snatched up the fountain pen and began to twirl it back and forth on slender fingers. Watanabe marveled at the precise movements. These were not the hands of a business executive.

The white-haired man stuck out his bottom jaw, breathing heavily. Watanabe would not have been surprised if fire had shot from the man’s nostrils. The pen flipped back and forth between his fingers, floating almost automatically as if moved on its own accord and not because of anything he did.

“Exactly what is it you would do?” the man asked, challenging.

Watanabe jumped when the man spoke. He glanced at the girl to see if she noticed. She was pretty, in a harsh sort of way, and he worried she might think him less of a man if she had seen him startled. She stared straight ahead like a store mannequin.

Masamoto bowed again, obviously buying time to think. Surely he hadn’t expected such a transformation from the dried-up company executive. “What would I do?” He let his eyes flit to each man around the long, polished table, as if one of them might throw him a life raft. “What would I do?” he repeated.

Watanabe had to force himself not to roll his eyes. Surely the boss should have put him in charge.

“Yes,” the white-haired man said, kind and smiling again, as if he was Masamoto’s uncle and wanted him to give the correct answer. “How do you envision your role in the company?”

“I, well… I would…” Masamoto stammered. Watanabe could see sweat forming on his sempai’s forehead. He knew things were about to go from bad to worse. When Masamoto became nervous, he got mean. Watanabe was no stranger to violence himself. He’d taken part in kidnappings, torture, had even helped dismember a girl and dump the pieces in the ocean on the other side of Shika-no-shima Island — but he had enough sense to know when a more diplomatic approach was warranted. Brute force was the only trick in Masamoto’s arsenal.

The man at the head of the table pointed his fountain pen at the stammering yakuza soldier as the good humor bled again from his face. The man’s emotions flowed back and forth like waves of the sea. Watanabe felt his stomach lurch at the suddenness of the change.

“It is just as I thought.” The man’s voice dripped with acid disdain. “You bring nothing to this table but empty threats.”

Here it comes, Watanabe thought. It was his duty to support his sempai, but he kept his hands locked behind him, hoping it wouldn’t come to that.

“I assure you,” Masamoto snapped like an angry child, “I bring the protection of our organization.”

“Protection from what?” the white-haired man demanded.

“I would offer protection from fear,” Masamoto said. He shot a glance at Watanabe, proud that he’d come up with such a fine answer so quickly.

The white-haired man stopped, then nodded as if Masamoto might have actually given a good answer. He removed the cap from his fountain pen and made a few notes in the folder in front of him. When he was finished, he blew gently on the ink, then set the pen on the table. Rising from his seat, he took off his suit jacket and draped it across the back of his leather chair. He picked up the fountain pen and began to twirl it again; this time he left the cap off so the gold tip glinted in the boardroom’s fluorescent lighting.

Watanabe’s eyes widened at the sight of the man without his suit coat. Long, fluid muscles moved under the white shirt like those of a racehorse under shimmering skin. This was no ordinary old man.

“Fear?” The man stepped around the table to face Masamoto as if they were gunfighters from an American Western movie. “Tell me. What do I have to fear?”

They were still twenty feet apart, but something told Watanabe that was much too close.

Masamoto looked helplessly at Watanabe for an answer. “You… We… You. .”

The white-haired man put up a hand, silencing the dumbfounded gangster, moving ever closer as he spoke.

“Sometimes,” he said, “it is wise to fear things that are certain do us great harm. Such a notion that we might be injured keeps us safe. Don’t you think? Have you ever heard that there are four things to fear in Japan?”

Masamoto’s mouth hung open. He shook his head. Though more stoutly built than the older man, he was at least six inches shorter — and, to Watanabe, looked to be growing smaller.

“Earthquakes,” the white-haired man snapped, halfway across the room now. “Thunderbolts.” He cocked his head to one side, letting his words sink in. It seemed to Watanabe that he glided across the floor. “Fire.” The man stopped in front of Masamoto, chest to chest, towering above him. “And perhaps the most fearsome of all…” His eyes narrowed. The pen twirled. “Old men.”

Watanabe knew something bad was about to happen before he saw it. His hand dropped to his waistband to draw his gun, but a sudden crushing pain to his windpipe sent a shower of exploding lights through his head. The girl in the gray business suit struck like a viper, slamming a hammer-fist into his throat. She moved in close, her face just inches from his as she snatched away his pistol. The odor of peppermint on her breath hit him full in the face. She wagged a manicured forefinger back and forth as one might do to warn a small child to stop some bad behavior.

Watanabe collapsed to the floor, his back sliding against the wall. He watched helplessly as the white-haired man smiled and then, with the slightest flick of his fingers, drove the fountain pen deep into Masamoto’s left eye.

