curve that swept through 180 degrees. At the end of the curve, she turned left, then right, and reduced speed again. The headlights had fallen farther behind, but they were still there. There could be no doubt now.
She drove thirty more yards, then on impulse turned into a long driveway beside a one-story ranch house. The driveway actually ran past the house, which was set far back from the road. She shut off her engine and got out, moving quickly underneath a carport that held two American-made sedans. She'd worried that the occupants of the house might wake up, but no lights came on.
She cycled the slide on her Glock and waited.
The headlights glided up the road, then passed the driveway without slowing down. Alex leaned back against the clapboard wall, her pounding heart resonating through the wood. Was she going crazy? Her left hand went to the cell phone in her pocket. Who could she call? Chris? He couldn't leave Ben. Even if he did, he wasn't trained for this kind of situation. Will Kilmer was too far away to help. Christ, even if she called 911, she couldn't direct help to her exact position. She only knew where she was in general terms. In the last ten minutes, she had broken half the rules in the FBI book.
'They
Her heartbeat slowed steadily and, when no headlights appeared, stabilized at something like high normal. To pass the time, she counted the beats per minute:
'Fuck,' she muttered, digging out her cell phone. She dialed Chris's cell phone, and this time, thankfully, he answered.
'Hey, you doing okay?' he asked.
'No. Listen to me. The white van followed me after I left your place. I'm parked in a neighborhood off Liberty Road, and he took off about five minutes ago. He couldn't be at your place yet, but it's possible that he could be headed there. Are you still in the studio?'
'Yeah.'
'Your gun close by?'
'In my hand. Should I call the police?'
'It wouldn't hurt. You could just say you saw a prowler.'
'I've done that before. It took fifteen minutes for anybody to show up. This is the country, not the city.'
'Make the call now.'
'Okay.'
'I'll call you back in a few minutes.'
'What are you going to do?'
'Find the van. Anybody approaches that studio, you shoot to kill.'
'Alex-'
'I'm hanging up now.'
She was reaching into her pocket for her keys when her threat radar redlined. There was no warning, no sound, nothing tangible to make her freeze-yet she had. Something had changed while she was on the phone. Her conscious mind had not registered it, but deep in her reptilian brain, some ancient sensor had been triggered. Adrenaline was flushing through her as though she had an infinite supply. It took all her self-control not to burst into panicked flight. A normal person would not have been able to resist the urge, but Alex's training had set deep; she knew that to run was to die.
Her heartrate had doubled. Thirty yards away, the asphalt street was dimly lit by the spill from a distant streetlight. The nearby houses had single bulbs on their porches, nothing more, and there was no moonlight to speak of. Her world was black and gray. She crouched and moved swiftly to the inside corner of the carport, sweeping the area with her Glock as she moved. It took an act of will not to push the doorbell button beside the screen door.
Her ears were attuned to the slightest sound, but she heard only the steady thrumming of air conditioners in the humid darkness. Then it came: a percussive skating sound, like a stone skipping across cement. Her pistol flew to the right, where the carport opened to the driveway. She stared into the blackness like a trapped miner searching for light. She stared so hard that she was almost entranced when a leather-gloved hand seized her throat.
Before she could react, another hand slammed her Glock against the carport wall. She fought with every fiber of muscle in her body, but her struggles had no effect. She couldn't even see her attacker; his enormous bulk blocked out the light. She tried to lunge upward with her right knee, but this only revealed the helplessness of her position. Her assailant had pinned her lower body against the wall. She tried to scream, but no air could escape her windpipe.
She struck again and again where she thought a face should be, savage blows, yet they had no effect. Her fist collided with flesh and bone, yet her attacker didn't even move to avoid her blows.
He was choking her to death. In seconds she would lose consciousness. Fear welled up with debilitating force: she was stunned to realize that it had no limit. It shot up into terror and rocketed free, like a missile breaking away from the earth's gravity. She tried to gouge the invisible eye sockets with her fingernails, but the man simply drew back his head, putting them out of reach. Had she heard an appreciative chuckle? Tears of rage blurred her eyes. The already faint image of the distant street began to go black….
A ringing crash of metal on metal heralded a barrage of canine fury. A huge dog had launched itself against the Cyclone fence at the end of the driveway. The animal was fifteen feet away, but his thunderous barking made an attack sound imminent. The grip at Alex's throat lessened for a moment, and the massive thigh pinning her to the wall torqued away. With all the strength left in her body, she twisted into the attacking shadow and hammered her knee into the apex of faint light at its center.
Testicles crushed beneath her knee, and an explosive grunt burst from the shadow. The grip at her throat loosened, and she screamed with the piercing shriek of a panicked five-year-old. Even the dog fell silent. But before she could exploit the instant of uncertainty, the glove closed around her throat with redoubled force, and the hand pinning her arm slid down toward her Glock.
The hand tried to wrench the pistol from her grasp. In desperation she thrust her left hand deep into her pocket, dug past her cell phone, and jerked out her car keys. Raising her hand high, she stabbed again and again, like Norman Bates in
In the same instant, the carport light switched on.
What she saw disoriented her: not the face of a man, but a huge maroon shape sitting on a massive pair of shoulders. A door flew open behind her. A man shouted a warning, but the Glock flashed up to her face with eerie slowness and blotted out the light.
'Hey, miss? Hey! Are you okay?'
Alex blinked her eyes open and looked up at the face of a bald man wearing pajamas. In his right hand was a pump shotgun, in his left her Glock 23.
Her right hand flew to her face. There was blood there, lots of it. For a moment she was back at the Federal Reserve bank; she'd fallen on her back then, too, only the soundtrack had been the automatic weapons and grenades of the Hostage Rescue Team, not a Southern drawl uttered by a man in pajamas.
'Am I hit?' she asked. 'I heard shots.'
'You're not hit,' said the man with the shotgun. 'That fella fired one shot, but when I jammed my twelve- gauge through the door, he knew he'd better not shoot again. He slammed this pistol into your head, so I aimed my Remington center mass. He dropped the pistol and took off running.'
'Did you see his face?'
'No, ma'am. He was wearing something on his head. Looked like a T-shirt or something. He looked like something out of
Alex breathed deeply and tried to calm down. Her dilemma was simple: identify herself as an FBI agent or get the hell out of here. Her instincts told her to haul ass, but if her attacker turned out to be Grace's killer, she
