Whiplash

"Maybe he doesn't think the FBI is thorough enough," Erin said. "Or more likely, he thinks you're holding out on him."

Bowie looked thoughtful. "Or maybe Kesselring knows more than he's told us and wants to see if anyone else does too."

33

STONE BRIDGE, CONNECTICUT

Thursday morning

Why hadn't Dr. Kender called? Surely he'd had plenty of time to think things through. Erin looked over at her fireplace, at the two loose bricks she'd dug out to stash a copy of Caskie Royal's papers. She'd awakened that morning feeling urgent, wanting to get something rolling or-or what? She didn't know, but she felt restless and unfocused. She felt something bad was coming, and it was driving her nuts.

Fifteen minutes later, Erin gave up and dialed Dr. Kender's number. She got his voice mail. She checked the schedule he'd given her, and sure enough, he was teaching a graduate class on Ahmose I, first ruler in the Eighteenth Dynasty, who finished the campaign to expel the Hyksos rulers from Egypt, something she knew since she'd read the course syllabus. If he didn't call her by noon, she'd try again. She was anxious to talk over taking the next step, releasing the papers, come what may. What was holding him up?

She grabbed her car keys and decided to see for herself. She drove past the Schiffer Hartwin corporate headquarters outside Stone Bridge, past the local police station with its American flag flying outside in a nicely planted flowerbed. She admitted she'd hoped to see a sign of Bowie, but she only saw two uniformed officers walking purposefully toward their patrol car. She knew Police Chief Amos had to be hating every minute the feds were there.

She turned her beautiful Hummer right on Munson Avenue, just five minutes from the interstate. In her rearview mirror she could see a car she recognized turn right some twenty feet behind her.

It was the same car that had been with her since she'd left her apartment.

She couldn't make out the license plate. Her grandfather hadn't believed in coincidences, nor had her father. Genetically, she wasn't predisposed to, either.

Time to test it out. She pressed her foot down on the gas and took a quick right onto Marple Drive, her tires screeching.

The car turned a moment later, its tires screeching as well, even accelerated, gaining on her now.

Coincidence would have been nice. This wasn't good.

She tried to make out who was driving and how many were in the car but she couldn't tell because the windshield was darkly tinted, and who did that? No one on the up-and-up, that's for sure. It was time to do a U-turn, though her Hummer H3 didn't like them very much, and drive as fast as she could back to the police station.

No, not yet. She had to find out who was after her. She speeded up again, turned a sharp left and another sharp left, and came out again on Munson Avenue. She was only a half-mile from the police station, so she slowed down, hoping the car would close with her, when she heard a sound like a gas stove lighting and saw a glimpse of flames from the corner of her eye outside the left rear door. She unclipped her seat belt, hit the brake hard, flung the door open, and threw herself out of the car. She hit hard on her shoulder against the asphalt, and rolled just as the explosion ripped through the roof of her Hummer, burst out the side windows and the windshield, sending shards of glass flying out everywhere and waves of boiling air and shooting flames into the sky. She curled into a ball, covered her head with her arms, and prayed. The noise deafened her, made her ears ring, and the smell made her gag as she curled tighter. She tried to suck in air, but the explosion had eaten it all up. She felt something strike her back, and shook it off. She saw it was part of a car seat, burning brightly beside her. She didn't know how badly it had burned her, but she didn't hurt, didn't even feel it yet.

She staggered to her feet and ran behind an oak tree at the edge of someone's front yard, and watched the lighter debris raining down. The road behind her Hummer was empty, her pursuer gone. But her car was a torch, and she felt the air boil hotter now than it had just a moment before. How was that possible? She was watching a nightmare, but it was real and it was happening here, right in front of her, in a nice middle-class neighborhood with no one around, thank God.

Her beloved baby, her Hummer H3, that she'd proudly owned for three years since she bought it from a gentleman from Cabot, Vermont, who made cheese and whose fiancée had hated it. It was light blue and so beautiful all the guys envied it, and now it sat in the middle of the street, only its frame intact, a flaming, stinking, smoldering mess.

Someone had meant for her to be in it.

She heard a woman scream.