Screaming, the stubby yakuza dropped to his knees. He tried to draw his pistol, but the white-haired man swatted it out of his hand and sent it skittering across the floor. Blood poured down his cheek, splattering his shirt.

“You will pay!” Masamoto screamed, his voice shattered from the excruciating pain.

The white-haired man nodded at the girl in the business suit. She bowed slightly, eyes going wild as if she’d just been unleashed. Using both hands, she hiked up the gray skirt. The colorful flash of a black and green tattoo covered the taut skin on both her hips above black knee-high stockings. Drawing back, she kicked Masamoto in the face, driving the pen into his brain.

“There,” the white-haired man said, bending low to look Watanabe in the eye where he’d still sat helpless, collapsed against the wall. “Please inform Tanaka-san that Yanagi Pharmaceuticals has nothing to fear. There is a new man at the head of the table.” He slapped Watanabe’s cheek, bringing the taste of blood to his lips. “Did you understand that?”

Watanabe nodded, feeling stupid for being so frightened of an old man. Of course, this particular old man had just stabbed his partner in the eye.

“I understand.”

“Good,” the white-haired man said. “Tell Tanaka he owes me a new pen.” He took his seat at the head of the table, nodding at Masamoto’s still twitching body. “He may send his men to pick up the pieces later this evening. I will have him prepared for easier disposal. It is the least I can do.”

“I understand.” Watanabe’s head bobbed quickly. “I will tell him.”

The young yakuza stumbled out of the boardroom, leaving behind the body of his dead sempai. Perhaps, he thought, being in charge was not as good as he had believed.

CHAPTER 24

Quinn left Emiko Miyagi’s home feeling honored that she would confide so many personal details to him and, at the same time, weighed down by the knowledge she had given him. Trying to find a killer was an entirely different thing if that killer happened to be the daughter of a dear friend.

Two miles later he ran into a traffic accident that completely blocked the George Washington Parkway. Gassing the Boxer engine, he leaned the lanky GS into a quick U-turn and backtracked to cut through a neighborhood so he could take Fort Hunt Road into the city. The Bluetooth speaker buzzed inside his helmet shortly after he’d turned onto the quiet two-lane.

“Quinn,” he said, half annoyed at the interruption to the solitude of his ride. Were it not for his job, he’d never sully a journey on the back of a motorcycle by connecting himself to any form of electronic communication.

It turned out to be Ronnie Garcia, an ever-welcome distraction. “Hey,” she said. “You okay?”

“I am.” Quinn slowed a hair, keeping a wary eye for traffic that might pull out in front of him on the side streets while he talked. “You?”

“On a break from pursuit driving class,” she said. “It’s fun and all, but nothing like the real thing. I think working with you has ruined me.”

You and me both, Quinn thought, but he didn’t say it.

“Listen,” Garcia continued, “I feel like I should tell you, Palmer is really pissed. He called to ask me if I thought you were cracking up under pressure…”

“And what did you tell him?”

“I told him you were the most stable crazy person I knew.” She laughed.

“Really?”

“Of course not,” she said, sounding hurt. “I know psychs are nothing to screw around with. I said you were fine. He is worried that you’re going to go gunning for every Asian female that you think looks out of place.”

“Thanks,” Quinn said, watching the side mirror as a Fairfax County blue-and-white fell in behind him. “… I appreciate it.”

The cruiser followed for half a block before the top lights came on.

“Listen, Ronnie,” Quinn said, “I’m gonna have to call you back. There’s an Asian female police officer about to pull me over…”

“Shut up.” She laughed.

“Seriously,” Quinn said. “But not to worry. She looks harmless. Gotta go.”

Used to last-minute interruptions from a man like Quinn, Garcia said good-bye and ended the call.

Quinn pulled the BMW to the curve under a stand of white-barked sycamore along the quiet Fort Hunt neighborhood.

The driver was a slender woman of what Quinn guessed to be Chinese heritage. His conversation with Ronnie Garcia notwithstanding, and considering recent events, he kept a wary eye on everyone, Asian, female, or otherwise.

This one approached in the lead while her partner, a burly blond man, followed a few steps to the rear.

Though he’d never worked traffic, Quinn knew it was one of the more dangerous aspects of patrol. He put the sidestand down but remained on the BMW to ease the approaching officers’ nerves. He had his helmet and gloves off by the time they reached him.

“Good afternoon, sir,” the female officer said. She had high cheekbones and what his mother would have called laughing eyes. Her name was Officer Chin. “Looks like you have a taillamp out.”

“Sorry about that.” Quinn held out his driver’s license and insurance card.

The big Swede, whose nameplate said he was Larsson, took a half step forward. “You armed?” he said, giving a sideways glare at Chin for not asking.

“Pardon?” This was a first.

