"Thanks " I raised the gun so he could see it. "But nothing that I can't take care of myself."

His eyes went wide, and he turned and scurried off, fast as an overweight hospital guard could.

I wanted to wrap this up before he came back with reinforcements, especially in the form of actual police. Problem was, Stinson did as well. Before I could swing the .357 in his direction, he had grabbed the monitor equipment cart. Lowering his head, he lunged forward, driving it straight into the forearms I raised to shield my face. The cart hit me with enough force to throw me sprawling on my back, halfway out the door.

The next shot I let off drilled clanging through the cart's shelves. It would've taken Stinson out as well, if he hadn't dived to one side. He was up on his feet again before I could get the cart out of my way. I ignored the screaming and shouting from the nurse station down the hallway as I scrambled upright, sprinting back into the private room with the gun held before me.

I'd forgotten about Perry all my focus had been on Stinson. But as soon as I was back through the doorway, Perry blindsided me, tackling me around the waist and driving both of us against the side rails of the bed. I managed to twist myself around before we hit, so the rail hit me at the small of back. The sudden shock of pain made my fist clench around the gun's grip That shot didn't miss. It was point-blank into Perry's chest. A .357 load hits someone that close, it's enough to lift them off their feet. Especially a skinny weasel like him he landed nearly a yard away from me, staggering backward with blood welling from between the fragments of his breastbone. His shoulder blades. .h.i.t the window, shattering the gla.s.s into shards and catching the blue glow of the parking lot light poles. For a moment, his body was centered in the jagged-edged frame, then tumbled out, arms spread wide.

There wasn't time to watch him fall. From the other side of the room, Stinson sprung forward, grabbing my wrist and forcing the gun upward. The only move I had available was to bring my knee up sharp into his crotch but that worked. His grasp loosened enough for me to yank my arm away. Too hard the gun's grip was slippery from the blood that had spattered onto me from the close-range wound in Stinson's chest. The .357 went flying over the bed and struck the far wall.

More shouting now, but from outside the building. And a blaring car horn Stinson glanced out the shattered window, down toward the hospital's front entrance.

Then he was gone, shoving me aside and running headlong out the door and into the hallway.

That was the best move for him. Whatever he had been expecting to happen when I'd arrived at the private room that hadn't gone down. If he got out of here before the police arrived, he'd have another shot at it. Something to do with the backpack I was supposed to deliver but I still didn't know what it was.

And he had the means for making a quick exit from the scene. I stepped across the room and looked out the window, the chill night air streaming into my face. There was action going down there, as well, with a bunch of guys around a gleaming new Dodge Challenger this one was red as well, just like the first one with its engine running. Perry's body was sprawled facedown on the sidewalk a few feet away from the car.

If I'd stayed there much longer, I would've seen Stinson come running out of the hospital front doors and dive behind the wheel of the waiting car. But my plans didn't involve hanging around and talking to the police, either. I still had a delivery to make.

I scooped up my backpack and the stuff that'd spilled from it. Bent over, I spotted the .357 under the bed and quickly grabbed it. Jamming the gun and everything inside the bag, I bolted for the door.

The nurses and the doctors and the security guard all were cowering behind the counter as I raced past, my backpack flapping behind me in one hand. I was glad to see that the hospital's security cameras were all still dead. A second later, I'd punched the code into the stairwell lock, and I was taking the bare concrete steps two at a time, heading for the loading dock below.

"How'd you know it was a setup? Must've been something he said."

"No . . ." I shook my head. "It was what he didn't say."

Mason and I were back where we'd started, behind the restaurant where he worked. We didn't bother to hide this time of night, the strip mall was completely empty. I sat leaning against the Ninja, while he kept his arms folded across his chest, spine against the trash dumpster. My backpack was bungeed again to the bike's seat, and I had the delivery Dalby's bag slung behind my shoulders, just the way it'd been when I'd first left Los Angeles.

I had to give Mason marks for being there at all. That showed a certain amount of cla.s.s on his part. He was probably already in trouble with the halfway house he lived at for not having checked in after the end of his shift. His parole office would give him a load of grief about that it was always part of a con's release conditions that he wasn't wandering around late at night, getting into trouble. Which was pretty much what he had done this had been a long, busy night for a guy like him, who was supposed to be keeping his nose nice and clean.

