Germ

Julia felt exposed. She put her gun and the palm of her other hand on the bar top, hoisted herself up, and dropped behind the counter. She felt shelves of glasses, cleaning supplies, bags of something, pretzels or nuts probably, then the thing she expected: a small refrigerator. She cracked the door open. White light burst from it, revealing an area behind the bar free of bad guys. She crouch-walked to the end of the bar and went around it.

She heard the metallic chink of door locks, then hinges creaking, fast and high-pitched. Someone had swung open the back door, the one she had tried to jimmy. She stood and ran toward the office, then stopped and crouched again. A body lay sprawled on the floor. The cop from the cruiser. He was spread-eagle, facing up, eyes open. The chest of his blue uniform glistened in a way it shouldn't have. He still clenched his gun in one hand; a flashlight had rolled several inches from the other. The dim office light caught the edges of the flashlight's shattered lens and bulb.

She squinted at the office door's porthole window over the top of her pistol. She scanned past the booths, then back to the office door. Bathroom doors ahead, on the left. She pivoted around to assess the area behind her, then back again. Only then did she move up to the body. Keeping her vision on the hovering white dot of her gun's front sight and the office door beyond, she reached down to feel his carotid artery. No pulse.

She stepped over him and moved quietly to the office door. A small, green-shaded lamp sat on a cluttered desk, casting the room's only light. The back door stood open.

Outside, a car door slammed. She ran through the combination office-storage room, weaving around stacked boxes and unused equipment. When she entered the alley, she spun left into the parking lot. A sedan was squealing out onto Brainerd, tires smoking, engine revved to critical mass. Julia raised her gun and fired three rapid shots. The back window shattered and rained out onto the trunk and blacktop like the jeweled train of a wedding gown. She started to squeeze off another round when the car disappeared beyond a building.

She dashed back through the back door, into the customer area, over the corpse, and directly to the phone booth. She holstered her weapon, stepped in, and shut the doors. The light flickered on. Not knowing what she was looking for, if it was breakable, she moved carefully. She stepped on the tiny seat and pushed her palms against the plastic light cover, raising it up. She contorted her hand up into the space between the panel and the area above it, slowly feeling around its circumference. The panel gave up its hold and fell past her to the floor. Ceiling and lighting fixture exposed, she found nothing. Next she checked the phone itself: the coin-return slot, the outside edges where it mounted to the booth. She used a pocketknife to pry the instruction card out of its metal frame. Nothing stashed behind, no messages written on it.

She was thinking about looking on the booth's roof when she slipped her hand beneath the seat and felt wads of rock-hard gum and firm, angular ridges that could be anything. Her heart stepped up its pace. She fell to her knees, pushed her head against the wooden side panel, and looked under. Too dark. She felt along the edges, the brackets holding the seat. Then something moved. She dug at it, and it slid out from a bracket. A small square of plastic.

A memory chip!

The tracking device was on it. Goody, you sly fox, she thought. He had turned the transmitter off but kept it with the chip so that anyone looking for it—Julia, anyway—would know immediately that he had placed it there.

With a tight grip on the chip, she opened the bifold doors, extinguishing the light. She made her way back to the rear door and stepped into the alley. She was halfway across the parking lot when she heard the first police sirens. The cop who'd been killed probably noticed a light or something inside, called for backup, then rushed to keep his appointment with death. She hurried into the alley on the other side, letting the shadows envelop her. When she reached the end of the block, she heard a chorus of sirens reach a crescendo, then drop off as tires screeched to a halt. She looked back to see red and blue lights splashing against the fence at the back of the parking lot— and something else.

A shadow. It had moved quickly into the gloom against the fence a half block back. Concealing her fear, she stepped casually around the corner of the last building on the block. She slipped the chip into the wide back pocket of her pants. She removed her pistol and moved to look back down the alley.

Shadows, just shadows.

She stood, continuing to stare into the blackness. Nothing moved. The lights at the far end wavered like a psychedelic dream. Slowly she backed away from the building's edge, turned quickly, and ran across the side street to the next dark alley.