Germ

Julia gasped for breath, one weak hand touching the gauntlet. The attacker's fist closed, pinching her trachea like a straw. Fat dots of purple and red began to crowd her vision. In a mad effort to get free, she yanked the wheel sharply right, smashing into the door of a parked car. Sparks and headlamp glass pelted the windshield; metal screamed because Julia could not. The assailant in the backseat merely swayed . . . and loosened his grip. She gulped in huge breaths, her lungs on fire, her throat raw.

They were traveling now at more than sixty miles per hour along one of Chattanooga's busiest streets, a feat impossible to duplicate in daytime traffic. Now, at a quarter after one, Julia took advantage of the absence of commuters.

"Slow down," the assailant hissed, punctuating his words with light squeezes. Each one sent a bolt of pain up her neck and into the back of her right eye. Panic stirred within her, ready to free her mind of all restraints. He squeezed again, this time holding the pressure.

"I mean it," he said. "If you draw attention to us, I'll break your neck without a second thought."

She eased up on the accelerator; he eased up on her neck. The speed dropped to fifty, then forty-five.

"Good girl."

The car sailed through a red light, eliciting a loud honk from a car Julia didn't see.

"I understand," her captor whispered. "We've got something like a Mexican standoff here, don't we?"

The speedometer needle hovered around forty.

"You must be trying to guess my next move," he said. "Let me help you: right now, I'm considering my choices. I can kill you now and take my chances in a crash. Of course, I'd try to grab the wheel and steer to safety. That might work. Or I can wait until you have to stop—for traffic, an empty fuel tank, whatever. It has to happen sooner or later."

He let her ponder those options.

"Or you can pull over, I'll give you the message I was asked to convey, and be on my way."

Julia continued driving. A bead of perspiration broke off her brow and slid into her eye, stinging it. She tried to blink it out. Coppery blood on her tongue: she had reopened the cut in her lip. She didn't believe for a moment that he had a "message" to deliver—at least not one that involved leaving her alive. He wanted to instill doubt, to give her a flicker of hope. Hope would keep her from acting drastically and could possibly get her to pull off onto a darkened side street, where murder was much more comfortable.

"You know?" he said, his voice growing deep with menace. It sounded to Julia that he said the next sentence through clenched teeth. "I like the one where I kill you and take my chances."

Abruptly, he dropped his head lower. A police cruiser was approaching from the opposite direction a half block away.

"Don't—don't flash your brights," he said, every word as firm as the grip he had on her neck. "Don't make a face or twitch a finger. If you signal them in any way, I'll keep you alive long enough to choke on their blood."

She'd never believed anybody more.

The cruiser drew closer. Streetlamps illuminated the faces inside. Two patrolmen. Probably frustrated by orders to carry on as usual, while a cop-killing investigation was unfolding farther away. The officer in the passenger seat said something sharp. The driver agreed with a frown. They could be talking about their wives, for all Julia knew.

They were no more than twenty feet apart when Julia cranked the wheel into the police cruiser's lane.

The freckle-faced assailant had tried to take a step toward

him while firing the shotgun. As he was closing his eye to aim, his foot came down on the rotted step that Stephen had meant to repair. It splintered under his weight, sucking his foot into its maw. The gun boomed, taking out a head-sized chunk of the cabin's siding directly above the door, showering Stephen with splinters and dust.

Stephen stormed out the door, raising his elbow in the jaw-splitting fashion he hadn't postured since his days as a college linebacker. As Freckles was arching forward and down from his crash through the step, Stephen's elbow caught him squarely in the forehead. The impact sent him reeling back in the other direction. Stephen grabbed the shotgun by its barrel; it slipped easily from Freckle's unconscious hands.

He spun the gun around, raising it toward the other assailant, who was bringing a pistol around from behind his back.

"Freeze!" Stephen screamed.

The man didn't even pause. His pistol just kept coming, two seconds from fatal effectiveness. Stephen grasped the man's intention to go down fighting.

"Ahhhhh . . ." Stephen bellowed, the sound rising like a furnace under extreme pressure. He hurled the shotgun at the man, who raised an arm to parry the blow. By the time he swatted it away, Stephen was within striking distance. He planted a massive fist into the man's head, striking the temple. The man crumpled under the impact.