Plus . . . he didn't know what I was going to do now. To him. After he and his prison buddy Perry had cooked up their little scheme and put in the fix in on me he had to figure I'd feel justified in doing just about anything to even the score.

But somehow I'd known he was going to be here, even before I pulled the bike in from the street and circled around behind the restaurant. I guess with so little going for him now especially with his and Perry's big idea having fallen through, and me still being alive and all he didn't have much left, except to be a stand-up guy. And take whatever was coming, without flinching.

"Okay " Mason shrugged. "So what was it, then? That he didn't say?"

"He didn't say anything about money. That was how I knew." I looked up at the night sky stars, sorting out my thoughts, then back down to Mason. "Somebody the way that Perry guy was yeah, he's like you. In a lot of ways being a con and all. So yeah, you could be buddies, and cook up schemes, and do all that stuff. I suppose that's what guys who have been in prison together pretty much do when they're outside again. But there was one way that he was a whole lot different from you."

"What's that?"

"He was younger," I said. "A lot younger. Young enough to still want things. The things you need money to get. Somebody like you . . ."

"You can say it." Mason showed a thin smile. "An old guy like me, right?"

"Yeah." I nodded. "I could just about buy it, that you were helping me out . . . just to feel alive again. Like you were in the game, making things happen. Something to get the blood flowing."

"That part, you're right about. It did feel good."

I suppose some day that'll happen for me as well. If I lived that long.

"So that'd be enough for you." I studied Mason's profile as he turned his face away from me, looking out toward the empty parking lot. "To feel alive again. But not for your buddy Perry. When you're still young, no matter how screwed up you are, you pretty much know you're alive. Because you still want things. So you need money."

"Yeah . . ." A nod. "Money's good. Sometimes."

"All the time," I said. "Until it isn't. I haven't gotten to that point yet and I figured Perry hadn't, either. So he should've asked me to cut him in on whatever I had going on. He knew there was some significant money involved. Between what I was doing, making the delivery and all, and what the Stinson guy had going on, with a whole team backing him up and a new muscle car being delivered right to the hospital's front door you'd have to be an idiot not to smell that much cash in the air."

"I'd told him as much."

"Sure otherwise, there wouldn't have been anything going on at all. But like I said Perry didn't even mention it. Didn't ask for a cut of whatever I was getting paid, even a taste of it. Didn't even want his expenses covered, whatever they might've been. So if he wasn't talking to me about money . . . that meant he'd already talked to somebody else about it. And that could've only been Stinson."

"You got that right." Arms still folded, Mason looked back over at me. "Kind of a strange guy, if you know what I mean "

"Believe me. The more run-ins I have with him, the stranger it gets."

"But he's not so screwed up that you can't do business with him. Plus . . . he's got that mental thing going on. You know?" Mason lifted a hand, rubbing his chin as he thought things through. "Some guys have got that. They can read situations and decide what they want to do " He snapped his fingers. "Just like that. Which is what you need whether you're right or wrong about it. Soon as Perry had gotten into his room, talked to him, and got him on the phone with me he was on top of it. Just like that."

"Too bad I was on top of it, too. Too bad for him, I mean."

"Yeah, well . . ." Mason shrugged. "Perry got the worst of it. I'm gonna miss him least I had somebody to talk to, when we'd be back at the halfway house. Cooking up schemes and stuff. Even if none of 'em were ever gonna happen. Most of the other guys on my parole officer's caseload, they're such burnouts you might as well be talking to the wall."

Something else I had to keep in mind or at least at the back of it. This was all fine now, but I wanted to get out of this business before I wound up like that.

We both fell silent for a minute or so, gazing out at the herringbone lines of the parking lot s.p.a.ces, the stripes tinted blue by the lights at the top of the poles. A couple cars and trucks went by on the street beyond, and that was about all there was to intrude upon our deeply somber meditations. I hadn't been thinking that way when I'd gotten here, but after talking with Mason, that was how my thoughts had turned.

"So . . ." He glanced over at me again. "You really should. You gotta get back on the road. If you're gonna make your delivery."

"I'd be looking forward to it," I replied, "if my Plan B had worked out the way I wanted. Now I have to figure that Stinson guy's out there again, waiting for me. And he's probably really worked up, after all that mess at the hospital." A slow shake of my head. "Guys like that they're like girls. You know? Or what everybody's thinks girls are like. Everything's personal with them."

