roared, bullets shattering a window across from him.
Tightening his grip on the pistol he’d taken from the man whose nose he’d broken, Buchanan raced in a greater frenzy. The misty rain seemed thicker, the night darker. There wasn’t any traffic. The rain discouraged pedestrians. Ahead, opposite, on the right, a murky street light revealed a lane that headed south, bisecting the block between Twenty-first and Twentieth. Buchanan lunged toward it, his travel bag slowing his momentum, but he couldn’t ditch the bag. He couldn’t give up the books and files that were in it.
Behind him, he heard curses, strident breathing, rapid footsteps. The sign for the lane read HOPKINS. Sprinting from P Street onto it, he flinched as bullets struck the corner he passed. At once, he whirled, crouched, and aimed one-handed with his elbow propped on his bent knee, controlling his trembling arm. Sweat merged with beads of mist on his brow. Leaning out from the corner, he wasn’t able to see clearly enough to line up the front and rear sights of the pistol. But if he couldn’t, his pursuers couldn’t aim clearly, either. Judging as best as he could, he squeezed the trigger rapidly, firing three times, the shots echoing in the narrow street, assaulting his eardrums.
Nonetheless, he heard the clink of ejected cartridges striking the pavement and a groan as if he’d hit one of the men, although he had no way of knowing if any of his bullets had connected because both men dove flat on the pavement and shot in his direction, their gun muzzles flashing. A bullet blew a chunk off the corner of the building, nearly hitting Buchanan’s eyes. He flinched and shot three more times toward the men, who now rolled in opposite directions, seeking cover behind parked cars.
Buchanan wasn’t about to get caught outnumbered in a stationary gun battle. The moment he lost sight of the men, he ducked backward, rose, and charged toward the end of the narrow street. The gunshots had caused lights to come on in upstairs apartments. People foolishly showed their silhouettes at windows. Buchanan kept racing. He heard a distant siren grow louder. He heard a window open. He heard a shout above him. But the rapid, echoing footsteps behind him were the only sounds he cared about.
Spinning, seeing the two men appear at the entrance to the narrow street, Buchanan fired twice more. The men separated and lunged into doorways.
Buchanan zigzagged, trying to confuse their aim. A bullet tugged at his left sleeve; another forced tickling air past his right ear. But this time, he didn’t hear gunshots, only eerie muffled sounds, as if hands were striking pillows. The men had put sound suppressors on their weapons, making the noise of Buchanan’s own weapon seem even more explosive when he spun again and fired. More lights came on in upper apartment windows. The siren sped closer, louder. Another joined it.
Buchanan sprinted from the narrow street, racing through the misty rain across O Street, charging to the left toward Twentieth Street. Relieved to be temporarily out of the line of fire, he suddenly tensed as headlights blazed behind him. In the middle of the street, not knowing which way to dive, he had to spin, and the headlights streaked directly toward him. Brakes squealed. But the car wouldn’t be able to stop soon enough. Buchanan had to leap forward, onto the hood of the car, sliding along it to absorb the impact, his face pressing against the windshield, stunned to see the unmistakable red hair of Holly McCoy behind the steering wheel.
Holly’s face was contorted in a shocked, silent scream. Then a flapping windshield wiper struck the side of Buchanan’s face and he snapped his head up, peering over the top of the skidding car, seeing the two gunmen appear at the exit from the narrow street. Breathing rapidly, Buchanan raised his weapon and fired along the roof of the car, unable to aim effectively but shooting four times, often enough to send the men scurrying back into the cover of the narrow street.
“Drive, Holly! Don’t stop! Drive!”
The car quit skidding and increased speed. Sliding, Buchanan banged his face against the windshield. He glanced frantically over his shoulder, seeing that they’d reached Twentieth Street. A one-way heading north, it forced Holly to veer left into a break in sparse traffic. But the momentum caused Buchanan to slide sideways on his stomach, to his left, across the car’s wet hood. With a travel bag in his left hand and a pistol in his right, he couldn’t grab for anything. But even if his hands had been free, there wasn’t anything on the slick hood to grab.
The car kept veering. He kept sliding. He anticipated his impact on the pavement. Tuck in your elbows. Roll. Keep your head up, he mentally shouted to himself. He couldn’t afford another trauma to his head. And then he was slipping off the right side of the hood. Heart pounding, seeing the sideview mirror, he hooked his right elbow around it, bent his legs up under him, felt a jolt, and dangled. The sideview mirror sagged from his weight. He kept his elbow crooked around it, dangling lower, his shoes inches above the pavement. The car skidded. His shoes touched the pavement. The car slowed. When the sideview mirror snapped off, Buchanan landed hard, rolling in a puddle, the wind knocked out of him, but not before the car had stopped, its momentum throwing him forward.
He lurched to his feet. More headlights blazed toward him. He heard sirens. He thought he heard racing footsteps. Then he definitely heard Holly shout from inside the car. She pressed a button that unlocked the doors.
But instead of opening the passenger door in front, Buchanan yanked open the door in back and dove in, slamming the door behind him. Sprawling out of sight, he yelled, “Go, Holly! Move!”
13
She obeyed, squinting ahead past the flapping windshield wipers, darting her gaze toward her rearview mirror, straining to see if the sirens belonged to police cars chasing her. But the headlights behind her remained steady, and no men appeared on the sidewalk to shoot at her, and the sirens came from farther away, less intimidating.
“What happened?” she asked in dismay.
As she turned right onto Massachusetts Avenue, steered a quarter of the way around Dupont Circle, and then headed south on Connecticut Avenue, Buchanan quickly explained, all the while remaining low on the backseat, out of sight. Even though their hunters knew what type of car Holly drove, they’d be looking for a man and a woman, not a woman alone.
Holly’s hands were sweaty on the steering wheel. “Are you hurt?”
“I pulled some stitches.” His voice was taut. “If that’s the worst, I’ll be fine.”
“Until the next time.”
“Thank God you just happened to be driving along that street.”
“There was nothing ‘just happened’ about it.”
“What do you-?”
“When you started down Twenty-first Street and they chased you, you ran from the sidewalk and darted between two passing cars.”
“Right, but how did you know about-?”
“The second car, the one that beeped at you, was mine. After the hotel’s parking attendant brought it to me, I decided to drive around the block to see if I was being followed.”
“Sounds like you’re learning.”
“And I also wanted to see if you got out of the hotel okay. I was driving toward you when I saw the fight, but you ran in front of me before I could get your attention. Then you disappeared along P Street. I was past that intersection, so I figured if I turned left onto O, I might get a glimpse of you coming from Hopkins or Twentieth Street.”
“But what if I’d stayed on P Street?”
“You don’t strike me as the type to run in a straight line.”
“You really
“Evasion and escape.” Holly exhaled. “I missed that course when I was in journalism school.”
“I didn’t mean to get you involved. It was the furthest thing from my mind. I’m sorry, Holly.”
“It’s done. But I helped make it happen. I didn’t need to agree to meet you. I could have kept my distance. I’m a big girl. I stopped letting people control me a long time ago. Do you want the truth? I thought you wanted to meet me to tell me something that would put me back on the story. I got foolish and greedy. Now I’m paying the price.”
“Then you understand.” Staying low in the backseat, Buchanan spoke reluctantly. “You realize that because
