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  The cab shot out into traffic, cutting a semicircle across three lanes, and sped away in the other direction. Horns blared and wheels locked in a chorus of wailing tires. Several cars smashed into each other.

  And the killer did precisely as she had anticipated.

  He dropped the valet and galloped into the street after the cab. His feet flashed by Julia’s hiding place. She turned to watch his progress, but he was instantly out of sight, lost among the traffic. She heard cars a block away sounding their horns and locking their brakes. The cabbie was doing quite a job for forty-seven bucks.

  She was out from under the car in seconds, chunks of greasy dirt falling from her hair and clothes.

  “Allen! Stephen! Move it!”

  She draped the gym bag’s strap over her shoulder and stood on her tiptoes. The killer was two blocks away, only a half block from the cab. He stopped. Julia’s breath wedged in her throat—she knew what he was doing. The back window of the cab shattered, shot out by the killer’s silenced weapon. The cab veered and bounded onto the sidewalk.

  I got him killed!

  But it kept moving, coming off the sidewalk and swerving around a parked car. It made a sharp turn and disappeared. It took the killer a full ten seconds to reach the same spot and disappear himself.

  Sirens warbled around the corner where the bank stood, then stopped. Witnesses would soon inform the police of the direction they had fled.

  Allen and Stephen reached her side, congratulating her for a brilliant move.

  “It’s not over yet,” she said. “Stephen, you going to make it?”

  He touched his side and grimaced. “Yeah. Nothing a tight Ace bandage and some ibuprofen won’t ease.”

  “Good enough.” She ran to the first taxi in line.

  forty-four

  After they’d climbed in, they waited for the driver, who was standing outside his open door, looking in the direction of his apparently berserk colleague. “Driver, we’re in a hurry!” Julia called.

  He slid in behind the wheel, hooked an arm over the seat back, and glared at them. “I ain’t going to do what Frankie just done,” he said.

  “We don’t want you to,” Allen said. He held his hand open to Stephen, who pulled the envelope out of his back pocket, groaning when he twisted, and placed it in Allen’s hand. Allen pulled out a hundred-dollar bill and held it up. “Will this get us to Maryville?”

  Julia was squeezed between Stephen and the door. Through the back window, she’d caught a glimpse of the killer darting between cars, moving quickly toward them.

  “Let’s go!”

  “I can get you there,” the driver said slowly, seeming to talk to the money, “for this here tip plus the fare there and back.”

  “Sounds good.”

  The hundred dollars disappeared into the driver’s shirt pocket. He settled himself in behind the wheel and started the meter.

  The killer was a block away. His arms pumped like an Olympic sprinter’s—an Olympic sprinter with a really big gun.

  “Go!” Julia pulled her pistol from its holster under her arm but kept it hidden beneath her jacket.

  “Look, lady—”

  “Another hundred,” Allen said, digging in the bag, “if you do what the lady says. Now!”

  The driver slammed the shifter into drive and punched the accelerator.

  The killer stopped to aim. Leveling the pistol at the taxi, he jerked toward the sound of squealing tires behind him. He leaped to avoid being struck by a car, came down on its hood, and flipped off, disappearing from Julia’s view. When he reappeared, he jumped on top of the car’s hood. From that vantage point, he raised his gun again.

  Julia caught the glint of the laser’s ruby sparkle. Then the cab veered around the corner at Locust Street and roared toward the highway a block away. She holstered her weapon.

  Allen tossed the hundred into the front seat, where it disappeared into the driver’s shirt pocket. He turned to Julia. “Since when are killers resurrected?” he whispered. It sounded like an accusation.

  Stephen groaned and said, “What are you talking about?”

  “She said that guy back there was the one she saw shot to death last night!”

  “Obviously someone else.”

  “It was the same person,” Julia said.

  “Same clothes maybe,” suggested Stephen. “Same team of assassins, even. That would make sense if they were recruited under the same criteria: big, bold, tough as nails.”

  “No. It was him.” She touched a sore spot on her neck where his fingers had dug in. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

  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 alternated like opposing sentinels before the rooms at ground level and behind the wrought iron railing of a second-story balcony.

  Julia and Stephen clambered out as Allen paid double the fare. He climbed out on the driver’s side and watched Julia over the roof as she pulled a newspaper from a machine, folded it, and slipped it into an open side pocket of the gym bag.