“Simple question,” Larsson said. “Are you carrying a gun?”

“I’m a federal agent with Air Force OSI,” Quinn said. “My creds are in my inside left pocket.”

“I don’t care who you work for. This is northern Virginia.” Larsson smirked. “We got a dozen federal cops per acre. That wasn’t my question.”

Some federal agent must have run away with this guy’s wife or something. “Yes.” Quinn lifted the corner of his Transit jacket to reveal the butt of the Kimber.

Larsson gave a low whistle. “Shit, that is a nice pistol. I thought you Air Force boys carried Sigs.”

“Most do,” Quinn said without further explanation.

“I’ll need to take a look at it for a minute,” Larsson said.

Both Quinn and Officer Chin looked up in surprise.

“Right here on the side of the road?” Quinn asked.

Larsson held out his hand, palm up. “Yes, right here on the side of the road.”

“Come on, Max.” Chin shook her head. “We don’t have time—”

“Who’s the training officer here?” Larsson chided before turning to Quinn. “I don’t know how long you been doing this, but there’s an old saying in traffic. The guy running the stop is always right — and that would be me. You wanna complain, be my guest — after we’re done.”

Quinn took a deep breath. It went against everything he knew to hand over a sidearm like this. Still, Larsson was correct. He did have the right to secure the weapon during the stop, even if all he wanted to do was drool over it. Quinn decided not to mention the suppressed Beretta .22 under his arm.

He handed the Kimber to Officer Chin, who passed it back to a gloating Larsson.

“See, that wasn’t so hard.” The big Swede chuckled, an instant before he flicked off the safety and shot Officer Chin in the face.

Quinn leaped off the motorcycle, moving toward Larsson rather than away from him. Quinn wasn’t the type to hide behind a tree, and there was really nowhere else to run.

Larsson dropped Quinn’s Kimber to the pavement after the initial shot and drew his own pistol. Quinn caught the man’s arm as the weapon cleared the holster, pinning it against his side and driving him backward all the way to the hood of his patrol car. He was big, but slow, and had relied too much on bullets doing his work for him.

Quinn gave him a vicious head butt, all but destroying the man’s nose. The Sig fell out of his hand to thump against the hood of the car before sliding to the pavement with a clatter.

“Who are you working for?” Quinn threw the stunned man to the ground, kicking the weapon out of his reach before dropping a knee into his groin. A ballistic vest protected the downed officer from any body blows, so Quinn grabbed him by the collar, slamming his head against the pavement.

“Who… are… you… working for?!” Quinn yelled, slamming the man’s head back at each word. Spit flew from his mouth. He rolled the officer and handcuffed him before he could regain his senses and fight back. With Larsson contained, Quinn turned to check on Officer Chin but found the 10mm round from his Kimber had taken much of her throat and lower jaw. She’d been dead before she hit the ground.

Quinn returned to the fallen Swede, taking some satisfaction in the trickle of blood oozing from the man’s ear. “I’m going to ask you one more time.” Quinn took deep breaths, working to regain his composure. “Who’s calling the shots?”

Larsson clenched his eyes shut and laughed through the pain of his wounds. “You are a dead man, Jericho Quinn.”

Sirens wailed from less than two blocks away. Quinn cursed under his breath when he saw the ‘man down’ radio on Larsson’s duty belt. As soon as Quinn had thrown him on the hood of the cruiser, the device had signaled an alert to his dispatcher. When he’d failed to answer, they’d sent the cavalry to assist.

Quinn nodded to the dash camera mounted in the patrol car but Larsson shook his head.

“That? Camera’s been tits up for a week now.” He winced. “Just my word against yours, cowboy. And I say you killed my partner dead and then tried to do the same to me. These guys will gun you down the second they get the opportunity.”

Tires screeched as patrol cars converged from both directions of Fort Hunt Road, sliding to a stop and boxing Quinn in.

Responders saw a grim picture. Officer Chin lay in a pool of blood, half her face torn away. Larsson should have won an Oscar for his performance. Flat on his back against the pavement, he screamed, turning his face as if he was in mortal fear for his life. Quinn stood over him with a gun in his hand.

CHAPTER 25

Secretary of Defense Filson stood fidgeting in the Oval Office thirty-five minutes after Palmer had called to summon him on behalf of the president. Sec State Melissa Ryan was on the speakerphone. Palmer and President Clark were both seated. Filson, however, paced in place, his shirttail half untucked — as if he’d been playing basketball in his suit. Thick black glasses seemed constantly on the verge of jumping off a bulbous nose that should have held them firmly in place.

Lisa Kapoor, the director of Health and Human Services, sat across from Palmer in one of the twin Queen Anne chairs that flanked the Resolute Desk.

