Germ

His pursuers crossed into the middle lane and in a burst of speed edged closer. Now the Maxima's bumper was even with Donnelley's door. Instinctively, he touched the outside of his pants pocket. It was still there—the tracking device. He had not been able to place it on Vero's clothing, but it was turned on: his partner could track them. She was back there now, somewhere behind the Maxima.

He drew his pistol from the holster under his arm, bringing it across his body to shoot. Just then, the rear driver's-side window shattered into thousands of tiny crystals that sailed across the car's interior, along with the thunderous sound of a shotgun blast from the Maxima. Vero screamed, and both men ducked.

Another blast hit Donnelley's door. He kept his head down, blind to the road ahead, letting minor collisions with the guardrail on his right and the Maxima on his left keep the vehicle relatively straight. Another blast took out the metal pillar between the front and rear side windows and most of Donnelley's headrest. His gun flew across the car and skidded around on the passenger floor mat.

Boom! Vero's window disintegrated.

"Enough of this!" Donnelley slammed his foot down on the brake for a mere instant. The car jolted and the Maxima pulled ahead. He cranked the wheel to the left. The sedan's front corner rammed dead into the Maxima's passenger door, directly below the startled face of the shooter hanging halfway out the window.

The man's torso jerked down, as if for an enthusiastic Oriental greeting. From his position ducked behind the wheel, Donnelley didn't witness the man's face hitting the sedan's hood, but that it did was indisputable: the shotgun pinwheeled across the windshield and over the roof. A split second later the man jerked back into view, blood spewing from both nostrils. He disappeared back into the Maxima.

Donnelley sat up and cranked the wheel again. This time, the sedan nailed the Maxima just forward of the front tire. The pursuer's car shot across three lanes and fell back. Just as he was registering the decent distance he'd gained on the Maxima, the bloody-faced shooter reemerged, a new shotgun in hand. He appeared to be bellowing in rage, a warrior whose battle had become personal.

Donnelley slapped Vero in the chest and pointed to the floor. "Hand me that pistol. Now!"

Back at the on-ramp that had admitted the dueling vehicles onto I-75, another car, this one a chocolate brown Ford Taurus, vaulted onto the highway. In a chorus of screeching rubber, it fishtailed across three lanes before choosing one and bulleting forward.

Inside, Julia Matheson straightened the wheel and pushed the accelerator. Her lips were pressed against her teeth. Dark bangs clung to her sweaty face despite the car's air-conditioning. Her wide eyes darted around, looking for openings in the traffic and for her partner up ahead.

The pandemonium coming through the tiny speaker nestled in her ear was maddening. Through intermittent patches of static and dead air came explosions of gunfire, ferocious commotion that could have been crunching metal or more static, screams, and shouted expletives.

Her partner, Goody Donnelley, wore a wireless microphone designed for monitoring conversations from no farther than a mile away, but she saw no signs of him.

Once again she tried reaching him on the in-car police-band radio: "Goody! Pick up. This is Julia. Goody!"

She knew the problem: he had turned it off before going into the hotel to pick up the guy they'd said was causing trouble, because it tended to interfere with the body microphone's signal.

Through the earpiece she heard Goody yell, "Hand me that pistol. Now!" Static followed.

She thought again of contacting the Atlanta police, Georgia state patrol, her own agency . . . anyone; but she trusted Goody's instincts, and when it had all hit the fan, he had told her not to call for backup.

She slapped a palm down against the wheel.

It was not supposed to have gone down like this. Not like this.

Okay, no duh. But an hour ago the assignment had seemed more than boring. It had seemed beneath them.

three

Goody had called her shortly after six.

"Rise and shine," he said.

She could hear his sons laughing and yelling in the background. She couldn't image that kind of energy this early.

He continued, "Our mad caller's in town. He showed up at CDC this morning."

"Vero?" Julia asked, still groggy. "He's here?"