Kowalski pressed the Send button, appreciated the white-hot blast that blew out the first-floor windows and sent a booming echo rolling through the neighborhood.
Then he saw Claudia Hunter dive through a second-floor window, tuck and roll down the grassy hill on the side of the house, struggle to her feet, then take off behind her neighbor’s house. She was gone before all of the beads of glass showered the lawn below.
Holy crap.
That was impressive.
Kowalski knew he’d gone easy when he was strangling her with the dental floss. But her pulse had been shallow; she’d been checking out. Apparently, she had other plans.
Kowalski popped out of the car, thought about it, then grabbed the Adidas bag from the backseat. No telling how long it would take him to run Claudia down. He wasn’t about to leave his objective behind to be recovered by some dumb car thief.
Up the driveway, behind the house, down the hill, Ed’s head bounced around in the bag.
Hey, buddy. It’s your wife.
Claudia was a fast runner, even in bare feet and a summer nightie.
After a few backyards, Kowalski paused to stash the bag in a child’s tree house. The structure was fairly complex, with two separate entrances and stained, smooth pieces that were too perfect to have been assembled by hand. The bag was slowing him down, and he didn’t want to damage the contents too much. Or leave it back in the car, where a curious cop might spot it.
Kowalski checked the ground for a weapon, saw what he wanted, picked it up, and raced after Claudia.
Goddamn she was fast.
12:46 a.m.
Sheraton, Room 702
So if I walk across the room, and you stay here on this couch, you’ll die.”
“In about ten seconds. Give or take a second.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I’d say try it, but I’d rather you not. It really hurts.”
“Why is it ten feet? I mean, why not nine, or eleven? Is it ten feet exactly?”
“You know, it’s a bit hard to make careful scientific measurements when it feels like your brain is going to explode inside of your skull. But based on available evidence, I’d say yeah, this microscopic noose around my neck stretches to damn near exactly ten feet.”
Jack considered this.
“Hang on. You obviously don’t work in a lab all by yourself. Can’t your colleagues help you out? Fix this fatal error in the program? I don’t know … give you a blood transfusion?”
“They’re all dead. It’s why I left Ireland.”
Kelly looked at him, her eyes pleading with him to shut the fuck up and listen. Saying, This is going to be a difficult speech, so I’d prefer it if you stopped asking questions and let me tell it my own way.
At least that’s what Jack read her in eyes. He was familiar with that look. Theresa had mastered it long ago.
“I’ve always known that my line of work is dangerously competitive,” she said. “We’re not officially part of the government, but we’re not independent, either. We sign confidentiality agreements like you wouldn’t believe. And we’re required to attend exhaustive seminars on lab security. But all of that doesn’t mean fuck on a bike when five thugs with Kevlar suits and Rambo knives storm into your lab one morning and start slitting your coworkers’ throats.
“These guys, whoever the fuck they were, wanted the Mary Kates, and all of our project research. They left two of us alive to gather it up—yours truly and my boss. He managed to trigger a self-destruct sequence on our servers, but they got wise to it, stopped it, and they cut off a hand for being uncooperative. I’m not sure if he’s alive or dead.”
“And you?”
“I jumped through a window and ran.”
“Then how—”
“How did I get the Mary Kates in my blood? Lab accident. The time we were ambushed, each of us already had a fair amount of the little buggers in our systems. It’s one of the things we were, um, trying to perfect.”
“So the fatal error was introduced, and the satellite was still fixed on you.”
“Exactly.”
“And you haven’t been alone since then?”
“Grand, isn’t it?”
She rested her hand on his forearm. Her skin was soft and warm.
“Let me get this out before we go any further: You don’t have to believe me. In fact, I think you’d be crazy if you did. There’s a box full of printouts and a USB memory stick full of research that will corroborate my story. It’s in San Diego, in case anything happens to me.”
She paused. “Are you listening?”
Jack had been staring down, processing it all. “I am.”
“Thank God. I’d hate to think you were zoning out while I was telling you vital information that might be useful in the event of my premature death.”
“I was just—”
“Never mind. If I buy the dirt farm, go to the Westin Horton Plaza, downtown near the Gaslamp Quarter. At the front desk, ask for a package for Mary Kate.”
“Should I write this down?”
“No way, boyo. Memorize it.”
Jack scratched down the initials anyway: MK, WHP, SD.
“Okay, I got it. Mary Kate, Westin Horton Plaza, San Diego. But wait…. Can’t you try to locate your boss? Isn’t there a chance he’s alive?”
“Even if he were, that would be difficult. I don’t know his name. He referred to himself as ‘the Operator,’ and nothing more. He was obsessed with security. But now all that’s fucked, isn’t it?”
12:51 a.m.
Behind the Edison Avenue House
There she was. Running along the banks of a rock-strewn creek that flowed behind the properties. You got yourself a smart woman, Ed. Instead of racing out into an empty street, where she could be easily picked off, she decided to follow a central path away from the danger, most likely planning to emerge when the danger had passed.
Sorry, Mrs. Hunter, Kowalski thought. This danger has a job to finish.
Pumping hard, Kowalski closed the distance. His fingertips caressed the smooth stone he had picked up back at the tree house. Dense little sucker.
“Claudia!”
Always better to use the first name. Increases the likelihood that someone will respond to you.
She didn’t turn, but she slowed for a second, and in that instant a tiny bit of hope seemed to drain from her body. That was all Kowalski needed. He hurled the stone at her head; direct strike. Claudia’s knee buckled and she tripped forward into the creek.
Kowalski didn’t slow down. He needed to confirm death— failing that, induce death—then recover the head and get the hell out of there. Behind him, in what was not quite the distance, the Hunter home burned like a three-story stone bonfire.
Claudia still had a little fight left in her. She was lying faceup in the shallow creek, despite the fact that Kowalski had seen her fall face-first. She’d had enough energy left to flip over. He admired that. Face your attacker, rather than hide from the inevitable. Kowalski could imagine her calling up her last reserves of strength just so she could spit on him as he approached.
He felt for a pulse; it was fading rapidly. She was on her way out.
He thought about leaving her as is. Investigators could surmise that she’d fallen and banged her head while fleeing from a burning house….
Okay, yeah, that was crap. Her neck needed to be professionally snapped.
Before he did that, though, Kowalski surprised himself by thinking about leaning over and kissing her forehead.