Kapoor, a well-respected heart surgeon before she’d been pressed into government service, was near the end of her briefing. It was nothing more than a summary of what they already knew, but at this early stage, that was to be expected. She was a matronly woman of Indian heritage with a keen intellect that matched the fire in her amber eyes. Blessed with the attendant real-world experience that came from being a grandmother of nine, she was not only smart, but just plain pleasant to be around. In her early sixties, she kept her curly gray hair neatly trimmed so it looked as though she was wearing a hairnet. Filson had tried early in the meeting to bully her as he did most people he met, but the fact that she’d raised three sons had rendered her immune to swaggering male bravado.

“It looks as though the only commonality in each affected U.S. city is the fact that they all had at least one soldier returning from Bagram Air Base,” she said. “The cases overseas appear to have ties to Afghanistan as well.”

Clark rubbed his face in thought. “But we’re still unsure how the illness is spread? Airborne, blood?”

Secretary Kapoor shook her head. “We do not know, Mr. President. I have CDC advising local providers to use all universal precautions. The spouse of each returning soldier seems to have contracted the disease as well. Of course, we’ve yet to determine if the cause is breathing common air, skin contact, or from unprotected sex.”

“Phhht,” Filson harrumphed. “If you’d been away from your spouse for a year, would you have protected sex?”

“Shut up, Andrew,” Clark said. “She’s just stating facts. I hate to do this to all those men and women who are scheduled to come home, but I don’t see any way around putting an embargo on returning troops to the U.S. from Afghanistan in general until we get a handle on this.”

“Understood and agreed,” Filson said, pushing his thick glasses back on his nose. “But I don’t like it. This whole thing has the smell of biological warfare.”

A smooth, feminine voice piped up over the speakerphone. It was Melissa Ryan, Clark’s Secretary of State — and Winfield Palmer’s significant other.

“Funny you should bring up bioweapons, Andrew.” She was no dove, but her struggle for diplomacy was consistently at odds with Filson’s hawkish behavior. “The president of Afghanistan made a statement to the press this morning, accusing the United States of carelessly releasing a biological weapon we had been planning to use against the Taliban.”

“You know that’s bullshit,” Filson scoffed.

“I do,” the Sec State said. “And so does he. Since when does the truth have anything to do with politics? What I’m telling you is that everyone is going to put their own spin on this thing. He’s got a country to control. We’re on our way out, so we make a likely fall guy.”

“It has already hit the major networks,” Secretary Kapoor said.

“That’s true,” Ryan’s honeyed voice said over the phone speaker. “Cell phones and the Internet have rendered secrets a thing of the past. I am sitting here in Mexico watching your favorite governor beat you to the podium.”

Clark cursed under his breath. “McKeon’s giving a press conference?”

“As we speak,” Melissa Ryan said. “He’s urging his good friend, President Clark, to get to the bottom of this outbreak and find our embattled troops some help.”

The president threw up his hands. “How long have we known about this, forty-five minutes? Where does this son of a bitch get off telling me about troops…” His voice trailed off and he took a deep, thoughtful breath. “Sorry, ladies,” he said. “Not very commander-in-chiefly of me. Lee McKeon may support my initiatives, but he can be a ruthless self-promoter in front of the cameras. We’ll ignore him as we usually do.” Clark turned to Secretary Kapoor again. “Tell me more about this Japanese study.”

The HHS secretary picked up her coffee from the side table. The bone-white mug bore the seal of the president.

“I have a team made up of people from CDC, FDA, and the Immunization Safety Office on the way to Fukuoka, Mr. President. If they find the Japanese do have a viable vaccine, they’ll start the necessary testing.”

“Let’s say their science works,” Clark said. “How long are we talking for FDA approval?”

Secretary Kapoor took a deep breath. “Approvals, with all the attendant trials and such, can take as long as ten years, sir — but I’m hopeful we can get this done in six months—”

“Six months?” Clark snapped. “That’s just not going to work. Didn’t we help China get a swine flu vaccine up and running in a couple of months?”

“True,” Kapoor said. “But that was a special case.”

The president raised a hand to show that he wasn’t interested in excuses. “Everyone who has contracted this disease has eventually died. Is that correct?”

“It’s still too early yet for us to tell with the cases that have presented in the U.S., sir,” Kapoor said. “They’re too new. But mortality in Japan was one hundred percent of those affected, yes.”

Clark stood with the groan of a much older man. He turned to look out the windows at the Rose Garden as he spoke. “I have to address the American people in four days. By that time, it seems to be an absolute certainty that some of the infected souls in our country will have perished. I am not about to tell their families we have a possible vaccine but need time to run more tests.”

“With respect, sir,” Kapoor said, “I would urge restraint. My information says the vaccine that Japan has developed is an attenuated virus.”

“Speak English, dammit!” Filson grumped.

