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  Zach glanced left and right. Satisfied no one paid them any attention, he closed the distance between them and answered, “Yes, ma’am?”

  “That was a nice thing, you did. You’re a good boy. You should meet my granddaughter, Veronica.”

  Warmth rushed into Zach’s cheeks. “Um, thanks for the thought, ma’am, but that’s all right.”

  The woman’s lips formed a thin line. “Suit yourself, but she’s a pretty girl, and she’s got a wonderful personality.”

  With an inward wince at the word, Zach wondered how homely the poor girl had to be, if her grandmother had to resort to pimping her out to strangers with a line about her wonderful personality.

  “Grandma? There you are.” The old woman glanced over her shoulder to the voice from the front door. Zach followed her gaze to a woman about his own age, who stepped in. Spirals of shiny, black hair cascaded half way to her waist. Her yellow sun-dress did little to hide her hourglass figure.

  The young woman made her way to her grandmother, kissed her lightly on the cheek, and eyed Zach. “She hasn’t been bothering you, has she?” Bright hazel eyes glittered from an oval face with smooth-as-butter, olive-toned skin. Her generous smile revealed a row of straight, white teeth.

  All Zach could do was slowly shake his head and stare, speechless.

  “Come on, Grandma,” Veronica said, wrapping the old woman’s arm in hers and tugging her away. Tiny, silver, bell-shaped earrings tinkled at her ears. “We have to get home for dinner.”

  The woman caught his eye. “Takes after her mother’s side of the family.” With a shrug of her shoulders that said, “I tried, you fool,” she let her granddaughter lead her out.

  Zach watched them leave, head cocked to the side, mouth open. He considered banging his head against the nearest wall. He turned away from the door and patiently waited for his turn at the counter. When it came, he gave Big Tommy his order.

  Without meeting his eye, Tommy spoke in quiet tones over the counter. “That was a nice thing you did with the old guy, but they’re like cats, ya know. Ya feed ‘em once, and ya never get rid of ’em.”

  Zach smiled at Big Tommy. “You act as though you’ve never been hungry.”

  “Yeah, I know how it is, but you can’t do that stuff. They’ll let ya sneak into heaven.”

  Zach shrugged a shoulder. “We’re all about three paychecks from a worn out gray suit, Tommy. Heaven will take care of itself.”

  “The usual?” Tommy asked.

  “Please,” Zach said with a smile. Tommy’s memory was phenomenal.

  When Tommy finished Zach’s order, he slipped a plastic glove off and held his ham-sized hand toward him. Zach’s hand disappeared in Big Tommy’s grip. In low, solemn tones Tommy said, “Happy Thanksgiving to ya, Zach Marshall. You ever need anything, you come see Big Tommy.” He winked as he let Zach’s hand slid away and whispered, “She brings the old lady in every Tuesday about this time.” His grin broadened until it threatened to split his head apart. “An’ a Merry Christmas to ya, too, Ebenezer.”

  “Thanks.” Zach sidled towards the cash register. The cashier, a twenty-something girl with a pert nose and short, blonde hair under a New York Yankees baseball cap, smiled as she scanned his tickets. “Is there anything else I can do for you tonight, sir?” she said, and blinked crisp, azure eyes at him.

  “No, thanks,” he said. “I think I just need to get home, have dinner, and relax.” He almost added, “before I can screw up anything else,” but thought better of it. He swiped his card through the reader, gathered up the paper bag containing his dinner, and headed for the door. On his way into the parking lot, he smiled at sight of the old man in the gray suit, crouched in the shadows, eyes closed, savoring a mouthful of potatoes and gravy.

  A quick scan the parking lot revealed no sign of the old woman or her granddaughter. He checked his watch. “Tuesday at seven-thirty,” and made a mental note. He held the receipt up and almost crumpled it, when he noticed the link number written on it in pen. It held a number and the name Lisa in blue ink.

  He stared at the receipt for a long moment, then turned toward the deli. Lisa was gone from the cash register. He shook his head and slipped the receipt into his shirt pocket. “Jesus, I really am a zone case today.”

