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1
WASHINGTON, D.C.
LATE AUGUST
TUESDAY, LATE AFTERNOON
Sherlock had the next hour planned out to the minute. A quick stop at Clyde’s Market for mozzarella cheese for Dillon’s lasagna and some Cheerios for Sean’s breakfast tomorrow, then thirty minutes at the gym: fifteen minutes on the treadmill and some quick upper-body work, that is if she managed to avoid Tim Maynard, a newly divorced firefighter who kept putting the moves on her. She was bummed she couldn’t be with Dillon at the gym as usual, sweating her eyebrows off, but she’d been tied up in a meeting about the Mason Springs, Ohio, middle school murders. She thought of Agent Lucy McKnight, who’d been in the meeting with her until she had to run out to throw up. Lucy was four months pregnant now, nearly over the heaves, she had announced when she’d returned to the meeting, and everyone had applauded. Sherlock, Shirley, the CAU secretary and commandant, and Agent Ruth Noble were giving Lucy a just-beyond first-trimester party this Friday evening at Shirley’s condo. Not a baby shower, too early for that. Their gift to her would be two pairs of pants with elastic waists. Sherlock flashed back to her own pregnancy with Sean, how happy and terrified she’d been. Lucy had a good man in Agent Coop McKnight. What a wild ride the two of them had had before they’d hooked up.
Sherlock had only enough time to jerk the wheel left, fast and hard, before the black SUV struck her passenger side. The impact hurled her Volvo into a parked sedan, and then spun her into the oncoming traffic. The world sped up, blurred into insanity. As if from a great distance, she heard horns honking, screaming metal, yells. Her Volvo struck the front fender of a truck, glanced off, hit a sedan trying to swerve out of her way, ricocheted off yet another swerving car. Her head slammed against the steering wheel an instant before the airbag exploded in her face. She heard a sharp thunk and saw only a flash of what looked like a body flying across the hood of the Volvo, and bouncing off her wildly spinning car. Her brain registered splattered blood on the windshield—she’d hit someone. He’d come out of nowhere. She looked at all the blood, so much blood. Hers? The person’s she’d hit? The world turned round and round, a whirling kaleidoscope of colors and shapes, until they ended when the Volvo’s rear end slammed into a fire hydrant. Her head was thrown violently forward into the bag and she was out.
2
Justice Cummings ran hard out of the alley between two brick buildings and into the street, looking back over his shoulder at the man and woman who were chasing him. He was a geek, not a runner, and he was surprised they weren’t closer. It had been a fluke he’d gotten away from them. They’d been slowed down by a homeless man who’d shuffled between them, his head down, mumbling. Justice didn’t know who they were, but they had to know he was CIA. There was no doubt in his mind they were out to take him, or worse. But why him? Why now? His brain squirreled around. All he could think of was the bizarre chatter he’d been picking up on the Russian dark web, some new kind of covert surveillance technology they were interested in, chatter his bosses hadn’t thought worth pursuing. But why attack him? Besides, how could anyone outside the campus have found out about anything he did? He never spoke about his work when he left Langley, he knew the rules.
He was vaguely aware of shouts and screams as he ran all-out into the street to get away from those people. He never saw the wildly spinning Volvo until it struck him, sent him airborne. His face smashed against the windshield, and he kept flying, the force of the impact bouncing him over the hood. He landed on his side, not a foot from a car sitting sideways in the street, the driver yelling out the window toward the still-spinning car. Adrenaline rushed through him. He couldn’t lie there, even though blood was spewing from his face and pain seemed to be everywhere. They’d catch him. He managed to jump up and run hobbling through the gauntlet of screeching and stopped cars to the other side of the street, pushed through the gathering crowd, all staring, not at him but at the growing mayhem. He looked back and saw a car slammed into a fire hydrant, saw the windshield was streaked with blood, his blood. But he was alive, he could move. He didn’t know where they were, and maybe they’d have a hard time getting to him through the growing chaos of mangled cars, blaring horns, and throngs of people running.
A moment later he was alone in another alley next to a Korean restaurant, the smell of kimchi and the fetid odor of garbage from the two dumpsters mixing with the smell of blood on his face. He ran behind the far dumpster, pulled off his hoodie, and ripped off a sleeve to press against his nose. It ached fiercely, probably broken. His breathing was ragged and too fast. He tried to calm down, but it was hard. He was afraid and he hurt all over. He kept the sleeve pressed hard against his nose and waited. His ribs hurt and his left hip felt like it had been twisted sideways, but he could still move. He looked to see blood running down his leg, and just seeing it, recognizing his leg was hurt, made the pain blast through him. He ripped off his other sleeve and made a tourniquet, tied it above the wound. He didn’t know how bad his injury was, only hoped to stop the bleeding. He stood there, panting, trying to deal with the pain. In twenty minutes he had gone from thinking he’d be having a cup of coffee with a nice woman he’d met at Langley who’d never shown up at the café she herself had chosen, to running for his life. Was it all a setup? She’d been part of a plan? He realized he knew next to nothing about her except he’d thought her pretty and very nice. But he’d been lucky, he’d gotten away, only to run full-tilt into a spinning car and bounce over the hood, and maybe that was lucky, too. Wonder of wonders, he hadn’t broken all his body parts, only his nose, and hopefully the cut on his leg wasn’t bad. Yes, he’d call that big-time luck. He wiped the blood from his face, hoped he wasn’t only smearing it enough to scare people.
He knew he had to leave the alley. The man and woman must have seen him flying over the hood of that car, and they were probably still looking for him, maybe thinking he’d been too injured to get very far. They’d come again, work their way through the chaos to find him. It had to be about his work, a foreign government, maybe. What could they possibly want from him that was worth a kidnapping in broad daylight? Or worse. There were CIA protocols to follow, an emergency number to call. But someone had betrayed him, maybe someone at Langley had set him up. Would they be the ones who came for him? Who could he trust?
Justice felt pain building in his ribs, felt his leg throb, and his nose was on fire and still bleeding, but he wasn’t about to go to an ER, that would be the first place they’d look. He thought of calling his wife, but no way would he put her and their kids in danger. He could hunker down at home, it was empty, his family wasn’t there, but they’d know where he lived. So he was on his own until he didn’t hurt so much and had time to think this through. He had to move, but Justice knew he couldn’t make it far on foot. He called an Uber and set the pickup point on a street three blocks away, and thankfully saw the driver would be there in five minutes.
Blood kept oozing out of his nose. All he could do was keep pressing hard as he slipped through the crowds of people leaving work, all hurrying, many of them focused on their smartphones, none paying him any attention. He kept looking back, but no one was following him. He’d lost them. He began to feel hope.