Kappor sighed. “That means the bugs are weakened but still very much alive. Live-virus vaccines are tricky things. Even if this Japanese company has developed one that works, it will take time to grow it for mass implementation.”

“We don’t have to immunize everyone right off the bat,” Sec Def Filson mused, looking at the president. “Just the military and first responders. That would send a signal—”

“I’m aware of the country’s vaccination plan, Andrew,” Kapoor said.

“Pompous or not,” Clark said, “Secretary Filson is right about one thing. The American people need some sort of hope of a vaccine — even if it’s on the horizon. They must be told we are implementing a plan as fast as humanly possible. Neither they nor I have any stomach for bureaucracy—”

Palmer’s cell buzzed. Clark nodded for him to take it, then went back to his discussion with the Cabinet secretaries. He believed wholeheartedly that world-saving ideas sprang from a healthy debate.

Millie, Palmer’s dutiful secretary, was frantic on the other end of the line. Her excitement was infectious, and Palmer found himself gritting his teeth as she spoke.

Quinn’s driver’s license and license plate had been flagged as soon as he started working for Palmer, so his office was alerted if anyone ever ran a check. When Fairfax County had stopped Quinn’s bike and run the plate, the first flag had pinged the system. Millie had called Fairfax County and gotten the gist of the story as it unfolded, giving it to Palmer moments later.

Palmer cleared his throat.

“What is it, Win?” Clark said. You look like you could use some Maalox.” Clark had known him long enough to realize that if he interrupted the president, Winfield Palmer had important information.

“I apologize, sir,” Palmer said. “I must ask to be excused.”

CHAPTER 26

Brakes squealed and tires crunched on gravel as a half dozen patrol cars and two unmarked sedans converged on Quinn from both directions. Doors swung open like a phalanx of Greek shields, and an army of police officers bailed out, bristling with weapons, all of which were pointed at him.

“Hands! Hands! Hands!” a gruff voice shouted.

Crazed barking came from behind Quinn as he let the Sig clatter to the street. A half breath later, he heard the thump of loping paws on pavement and wheeled in time to see a snarling Belgian Malinois leap toward him in a brindle flash of teeth and angry yellow eyes. The dog and officers alike were all hungry for a piece of anyone who would dare to harm one of their own.

Quinn raised his left arm in time to give the dog a viable target, hoping the responding officers’ desire to see him mauled outweighed their urge to shoot him. Even through the thick Transit leather, it felt as if a refrigerator had been dropped on his forearm. The dog grabbed a mouthful of leather and pliable crash armor, pinching his arm just below the elbow. It was a solid hold. Quinn kept his tone soft and unthreatening. Saying “good boy” and “good job.” The animal shook its head back and forth, but Quinn stayed with it, mimicking the actions of training with a bite sleeve. The last thing he wanted was for the dog to try to establish a different hold that might not be as protected.

After what seemed like an eternity, the handler shouted a command in Dutch. Front paws on his chest, the Malinois eyed Quinn a moment longer, shook him once more for good measure, then disengaged to drop onto the pavement. The handler moved in to take the trailing leash.

An instant later, someone the size of a college linebacker plowed into Quinn from the side, shoving him into the pavement and grinding his face into the gravel. It was all Quinn could do not to fight back, but these first responders were looking at a bloody scene involving someone they knew. Until he was in handcuffs, there was too big a risk one of them would shoot him.

Quinn caught the acid stench of vomit on the air where one of them had already thrown up at the sight of Officer Chin. Head wounds from a large-caliber weapon were not nearly so clean and neat as they were portrayed on the big screen. Amped by the sight of a violent encounter and the death of a friend, there was still the distinct possibility they’d shoot Quinn even after he was in custody.

A muscular young officer with spit-shined boots and a tight uniform shirt cut to accentuate the V of his back put a knee between Quinn’s shoulder blades and patted him down for weapons. He shouted “gun!” when he saw the tiny Beretta and “knife!” when he found the CRKT Hissatsu in the scabbard along Quinn’s spine.

The Malinois whined on the sidelines, hungry for a second bite.

Another beefy officer, this one older, with short, salt-and-pepper hair walked up and toed Quinn’s jaw with a black leather boot. The officer studied him for some time as if trying to decide whether or not to kick out his teeth.

“Mason, get this guy out of my sight,” the older officer said. The plate on his uniform said his name was Kincaid. “We’ll let CSU get here to secure the scene before we take him in. It’ll do him good to sit on his hands a bit.” Kincaid let his eyes fall to Officer Chin’s body. He shook his head sadly and then planted the toe of his boot squarely in Quinn’s ribs.

Quinn tried to roll with the kick, but handcuffed and on his belly there was nowhere to go. He groaned, bracing himself for another.