  Zach strolled across the parking lot toward the last wisps of the waning day. The indigo sky rapidly darkened on the heels of sunset.

  With the bag containing his dinner on the passenger side floor, Zach closed the door against the welcoming sounds from the deli. “Take me home,” he said. He rolled the windows down, enjoying the light traffic as his car’s autopilot accelerated onto the road. With Thanksgiving a week away, the balmy, west-central Florida night hung suspended, the calm before the annual Christmas shopping storm. Zach sighed. “I better get home before I step in front of a bus or something.”

  CHAPTER 4

  As Special Agent Sara Goode drove, she checked the dash outlets again for a place to plug her iLink in to recharge it. “Damn,” she said, letting her frustration loose. She held herself short of pounding a fist onto the dash and checked once more. There was no place to plug the damn thing in. Without a way to link with the two men, she was screwed before she started. She couldn’t afford to be out of communication for any length of time, especially with someone like Murphy on the loose.

  The SUV containing him and Newman was nowhere in sight as she’d circled Marshall’s block twice.“Dammit, dammit, dammit, Sara, think. Where will they go?” She leaned forward, peering over the steering wheel. Beads of perspiration formed on her forehead.There was no way she’d beaten them here. There was only one other possibility.

  Dr. Thomas’s house. She remembered his address from his file, but it was one of the new, gated subdivisions to the north of Clearwater. The Cadillac lacked Auto-nav or even simple GPS. “How the hell did people ever find their way around?” She picked up her link. “iLink. Directions. Dr. Lazlo Thomas residence. Starting point.”

  It was dead.

  She threw the useless piece of junk to the seat beside her and slapped her open palm on the dash in frustration. She took a breath to rein it in, thinking it through.

  If Murphy had gone to Thomas’s place, and she took off right now, she might already be too late. If she made it, and waited for him to get home, Marshall would almost certainly die, and she couldn’t try either of them again until she charged her iLink. The muscles in her jaw tightened. She turned the wheel and headed for a convenience store she’d seen a few blocks back where she could buy an accessory charger. In ten minutes, she would be able to try contacting Thomas and Marshall again.

  She pushed through the convenience store door and made her way to the stand containing the accessory chargers. When she found the right one, she grabbed it and strode to the counter, which looked like an altar to sundries. Two pillars of junk rose to meet an overhead assortment of shrink-wrapped gadgets, pills, and paraphernalia in seemingly no order, lending it a claustrophobic feel. The clerk was all of five feet nothing and likely weighed less than his age, which, she judged by his wrinkled brown skin and gray beard, was just this side of a hundred. She shook her head and closed her eyes—he was wearing an actual turban and fiddled with the coffee maker as if he were trying to reverse-engineer a flying carpet.

  “Excuse me, sir,” she said in her most polite voice.

  He ignored her.

  “Sir, I’m sorry, but I’m in a bit of a hurry. Can you please help me?”

  He shifted away from her, turning his back in her direction.

  Sara stood and practiced slow, deep breathing for another thirty seconds before pushing a breath out through her nose. She laid the charger on the counter next to the two-foot high display for vitamins, energy boosters, and herbal aphrodisiacs and stepped around to a position next to the little guy. She calmly slipped her Secret Service ID wallet from her pocket, unfolded it, and propped it on the coffee maker in front of his nose. “Listen, you shit-weasel,” she said in a low, ominou
s tone. “If I’m still in this roach hotel you call a store thirty seconds from now, I’m going to see to it you meet some nice young men from Homeland Security. Comprenez?”

  The man shot Sara a quick sidelong look and shuffled toward the counter.

  She grabbed her ID and ambled to where the man had already put the charger and receipt in a bag. When she laid a bill on the crowded counter, he dropped it in the cash register, placed her change next to the bag, and stared up at her. “Thank you. Please come again,” he said, in a sing-song voice, his hands folded on the crowded countertop surface.