  “Take care, buddy,” the driver said, and Allen believed he meant it. Their melancholy silence had conveyed the true depth of their plight more than he’d realized.

  “Just remember our deal.”

  “Oak Ridge.”

  Allen slapped the roof in acknowledgment, and the taxi pulled away.

  forty-six

  In the shade of the balcony, Stephen stood solid as

  a totem pole, stone-faced and still a bit dazed by his injuries, which had to be cleaned and dressed.

  Allen wanted a few hours of shut-eye for himself. He reached for the office door, but Julia stopped him.

  “Not here,” she said. Through the glass door, they could see that the office was unoccupied. Behind the brochure-crowded counter, a shadow moved on the open door to a back room. Julia hitched her head to the side, urging the men to follow her. They moved quickly into a breezeway at the elbow of the building where an ice machine and a soda dispenser hummed quietly.

  “We’re not going to take any more chances,” she said. “The people after us are too determined and too resourceful. There’s another motel about a mile back the way we came.”

  “Think the cabbie will rat us out?” Allen asked.

  She smiled. Rat us out. “The killer saw us take off in the taxi.” She combed her fingers through her hair, a quick, unconscious motion. “He was trying to shoot at us and dodge traffic at the same time, but I’m sure he took note of the taxi number or license plate. The guy’s too proficient not to. The cabbie may or may not stick to his story about dropping us off in … Oak Ridge, you said?”

  Allen nodded. “Yeah, it’s a small town about the same distance from Knoxville as Maryville, but in the opposite direction. I figured the cabbie’s odometer would support the story.”

  “Let’s not count on it working. Sooner or later, our enemies will figure they’ve been duped. You figure that killer could pressure the truth out of the cabbie?”

  “Without breaking a sweat,” Stephen said. If the strong resonance of his words was any indication, he was feeling better.

  “How are you doing?” Julia asked.

  “Flesh wound.”

  “So what was that kung fu stuff back there?” Allen asked.

  “Tang soo do, actually,” Stephen said. “Like tae kwon do, but its emphasis is on respecting the humanity of your opponent. The object is to use only the moves and the force necessary to stop an attack, escalating the severity of your blows only as the threat becomes greater.”

  “How much greater could that warrior’s threat have been?”

  “Shoulda brought a rocket launcher.”

  “You should have brought some brains,” Julia snapped. “That was a stupid move, taking him on.”

  Stephen looked hurt. Allen realized that Julia’s bold actions had impressed his brother as well.

  Stephen said
, “I knew if we just ran, he’d overtake us, shoot us or something. I thought the only chance we had was for me to confront him. Turned out that was like a gazelle picking a fight with a tiger.”

  “I thought you did well,” said Allen. “And you’re right, we’d probably all be dead if you hadn’t fought him.”

  “And that’s how we’ll all end up if we don’t get moving.” Julia shifted the gym bag to her right shoulder. “Let’s take a back street to the motel.”

  The thought of a cool, dark motel room made Allen drowsy. He’d risen early yesterday after a restless night, only to put in a typically hectic day, followed by a decidedly untypical night of escaping from gun-toting killers. Three hours of fitful sleep in the cramped front seat of Stephen’s Vega just didn’t cut it. He heard himself say, “Four hours of undisturbed slumber sounds like nirvana to me.”

  “No sleep, Allen. We don’t have time. I have some calls to make, and you have some errands to run.”

  Her words knocked him back a step. Who was she to determine their agenda? Returning her direct gaze, he sensed that the way he responded would shape an important dynamic to their relationship. He’d always been a leader himself, yielding authority to no one, especially a woman. She might have more experience in covert matters, but did her knowledge of the criminal mind and her prowess with weapons give her a right to assume control of their destinies? As he opened his mouth to protest, the ice machine loudly dumped a tray of ice into its holding bin.

  Allen jumped and snapped his head toward the machine, feeling Stephen tense up beside him. Julia didn’t flinch, merely continued to watch him. It seemed that surviving in the shadowy underworld of dark villains had made her unflappable. He had to admit, regardless of her gender and age, she was the most qualified to see them through this insane battle.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I think I feel a second wind coming on.”

  She spun and strode out the far end of the breezeway, heading for the street that ran parallel to Broadway Avenue.

  He was glad she hadn’t smiled. Stephen stepped past him, briefly patting him on the back with a mitt-sized hand.

  “I will not give sleep to my eyes, or slumber to my eyelids,” he said and walked on.