“I’m not going to waste my time,” the officer said, and walked away.

The streets had rained law enforcement shortly after the first police officers on scene threw Quinn in the back of their patrol car. Everyone that walked by gave him a glare that said they’d be all too happy to carve out his liver. He couldn’t blame them. Their friend, a fellow officer, had been murdered in an extremely violent way. Her dead body remained in the middle of the street, just as she had fallen, uncovered and vulnerable until crime scene investigators could get there to gather evidence.

Larsson sat in the open door of an ambulance with a bandaged skull, telling trumped-up lies and turning Quinn into the devil incarnate.

Inside the patrol car, Jericho began to work on the handcuffs as soon as Officer Mason slammed the door. Popping the stitching in his khakis over the small of his back with a fingernail, he kept his upper body as motionless as possible while he slid the thin metal shim out of his waistband. He worked as fast as he could, knowing it wouldn’t be long before sitting on his wrists caused him to lose the dexterity he needed to manipulate the tiny piece of metal. Officer Mason had been charged with adrenaline and anger during the arrest and had been none too gentle with the cuffs. They were already cutting off the circulation in Quinn’s hands.

Thankfully, the handcuffs hadn’t been double locked, letting Quinn click them one notch tighter as he inserted the shim farther into the mechanism. It was painful but allowed easier access to the teeth that actually locked the cuffs so he could push them out of the way. Once the left cuff was off and circulation restored to his hand, it was relatively simple to shim the other side.

He tucked the shim back in his waistband just as young Officer Mason got in the front seat. Kincaid flopped down in the passenger seat, then turned to glare at Quinn through the Plexiglas screen. His eyes burned with righteous hatred.

“I wouldn’t want to be you, son.” The officer dripped with unmasked contempt. “Jenny Chin worked at Fairfax Detention before she came over to the PD. She still has a lot of friends there, and they are going to turn your life into a living hell. It wouldn’t surprise me if you don’t survive the night.”

Kincaid turned to face forward, motioning for the junior officer to drive with a flick of his wrist.

Mason nosed the patrol car around two more units that had cordoned off Fort Hunt Road, working his way northwest.

Quinn took a deep breath and settled back in his seat. As a rule, a prisoner’s tension grew as the jail loomed closer. Law enforcement officers’ anxiety levels were highest at the point of arrest and tended to relax as more time passed. Angry and victorious, the closer they got to the safety and security of the jail, the sloppier they were likely to become.

Quinn was counting on it.

Ten minutes away from the scene, he started.

“Hey,” he said, kicking the back of the passenger seat. He got no response, so he kicked again.

Kincaid turned and slid the two-foot Plexiglas divider open so he could be heard.

“So help me,” he said through a clenched jaw, “I’m just looking for a reason to stop this car and beat the shit out of you.”

“How well do you know that Larsson guy?” Quinn said.

“Do yourself a favor and remain silent,” Kincaid said, slamming the divider.

“Hey!” Quinn kicked the seat again.

The officers ignored him. They were professional enough not to pull over and beat him. That was going to make things substantially more difficult.

“I want to confess!” He yelled so they could hear him through the screen — feeding them what they wanted. “Right now. I’ll give you a slam-dunk case. Tell you exactly why I shot that girl. You guys can be the heroes and I’ll get my time on TV.”

Quinn waited for a moment to let his offer sink in.

He’d rehearsed the plan completely through twice in his head, choreographing it like an intricate, perfectly timed dance. Mason was right-handed. He carried his weapon in a leather security holster that required the activation of a button with his index finger when he drew. He was new on the job and likely depended heavily on the security design of the holster to retain the pistol — a grave tactical error. Kincaid was left-handed and carried his pistol in a simple leather holster with a thumb-break snap. It would be easier to grab, but as an old salt, he’d surely been in more fights where he’d had to hang on to his weapon.

Where possible, Quinn made it a point never to screw with the old bull when a youngster was present — someone who didn’t know yet what he didn’t know.

The moment Kincaid opened the divider, Quinn screamed as if someone had just run out in front of the car.

“Look out!” he yelled as he moved.

The officers’ attention was momentarily drawn forward. Mason stomped the brake instinctively, throwing them both off balance. Quinn snaked an arm through the open divider, pushing in all the way to his shoulder in order to reach the rookie’s pistol. Defeating the security button with his thumb, he drew the pistol with his left hand and used it to smack Kincaid in the side of the head.

Still not comprehending what had happened to their handcuffed prisoner, the older officer raised a hand to ward off the blow. Quinn grabbed a wrist with his free hand and hauled back, drawing the older officer’s hand into the backseat with him, bending it into an arm bar against the sharp lip of the steel divider.

A deafening boom shook the inside of the vehicle as he shot two rounds at the radio.

