wanted my help in getting out of the country in exchange for those files.’

‘Who? What people?’

‘It’s best you not know specifics.’

‘I don’t have these files.’ Evan rocketed past a pickup truck. Every day they handed out tickets in Austin, here he was speeding like a maniac, and he couldn’t get a police officer’s attention. Traffic was light and the few cars he raced behind politely moved over to the right lane.

‘I think you do,’ Gabriel said, ‘but you don’t know it. Slow it down and drive steady if you want to know more.’ Gabriel nudged the shotgun into Evan’s kidney.

‘Tell me everything you know about my mom. Now.’ Evan floored the accelerator. ‘Tell me, asshole, or we’re both dead.’

The last thing Evan saw was the speedometer inching past ninety as Gabriel slammed his fist into Evan’s head, sending it smashing into the driver’s window, and the world went black.

6

S teven Jargo was killing mad. He hated failure. It was a rare occurrence, but it haunted him longer than most men, and he despised the sensation of panic that was a misstep’s inevitable partner in his world. Work went well or badly; a middle ground was only a theory. Panic was weakness, a lack of preparation and resolve, a poison for his heart. The last time he had been afraid was when he’d committed his first murder, but that terror soon dissipated, like smoke caught in a breeze.

But now he was scared and running, his hands scraped raw from sliding along the rooftop of the Casher house when all hell had broken loose in the kitchen while he was erasing the upstairs computer. He had dropped down to the cool of the yard, crashing into Donna Casher’s rosebushes, thorns ripping at his hands, and seen Dezz running out the back door, heard the shriek of the bullets, and they had both retreated to their car parked one street away. The noise meant police, and the police always drove fastest in wealthier areas.

Jargo had rented an empty apartment in Austin yesterday, under a different name and for cash, and perhaps it wasn’t safe but they had no other place to go.

‘At least one of them.’ Dezz breathed hard as Jargo drove twenty miles over the limit to a quiet, faded neighborhood on the east side of town. ‘Shaved head. Old like you. Mexican-looking. That’s all I saw.’ Dezz dabbed at his head, reassuring himself that a bullet hadn’t tweaked his skull. He jabbed a caramel in his mouth, chewed fast. ‘Didn’t recognize him. I saw a blue Ford on the street. License plate XXC, didn’t see the rest. Texas plates.’

‘Did Evan take a bullet?’

‘Unknown. The attacker fired in his direction. He was almost dead from the rope. You erased the files on her system?’

‘She’d overwritten her system already. She wasn’t leaving anything for us to find in case we showed up.’

Dezz leaned against the car window. ‘That fucker scared the piss out of me. I see him again, he’s dead.’ Then Dezz – small but wiry, with a look in his eyes as if he always had a fever – said, ‘What the hell do we do now, Dad?’

‘We fight back.’ Jargo parked at the condo, still watching the rearview to be sure they hadn’t been followed.

‘Evan didn’t see us.’

‘But he had the files on his computer,’ Jargo said. ‘He knows.’

They hurried upstairs and Jargo made two phone calls. In the first he gave no greeting, just brief directions on how to drive to the apartment, heard a confirmation, then hung up. Then he called a woman who used the code name Galadriel. He employed a group of computer experts on his payroll and he called them his elves, for the magic they could work against servers and databases and codes. Galadriel – the name came from Tolkien’s queen of the elves – was an ex-CIA computer expert. Jargo paid her ten times what the government had.

He fed Galadriel Dezz’s description of the attacker and the blue Ford’s plates, asked her to find a match in their databases. She said she’d call him back.

Jargo put antibacterial lotion on his scored hands and stood at the window, watching two young mothers walk in the sun, carrying their babies, indulging in idle gossip. Austin embraced this beautiful spring day, a day for watching pretty moms lift their faces to the sun, not a day for death and pain and everything in his world unraveling. He studied the street. No cars parked with occupants. Foot traffic heading to a local small grocery. He watched to see if anyone watched him.

He would have to call London in a moment. He had been lied to, and he wasn’t happy. Then he would make the most difficult decision of his life.

‘The files are gone,’ Dezz said. ‘If Evan’s alive, he can’t hurt us.’

‘If Evan had them on his computer, I assume he saw them,’ Jargo said. ‘He can name names. It’s not a risk I’m willing to take.’

Dezz sat on the couch in the condo, turning over his closed Game Boy in his hands. Not playing it. Three more caramels wadded in his cheek. Jargo saw Dezz was angry and nervous, the kill interrupted before it was done. Dezz would vent all that pent-up fury on the next weak person he encountered.

He sat next to Dezz. ‘Calm down. We were right to run. It was an ambush.’

‘I’m wondering who let Mr. Shotgun know we were there.’ Dezz slid the blob of caramel from one side of his mouth to the other.

Jargo went to the kitchen, poured himself a glass of water. Evan resembled his mother, and that had made trying to kill him harder. Jargo thought about Donna Casher’s once-lovely face, how he shouldn’t have left her alone with Dezz for two minutes while he searched her computer, how he had said, I’m sorry, to her after she was dead. Dezz needed more self-control.

‘The suitcases make me believe his mother told him they had to run. The files being on his computer are the why they had to run. She had to light a fire under his ass, get him home fast. You should have taken his laptop.’

Dezz opened up the Game Boy, twiddled the controls. Jargo let him, although he found the ping-ping noise of the game annoying. The electronic opiate, the cheek full of candy, calmed the young man. ‘Sorry. It meant getting shot. It doesn’t matter, the files are gone.’

‘Evan talks to the police,’ Jargo said, ‘and we’re mortally wounded.’

‘He doesn’t have proof. He didn’t see our faces. They’ll think it’s a robbery interrupted.’

The radio, tuned to local news, began a story about two police officers attacked and a witness in a morning homicide abducted from their custody. Dezz folded the Game Boy shut. The reporter said two officers were beaten and injured and gave a description of Evan Casher and a bald-headed assailant.

Jargo drummed a finger against his glass. ‘Evan’s alive and our friend let him speak to the police before snatching him back. I wonder why.’

Dezz unwrapped another caramel.

Jargo slapped the candy from his hand. ‘My theory is Donna knew she was in danger, and she hired protection. That’s who attacked us.’ He gave Dezz a hard stare. ‘You’re sure she didn’t spot you trailing her?’

‘No way. I was extremely careful.’

‘I told you not to underestimate her.’

‘I didn’t. But if this guy’s just hired muscle, why does he grab Evan back? The job’s dead. No need for him to risk his neck.’

Jargo frowned. ‘That’s a very good and a rather unsettling question, Dezz. Clearly he thinks Evan has something he wants.’

Dezz blinked. ‘So what do we tell Mitchell about his wife? Or do you just kill him and not bother with explanations?’

‘We tell him that we were too late to save her. That a hired gun killed her, kidnapped his boy. Mitchell will be devastated – easy to manipulate.’

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