Germ

A flash of memory caught her off guard: a seventh-grade science assignment to collect as many spiders as possible over a single weekend. Cobweb spiders, wolf spiders, jumping spiders, sac spiders, daddy longlegs. But the crowning jewel of any collection was a black widow. She'd known the prize would be hers. After exhausting the dark recesses of her house, she moved outside, overturning countless boards and stones. Finally she flipped over a chunk of concrete and there it was: glossy black, the size of a large marble—skittering right toward her bare knee as she knelt in the dirt. She barely jumped away in time and trapped it under a mayonnaise jar. Watching it try to escape, she sensed its dark hostility toward her. The trick would be to kill it without harming its body. She spent hours pushing alcohol-drenched cotton balls under the glass rim. The thing crawled over them, almost mocking. Finally she shot a stream of insecticide at it. It slowly rolled over and pulled in its legs like a fist. Cautiously she removed the jar, then the cotton balls.

It sprang to life. Moving for her, touching her hand before she could pull away. Stunned, crying out, she slammed a rock down on it, again and again.

For weeks afterward she'd awaken in the deep hours, drenched in sweat, swatting away dream spiders that dug into her skin with their fangs.

Something about that spider stayed with her—its intense desire to get her, even defying death for one last chance.

This man, this killer, reminded her of that indomitable black widow.

But he was infinitely more frightening.

'All I know,' she said, 'is that I saw that man, that one at the bank, blown to bits last night. A cop checked his pulse.'

'Could he have been wearing a flak vest?' Stephen offered.

She scowled. 'There was so much blood.'

The brothers stared at her, Allen with doubt in his eyes, Stephen with compassion.

She turned away, caught her reflection in the glass. 'I don't know,' she said quietly. 'Maybe I'm going crazy.'

A dark silence filled the cab. At another time the taxi's strong stench of pine cleanser might have offended her; now she was thankful it masked the odor of blood from Stephen's shirt. After pulling onto I-129 south and finding a comfortable speed, the driver snatched the mike off the in-dash CB radio.

Julia leaned forward to touch his shoulder before he keyed it. 'What are you doing?' she asked.

'Need to call the fare in. Company regulations.'

'Hold on a sec.' She turned to Allen, shook her head. He nodded and scooted to the edge of the seat.

'A third hundred,' he said, 'if your records and your memory say you took us to Oak Ridge.'

As the driver appeared to study the road ahead, his hand hooked itself over the seat, palm up. Allen slapped the bill into it. The money joined the other hundreds in the driver's shirt pocket.

'Four-fifteen,' he said into the mike.

'Go ahead, four-fifteen,' a woman's voice squawked.

'Got a fare to Oak Ridge. Let you know when I'm back.'

'Ten-four, four-fifteen. Hey, Manny, you know anything about the excitement in the vicinity of Church and Market?'

'Negative, Nora. What's up?'

'Sounds like a bank robbery.'

Manny's shoulders stiffened. Allen glanced nervously at Julia.

'Frank's been screaming at me through the box for ten minutes. Says someone shot up his steed.'

'Wow,' he intoned stoically to Nora, then clipped the mike to the radio. 'Those hot C-notes you been feeding me, Jack?' He kept his eyes on the road.

'No,' Allen said. 'The bank wasn't robbed. If it was, our deal is off and you can come clean about where you really took us. Okay?'

He didn't answer immediately. 'That's Oak Ridge, right?'

Allen sighed. 'Right.'

'Funny how that town looks more and more like Maryville every day.'

forty-five

They made the half-hour drive into Maryville in

relative silence. The driver queried them for knowledge of the events back on Church Street, but they claimed ignorance. When they responded to his attempts at small talk in monosyllables, he flipped on his radio to a country station and didn't speak again.

A few times, Stephen groaned quietly. He simply smiled reassuringly when Allen or Julia turned to him.

Allen's head ached with disturbing thoughts. What had he gotten himself into? In the space of one day, he'd been driven from his home, nearly murdered several times, and thrown into a fugitive run with the brother he hadn't seen in two years and a streetwise federal agent.

He glanced at their profiles. They were deep in their own thoughts. As he watched, Stephen closed his eyes slowly, exhausted and hurting. As much as Allen begrudged his brother's choices, he admired what he'd just done. The fact that Stephen had held his own with an obvious warrior boggled his mind.

And Julia. He shook his head in wonder. Even while the killer was battling Stephen, her decisive action was stunning. Running toward the guy as he was about to crush Stephen's head, firing off round after round, driving and holding him back so they could make their escape—all while the killer was shooting back! Some of it was a product of her training, sure, but either you were born with courage or you weren't; no amount of instruction could instill raw bravery. Reliving those harrowing moments heightened his sense that something special had occurred.

He'd heard about men in combat who found themselves surrounded and outnumbered. Later they'd claim that everything had come together in that moment: with bullets and shrapnel whistling past their heads, they instantly remembered minute details of every evasive maneuver they had ever learned in training or in the field, they could accurately predict every inch of terrain they had never seen, their marksmanship became flawless, their feet sure. Only after escaping certain death did they realize that they had done things they could never, ever repeat or explain. But they had survived.

What Julia and Stephen had done back there was something like that.

His eyes traced the contours of her face, turned in profile. The strong forehead, straight nose, full lips. She was gorgeous—not in a fashion-model way, but with the kind of delicate beauty that shocks school-age boys into realizing there are things about girls worth noticing. Still, Allen found himself appreciating her for qualities the mirror could not reflect: the quickness of thought and fearlessness that had saved them from the killer. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt desire for a woman because of her strength of character, intelligence, compassion, or other uncaressable trait. The realization that he felt that way now made his stomach tumble, a thrill he had not experienced in years. He was vaguely aware that his attraction for her benefited him in a more valuable way as well: it took his mind off the predicament they were in.

Thirty minutes after leaving Knoxville, the taxi rolled into Maryville. Julia stared out at the passing buildings. She seemed to seek out each street sign as they passed it, nodding as though committing the name to memory— familiarizing herself with a locale from which they may have to escape. Very professional. He smiled, but the necessity of her precautions made him unable to hold it.

She noticed his attention and smiled, sweet but absent, then returned to her reconnaissance.

Allen looked out his own window. As he watched the sun-drenched town unfold in all its disarming beauty, he felt a pang of envy for those who lived peaceful lives here or visited with nothing more pressing on their minds than finding the nearest gas station or restaurant or bathroom. Maryville, nestled in the shadows of the Great Smoky Mountains and liberally studded with century-old buildings and trees in full bloom, made him ache for his own hometown, the near-perfect life he'd carved there for himself. His face flushed with anger at the faceless people who'd taken it from him.

Julia's voice distracted him.

'Pull in here.'

Allen followed her finger to a Motel 6 sign just ahead. The driver whipped into the parking lot without slowing and jerked to a stop in front of the office at one end of the L-shaped structure. Bright blue and orange doors