  She emptied the charger into her hand and transferred it to a jacket pocket. Then, she dropped the receipt in after the charger. She crumpled the bag, placed it gently on the counter in front of him, and hit him with her flattest stare. “Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” She stared at his nametag, “Phil? Really?” she said, fighting to keep from laughing. “You have a real nice day, too.” She winked and strode out.

  By the time she tugged the Caddy’s door open, the store’s interior was deserted.

  She shoved the charger into the outlet, and plugged her iLink in as she drove north. The lab was close to the Interstate before it crossed the bay. Marshall might still there, and she could just scoop him up and head for Thomas’s house. She pushed the button to crank the engine over and motored out of the convenience store’s parking lot toward GenTest.

  ***

  After what felt like an eternity, she wheeled the motorized behemoth into GenTest’s lot. It was empty. Her plan to save both men was unraveling before her eyes. She checked the charge indicator for the fourth time. It finally showed enough power to try a call.

  When her call to Dr. Thomas went to voicemail again, Sara growled softly and repressed the urge to throw the thing out the window. As she sat seething in the stolen car, she resorted to counting backwards from a hundred by sevens. It was a trick her father had taught her years ago to get her anger under control.

  By the time she reached forty-four, her head cleared enough to allow her to accept the fact that a decision had to be made. Someone would die on her watch and it galled.

  She slammed her fist on the steering wheel in frustration. If she wasted any more time this way, she’d lose both of them. She swung out of GenTest’s parking lot, and swung the boat of a car around. Her thoughts returned to Dr. Marshall’s tousled dark brown hair and piercing hazel eyes. If she had to cut his friend loose and wait at his house, so be it, but she was not going to let both of them die. Not tonight.

  It was in the right neighborhood, and even with her iLink GPS function, she still got turned around twice and had to backtrack around the one-way streets. Just as she figured out her direction, the air rumbled with an explosion off to her left. Agitation sped her pulse to a gallop. It took every bit of her restraint to keep from shoving her foot to the floorboard. If the sound was what she feared, she was too late, but she had to be sure. Sirens wailed in the distance and she understood how a moth felt as she headed toward the orange glow she knew was Marshall’s house.

  Flashing red lights from the fire trucks strobed into the white interior of Murphy’s restored antique Cadillac as Sara rolled past Marshall’s street. She parked the barge a block away, quick stepping to where yellow and black emergency tape stretched across the street like a leftover Halloween decoration. Beyond the tape, a fire truck’s engine rumbled as it pushed water through three hoses snaking away. Flood lights lit everything in stark relief and there were no cars parked on the street as far as she could see. Reversing her steps, she walked to the corner one street over, turned, and followed the sidewalk. The neighborhood was quiet except for a few residents milling around in small groups as she strode to the house directly behind Marshall’s. It was dark. She checked the surrounding houses, and seeing no lights on next door, marched purposefully up the driveway and into the back yard. She approached the fence at the rear of the yard and, careful not to make any noise, peered over the hedges at Marshall’s house.

  The place smelled like a barbecue gone horribly wrong, and with good reason. White floodlights lit the front and sides of his house, leaving the rear shrouded in shadows. From what she could make out, an explosion at the front had ripped a good bit of the living room and master bedroom away. Debris lay scattered across the street and into the yard of the house opposite his. The resulting fire left the rest of Marshall’s home a smoldering ruin.

  She closed her eyes and took a breath. She’d chosen wrong. Murphy had blown up Marshall’s house. The thought of Marshall sitting in his living room when it disappeared started her stomach trying to twist itself into a knot. She bit back on the emotions trying to overwhelm her and forced her eyes open to the scene again.

  She watched the silhouettes of firemen move around and through the remains of what had been his house and shook her head. Then she focused on the rest of the property. Marshall’s driveway wound around the side of the house to a carport in the back, but his car was absent. Nor was it parked on the street in front of the house. He hadn’t been home. She breathed a sigh of relief and backed away from the fence, slipping into the deeper shadows, and stealing out of the yard. “Nothing I can do here.” She thought back to the folder they’d read on him as she marched toward Murphy’s Caddy. “Where are you, Dr. Marshall?”