“Pull over or I’ll kill him!” Quinn yelled, hauling back on Kincaid’s arm.

He felt the older officer move his right hand and shot another round through the divider, between the two men. “Leave the gun alone,” he said. “I don’t want to kill you. I just want out.”

Mason looked at Kincaid but kept the car moving.

“Look at it this way, kid,” Quinn yelled above the ringing in his ears. “If you let me go, you’ll have a chance to catch me all over again.”

Kincaid nodded, cursing like a sailor.

“Good job,” Quinn said when Mason had stopped the car. He directed the younger officer to open the back door and put his face against the windshield while Kincaid ditched his pistol in the front seat. A half a minute later and both officers stood handcuffed to each other, hugging a street sign. It was a quiet neighborhood and someone had surely called the police the moment they saw two patrol officers forced out of their marked cruiser at gunpoint.

Quinn leaned in close to the older officer.

“I didn’t kill your friend,” he said. “Larsson did.”

“Shut your mouth,” Kincaid hissed.

“Give it time, and you’ll realize you don’t know him as well as you thought you did. Notice how you’re handcuffed to a pole and I’m not shooting you?” He turned to leave, then spun, kneeing Kincaid hard in the ribs. It drove the wind from the man’s lungs even with the ballistic vest. “That’s for kicking me when I was down.”

CHAPTER 27

Back in the cruiser, Quinn turned down a quiet residential street, listening to converging units on the handheld radios. By the time help got to the stranded officers he was ten blocks away. He pulled up next to two boys sitting on the hood of a late-model Corolla and commandeered their car with little trouble. He sped away in the Toyota, leaving the boys minus their cell phones but with a war story about the time a wanted cop-killer stole their car.

Quinn ditched the Corolla a block from the Franconia Springfield Metro station but skipped the train in favor of a cab. The subway would be crawling with cops and bristling with security cameras. He told the cabbie to take him to the Comfort Inn in Chantilly, Virginia.

Palmer kept a room rented near Dulles where both Quinn and Thibodaux kept bug-out bags with cash, extra weapons, and burner cell phones. Quinn knew his photograph would be flashing through the blogosphere and over every news program in the country in a matter of minutes. Authorities were not likely to find out about his connection to Palmer anytime soon, so the hotel room and bug-out bag would be safe for the time being. He didn’t plan on stopping there for any length of time. Just long enough for Miyagi to meet him with the new ID and passport.

He still had to go to Japan. Being wanted for murder would make it more difficult — but all the more necessary.

He told the desk clerk he’d rented a room earlier but had forgotten the key and ID in the room. She sent security up and they found an ID in the side table drawer with Quinn’s photo under the name Irving Walstrom. She made him another key and slid it across the counter.

Once inside the hotel room, he sat on the edge of the bed, staring at one of the burner phones. He’d lost all his weapons during the arrest. Pressing Thibodaux’s number, he lay back, closing his eyes to try to relax.

The gunny wouldn’t recognize the number, so Quinn wasn’t surprised when he didn’t answer. He hit REDIAL. Two calls in quick succession meant something was up.

“Hallo.” The big Cajun’s guarded voice was a welcome sound on the other end of the line.

“Jacques,” Quinn said, “it’s me.”

“Hey, beb,” Thibodaux said. A baby squalled in the background. “You okay?”

“Not really,” Quinn said. “Listen, there will be some folks coming around to look for me, FBI maybe. I’m not sure.”

“Tell me where you are, l’ami, and I’ll come get you. Palmer will work this out.”

“Maybe,” Quinn said, “maybe not. You’ll see what I mean very soon.”

“Whatever,” the Cajun said. “Let me come and get you. We’ll handle this. I been to handlin’ school.”

“I have to get out of town, Jacques.”

“You’re breakin’ my heart, l’ami,” Thibodaux said. His voice fell stern as if he was talking to one of his sons. “Meet me and let me help you out.”

“Listen, Jacques,” Quinn said, “it’s against the law to lie to a federal agent. Helping me out could seriously screw up your security clearance — if it doesn’t get you thrown in jail.”

“Are you shittin’ me?” Thibodaux seethed with frustration. “You’re in trouble, and you think I’d give a rat’s ass about my career!”

Quinn was sorry for even calling now. “I’m not dragging you into this.”

“After all you already dragged me into?” the Cajun scoffed. “You wanta be a turd, go lay in the yard — but you know better than that… you truly do.”

“This is too dangerous—”

“Easy now, Superman,” Thibodaux cut him off. “That’s your biggest problem. You know that? It honestly ain’t your job to take care of the whole damn universe. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a pretty fair hand at takin’ care of my own self.”

“Jacques, you have to listen to me. This is bad.” Quinn swung his feet off the bed. “They’ll be monitoring your phone, watching you, questioning your family, whatever it takes to find me.”

