through customs. The Chinese would sever all connections with him now and deny he ever existed, no matter how valuable the information he’d gotten them from Lindy’s computer. They might even kill him if they could.
Xu forced himself to lie perfectly still on the rock-hard mattress, yet the pain in his arm continued to drum a steady tattoo. He wanted nothing more than to go to sleep, but the instant he closed his eyes, he was back at the Fairmont, watching each and every scene play through slowly. So be it. He examined each decision he’d made, an exercise his trainers had taught him early on. He thought of the flash-bang he’d long carried with him. He’d never really believed he’d need it, but his training had always pushed precaution, and that piece of insurance had paid off in spades. It had been a while since he’d used one, but he hadn’t forgotten. That and the bomb he’d set up in his room had saved his life.
Should he have gone out the hotel through the back service entrance? No, there would have been FBI agents out there waiting for him, away from the crowds. He’d done the right thing there, too, getting whole-hide out of the lobby by mixing with the tourists who were running around like berserkers after he blew up his little surprise.
He let himself relive the awful pain he’d felt crashing down to the sidewalk when the FBI agent had tackled him and smashed her fist against his wounded arm. He felt again the humiliation and panic when she’d snapped the cuff on his right wrist and began reciting his rights to him, close to his ear, the bitch.
Even after all his training, perhaps because of it, there’d been no way he could have foreseen that agent chasing him down. It wasn’t just any damned FBI agent, no, it was a woman, and it shouldn’t have happened, wouldn’t have happened if he’d been whole. He should have turned to face her, used his training to snap her skinny neck or his Beretta to shoot her dead, before she’d gotten him down.
And someone had shot the bitch. It had looked to Xu like she was dead, a shot through the head, but of course he hadn’t checked, just shoved her off him and run.
Who was he? Was it the same idiot who had shot Judge Hunt at the wrong moment and blown the Cahills’ trial apart? Had he shot the agent purposefully to save Xu? Why?
When the knock came on the door of his motel room, Xu grabbed his gun, gasped at the rip of pain through his arm, and shouted, “Go away!”
Another knock.
Xu raised his Beretta, aimed it at the motel door. “Who is it?”
A hard rasping smoker’s voice called out, “I’m the one who saved your bacon.”
Xu stared at the man standing in front of him, his back to the motel door. He was wearing a Giants baseball cap, sunglasses, a loose blue Windbreaker, jeans, sneakers, and gloves. He smiled at Xu, not moving since Xu’s Beretta was steady on his chest.
“Who are you?”
“I already told you, I’m the one who saved your bacon. Good thing I followed you here from that doctor’s office in Sausalito, since it looks like you’re going to need some more saving.”
“How did you find me?”
“Well, now, I’ve got to admit I had a bit of luck there. My car was near that white Infiniti you stole—nice job, incidentally, yanking that guy right out, no muss, no fuss, and you were out of there. I lost you for a while because of all that snarled traffic you caused at the Fairmont, but then I thought about it and decided you’d probably headed to the Golden Gate, so I did, too. And there you were ahead of me, going through the tollbooth. I followed you off at Spencer Avenue, watched you leave the Infiniti and steal the blue Honda. Then I sat back and waited for you just down the block from that doctor’s office.
“Yeah, I heard the gunshot. You killed the guy. Why? He saved your bacon, too.”
Xu’s arm hurt from holding the Beretta steady, but it didn’t matter. The Beretta didn’t move. “I overheard the moron calling the cops. I had no choice.”
“Good to know you don’t just go around shooting folk for no reason.”
“No,” Xu said, “there’s always a reason. Then you followed me here?”
“Sure, not a problem. I was surprised you made it so far the way you were driving. Gotta say, you sure don’t look so hot. You’ve still got some blood on your face from when that agent planted you on the sidewalk.”
There was blood on his face? What did this guy want? Xu said slowly, “But that was yesterday afternoon. Why did you wait until today to knock on my door?”
The man said matter-of-factly, “The Feds might have been following you or you might have had some other help coming. I had to wait, seeing as how I’m not too fond of the cops myself. You know, there’s a chance the clerk in the dinky motel office might have seen the blood on your face, and if he did, he must have wondered. Surely he wondered. If he sees your photo on TV, he’ll know.”
“Nah, the kid doesn’t know anything; he was too busy playing video games when I checked in. I don’t even remember a TV.”
“Like I said, you don’t look too hot. Do you want another pain med? Once we get you feeling better, we can decide where to go. Look, if I’d wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have shot that agent off your back. I’m not here to hurt you. You’re already in bad shape. I’m here to help you. Stop pointing that ridiculous gun at me.”
Xu ground out the words “Why would you care?”
“I’m thinking we’re a lot alike.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Nah, I kill because I want to, and you kill because you have to. See? Not so different.”
Xu stared at the guy for a long time, and nodded. “The pills are on the night table.”
The guy shook two pills out onto his gloved palm, handed them to Xu, waited until he swallowed them, and gave him a glass of water.
Xu still didn’t pull down the Beretta. He motioned the guy to step back, then held himself still and waited for relief.
“I see from the number of pills still in the bottle you’ve been going light on the pain meds. Not a bad idea, given who could come through that door.”
“Take another step back. I don’t want you so close to me.”
Xu watched him take two steps back.
“Why did you kill that FBI agent who was on my back?”
“Well, you see, when she knocked you down, she was out there in the open. I had a nice clear shot, and I took it.”
“You’re saying it wasn’t about me? You wanted to kill her?”
“Oh, yeah, I wanted her dead, but I figured what I was seeing was pretty interesting, so why not see where it led me? Hey, kill one bird and save the other.”
He opened his mouth, but the man raised a gloved hand. “No reason for you to ask me any more right now. Maybe if we become BFFs, I’ll tell you everything.”
The medication was numbing the pain in his arm but blurring his brain as well. Xu said, “Were you the one who tried to kill Judge Hunt?”
The guy nodded. “I thought I nailed the bastard, but he turned at that last second. Can you believe the rotten luck? But still, it was a good shot, he should have died.”
“But he didn’t. Did you try to take him out again in the hospital?”
Xu would swear the guy puffed up with pride.
“I gave that plan a lot of thought, even got me some blood from a patient in the hospital to smear on the walls of the elevator shaft to drive the Feds nuts, but—”
Xu interrupted, “It was a ridiculous plan.” He stopped talking at a fierce jab of pain, held himself perfectly still, waiting for the meds to kick in and kill the pain once and for all. This idiot who’d shot through an elevator hatch