  ***

  While the Mitsu moved through traffic toward his house, Zach opened the music app of his PCOD, ran it into the stereo, and accessed his music. Maybe Laz was right, he mused to the sounds of quiet jazz filling the car. Perhaps flirting with Special Agent Goode was a bad idea. He’d just about talked himself past the thought of her soft, brown eyes with the honey-gold flecks and into the futility of the plan when the Mitsu slowed. Brake lights ahead caught his eye. Beyond the tail-lights, the blue strobe of a city police car flashed.

  Zach sat up and rubbed his eyes as the Mitsu rolled to a stop at the end of a long line of traffic. “Wonder what’s up.”

  “Unknown at this time,” the car said.

  Zach rolled his eyes. One of the problems with voice activation was sometimes the microphone picked up random comments. A definite drawback for someone used to talking to himself, as Zach was. He considered turning into his neighborhood a block or two earlier and coming in from the other direction.

  “Auto-drive.” He said, after a while.

  “Yes,” the car said.

  “At the next available side street, find and take an alternate route home.”

  “Calculating. Route calculated.”

  Ten minutes later, the car’s blinker flashed and he turned south off Thirty-eighth Avenue. At the next left, Zach ran the fingers of one hand through his short brown hair. Ahead, flashing red and white floodlights strobed, spilling over the entire neighborhood.

  “Manual drive,” he told the car and gripped the steering wheel as it expanded into his hands. After a right turn and a few more blocks, he circled around to the left and rolled slowly over the uneven brick surface toward his street. He snugged the car against the curb, the front bumper even with the corner where yellow and black caution tape was strung across the street. He stepped into the evening air and walked toward where a giant fire truck and another, smaller red truck sat parked across his street.

  A man slumped, arms propped on his knees, sitting on the rear bumper of the fire truck. His head sagged in exhaustion. He wore heavy, dull-yellow pants with reflective silver stripes at the seams and bottom edges. Red suspenders stretched over the shoulders of his gray tee shirt. A thick coat matching the pants lay on the pavement at the man’s feet. Zach approached the long strip of yellow tape barring his way.

  He lifted the tape and slipped underneath. Cautiously, he approached the man. “Excuse me,” he said.

  The exhausted fireman lifted his head toward Zach. “Hi.” Black smudges accentuated the man’s cheeks and nose. “Can I help you, sir?” His short, dark hair lay damp and matted against his scalp. The man’s shirt clung to him in sweat-dampened patches.
/>   “Yeah,” Zach pointed in the general direction of his house. “I live on this street. Do you mind if I ask what happened?”

  The other man shrugged a shoulder. “Structure fire,” he started. “Either—”

  “Hey!” a voice to Zach’s right shouted.

  The shout from twenty feet away startled Zach. A uniformed police officer lifted a hand and pointed toward him. The strobe lights from the truck’s roof lit the officer and the surrounding houses and landscape, alternating between blood red and stark white. “You. Behind the yellow tape. It’s not safe here right now.” He flicked a thumb toward the yellow ribbon Zach had just ducked under.

  “But—” Zach started, holding his hands palm up at his sides. “I live on this street.”

  “Now.” His firm voice carried over the noise from the firemen moving equipment on the street. The officer turned toward Zach and crossed his arms, staring.

  “It should only take another two hours to secure the area and move our equipment. You really should get behind the barricade, sir, for your own safety.”

  “Thanks,” he said to the fireman and slipped under the yellow and black caution tape. Making his way through the dark, he jammed his hands into his pockets as he walked toward his car. Its parking lights flashed acknowledgment of his approach and the car’s security system disarmed. Once in the driver’s seat, he realized he had nowhere to go. Out of habit, his thoughts turned once again to the ring under his shirt.

  His jaw muscles bunched. He reached to the gold chain and slipped it and the ring it held from under his shirt. He pinched the ring between his thumb and index finger. It shone in the blue-tinted light from the pole overhead. Its diamond sparkled at him like laughter, reflecting his past foolishness.