“I don’t give a shit if they crawl up our collective orifices, there ain’t a Thibodaux among us who’d give you up.”

“It’s safer this way,” Quinn groaned. “Do me a favor and let Ronnie know I’m laying low for a while.”

“Man, oh, man!” Thibodaux whistled. “You gotta reconsider not callin’ her yourself. Badass babe or not, the girl’s feelin’ sort of fragile about your relationship at the moment.”

“I can’t,” Quinn said. “It’s too dangerous.”

“There you go again, puttin’ on the big red S.”

“Will you call her for me or not?”

“Whatever.” Jacques sighed, still not happy. “Anything special you want me to tell her?”

Quinn paused for a moment. “Tell her to be careful.”

“Seriously, beb? You’re on the run for your life and all you can think to say to your sweetheart is ‘be careful’? Son, remind me to pass you a slap when you come in from the cold. ‘Be careful’… I swear…”

“Well,” Quinn said, not knowing what else to say. “You be careful.”

“I love you, too, l’ami.” Thibodaux gave a dismissive laugh. “I love you, too.”

CHAPTER 28

Qasim Ranjhani stood at the window of his small apartment in the peaceful area of Lahore known as Johar Town, south of the medical college where he’d done postgraduate work. He gazed over the top of McDonald’s and Boston Pizza while he listened to the phone at Yanagi Pharmaceutical ring for the fifth time. Heavy traffic thumped past on Canal Bank Highway. Things were changing in Pakistan, and not for the better.

And now, no one was answering his calls.

With the four-hour time difference, it was just after 1:00 p.m. in Japan, and Ranjhani could not comprehend why no one would be on hand to pick up the phone. He was about to hang up, when a familiar male voice came on the line.

“Moshi moshi.” The voice gave the traditional Japanese greeting, assuming the call came from inside the country.

“Oda-san,” Ranjhani said, still tense with agitation that he’d been made to wait for someone to answer. He spoke English rather than his native Punjabi dialect of Majhi. His mother had seen to it he’d learned to speak English correctly, and his father, though a proud Pakistani, had felt it important he learn Arabic to better understand the Koran as it had been dictated to Muhammad by Allah Himself.

“Ahh, peace be unto you, Doctor,” Oda said, switching to English. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?” Ranjhani thought of him as a smiling viper. For a merciless killer, the man was always extremely polite.

“I am checking on my investment,” Ranjhani said, taking a long breath through his nose to calm his nerves. It did no good to let such a man know you were angry. He was not intimidated and prone to violent outbursts himself. “I have to say, I grow tired of speaking with your subordinate. I understand there was a problem with your project in Virginia. I wanted to hear about it from you personally.”

“Everything is fine. I assure you,” Oda said, a smile in his voice. “A minor inconvenience.”

Ranjhani sniffed, holding back his emotions. “I am sure I do not need to remind you what this minor inconvenience has done in the past.”

“No.” Oda’s voice turned ice cold. “You do not need to remind me. You pay my organization extremely well because we have certain skills — skills at which we excel. Our honor depends on it.”

“Honor?” Ranjhani gave a nervous chuckle in spite of himself. “I have always understood there was no honor among thieves.”

There was deadly silence on the line, so long that Ranjhani feared the man might have hung up and come to kill him.

At length, Oda spoke. “Then you are fortunate that I am a killer and not a thief. The whole of American law enforcement will help us put an end to our problem in Virginia once and for all. Do not concern yourself with trivial things. I have good news.”

“Good news would be welcome,” Ranjhani said, unconvinced.

“The American scientists have arrived. We have demonstrated our process and made them to feel quite at home. I am confident all four will be pleased with the results of our tests this afternoon.”

“That is good news,” Ranjhani said. “So, you believe we will remain on schedule?”

“I not only believe it, Doctor,” Oda said. Ranjhani could again envision the man smiling. “I am certain of it. That is what you pay me for. The first batch of two hundred fifty thousand doses of your… vaccine is ready now. The gun is loaded. The tests will allow us to pull the trigger. In the meantime, the Americans grow complacent. The time has come to, as they say, turn up the heat.”

One call ended, Ranjhani punched another number and walked to his bureau on the other side of the room while he waited for the phone to ring. Two polished wooden boxes, each roughly the size of a brick, sat beside his billfold and wristwatch. The sight of them added another jolt of excitement.

“Hello?” Lee McKeon picked up.

“Things in Asia are moving forward.”

“That is good,” the governor said, his voice noncommittal. He was with someone.

“I know you are uncomfortable with a meeting,” Ranjhani said, looking at the boxes. “But it has become a necessity.”

“Is that so?”

“Indeed,” Rahjhani said. “I have something for you that I must deliver with my own hands.”