Germ

"Two objectives. If no one's there, see if there's anything that'll identify who hired him."

"What do you mean, if no one's there? If I do this, there'd better not be anyone there."

"If Atropos or whoever he has working for him—a pilot maybe— does see you, then you want to leave this . . ."

She leaned over, rooted in her gym bag, and held up the gauntlet.

"But you can't just leave it," she continued. "You have to pretend to lose it accidentally, drop it while running away or something."

Allen shook his head. "Why give it to them at all? You really are an exasperating woman."

She set the gauntlet on her lap, and again she fumbled around in the gym bag. When she straightened, empty-handed, Allen presumed she'd misplaced something. Then he noticed the item resting in her upturned palm. It was about the size of a dime, but several times thicker, black. He leaned closer.

"A satellite-assisted tracking device," she announced. "Goody was going to place it on Vero so we wouldn't lose him. I have the equipment to track this puppy to hell and back. It's a beacon of the gods—as close to omniscience as we'll ever get."

She examined the device, used her fingernail to rotate an almost invisible switch set into its case. Then, picking up the gauntlet, black and muscular and hideous, she carefully slipped in her hand, the tracking device on a fingertip.

"I'm going to put the SATD into one of the fingers. If I've guessed right, Atropos will want to find out who was walking around with one of his own special weapons and who made an attempt to breach his plane." She withdrew her arm, then shook the gauntlet a few times to make sure the device wouldn't fall out. "The only clue he'll have is the gauntlet."

Allen nodded. "He'll have it examined it for fingerprints."

"I'm counting on that to keep him from finding the SATD too soon. He'll want to preserve any fingerprints that may be inside. Kendrick said Atropos is freelance; he goes where the jobs and the money are. I think he'll turn to his current employer for help in finding out who this new guy is. And I bet Litt has the means to lift and analyze a fingerprint. By the time they discover the tracking device, I'm praying that it's smack in the middle of their home base."

"So he takes it to them, and we find out where they are," Stephen said from the driver's seat. His deep voice was frigid, all business.

"Wait a sec," Allen said. "Why can't we simply attach it to their plane? Wouldn't that be safer?"

"We can't be sure the Citation will go all the way to their base. What if they land at a major airport and take another form of transportation to their final destination?"

"And even if they don't use the plane," Stephen said, "if they send it by courier or something, we'll still find out where they are."

Despite himself, Allen felt excitement lift his mood. "Want to bet it ends up at whatever swank address Kendrick Reynolds calls home?" he asked. "Or at one of the agencies he controls?"

Stephen cranked the wheel, jostling the van over what felt like a canyon wall. Allen turned to see the cop supply store's front window looming large in the windshield.

"First, Allen, we make sure you're well protected," Julia said behind him. "Then we make you look like someone Atropos doesn't know."

sixty-three

Now, disguised as Julia's "new player," Allen tried not to think of how completely alone he was. Julia and Stephen were waiting in the hangar, in the comfort of a Lear jet they'd secured as a staging area for this "operation," as Julia called it. He mustered his courage and edged to the corner of the hangar. He peered first left, at the parked planes, then right, toward the distant terminal.

All clear.

He stepped out of the shadowy alley and into the waning light, heading toward Atropos's Cessna. He walked along the front of a hangar, past the huge closed doors, moving fast. At the last hangar before a long stretch of tarmac, he heard music and saw that the sliding doors stood about five feet apart. As he approached, Freddie Mercury's mournful vocals swelled:

Mama, just killed a man

Put a gun against his head

Pulled my trigger, now he's dead . . .

A loud clang, followed by a string of expletives, slipped out the door. Allen hurried past the opening without looking. A sign jutted from the corner of the hangar: CAUTION—AIRPLANE CROSSING. He walked under it, casting a furtive glance to the left at an abandoned-looking building fifty yards beyond the end of the hangar. Wooden crates, oil drums, and tires formed a huge wedge against one side.