"Yeah?" Mason raised a graying eyebrow. "And you're trying to tell me that for you, it's not? If that's the case, why'd you come back here looking for me?"

He had a point. Logically, I should've been on the freeway already, piling up as many miles as possible before Stinson could get fully organized, with whatever his next plan might be.

But sometimes . . . logic just comes in second. Even for me.

"Go on " He nodded toward me, bringing his head down a little to indicate the hard, cold lump of metal tucked inside my jacket. "My buddy Perry screwed you over or at least he tried to and you took care of him. So you might as well finish the job."

I reached inside my jacket and pulled out the .357, then just looked at it, filling my hand.

"You might as well," came Mason's voice. "You'd be doing me a favor."

"Really?" I looked up at him. "Think so?"

"Sure. If you don't, what've I got to look forward to, except slopping out this greasy spoon's kitchen and a cot at the halfway house?" He shook his head. "That, and just waiting for something, I don't even know what it is, that'll never happen. I'll pa.s.s."

That didn't surprise me. Maybe I'd known it from the beginning, when I'd first met him here beside the garbage dumpster and we'd started talking.

And maybe that was why I hadn't been totally surprised, when the whole business at the hospital with Stinson had turned out to be a setup, something that he and his buddy Perry had cooked up at my expense. Because if it didn't go off the way they'd planned, he'd still get what he wanted. What he wanted more than anything.

"No . . ." I shook my head. "You're not pa.s.sing on anything." I tucked the .357 back inside my jacket. "I'm not letting you off the hook."

He gazed long and hard at me, as my words sank in.

"I'm not doing anything," I said. "Except my Plan A. I'm just going to start up my bike and head on out of here." I tightened the straps of Dalby's backpack. "And I'm going to leave you here, just the way you were. And just the way you're going to be." I snapped the buckle of the waist belt together. "Because that's just how cold I am."

He nodded, almost in appreciation. "That's cold, all right."

"If you hadn't p.i.s.sed me off so bad, I might've helped you out. And . . ." I turned and slung my leg over the Ninja's seat, getting into riding position. "If you ever find some other way to screw around with me, maybe I'll change my mind."

"That's not likely to happen," said Mason. "Let's face it I'm a tame rat. An old one, too. This was pretty much my last chance to screw around with anybody."

"Probably so." I started up the engine, feeding it enough throttle to rev it into a high whine. "Keep it that way." I picked up the helmet he'd bought for me and slipped it on, visor up. "Or don't."

I turned the bike around and headed out of the empty parking lot.

I didn't look back.

TEN.

"Now do you want to talk?"

They had been waiting for me the guys in the fake paramedics van. Again, out on the street near the strip mall. They just wouldn't give up.

With my fists gripping the Ninja's handlebars, I looked over at Jerry behind the van's steering wheel. "I'm not really in the mood," I said. "Lot's happened "

"Yeah, we know." Jerry nodded. "Look the situation's changed. It was bad enough before, but now it's worse. We know what happened at the hospital "

"I don't think you do. You weren't there."

"Actually . . ." He leaned out the driver's-side window. "We were. Okay, maybe not inside the hospital, but we saw what happened outside. With the window getting shattered, and the guy falling out "

"He didn't feel a thing. At least, not by the time he hit the pavement." I reached inside my jacket and pulled the .357 partway out, just enough to remind these people of what I was carrying. "You, on the other hand, might not be so lucky."

"We're willing to take the chance."

"That's great for you," I said. "But why should I?"

"Hey." The guy looked genuinely hurt. "We should be friends really. Who do you think switched off the security cameras at the hospital?"

"Wait a minute. You did that?"

"Piece of cake." Now he was visibly pleased with himself. "All we needed was a late-night coffee shop with a Wi-Fi connection, and we're in. My buddies and I were hacking into those kinds of systems back when we were in junior high. The two-bit company that runs the service won't be able to switch it back on until they trace the server we patched everything to. It's in Uzbekistan good luck with that."

"Okay . . ." I eyed him suspiciously. "So why?"

"I told you we should be friends. We're on your side."

I mulled it over, while we were waiting for the light to change. I wasn't falling for that bit about being friends, but still. They'd said something before, about what was in the bag I was carrying. Maybe they knew, maybe they didn't but given everything that'd gone down, it was probably worth finding out.

"Okay." I raised a hand and pointed to the side of the street, a couple blocks farther on. "Pull over."

"Here's the deal," said Jerry. "It's a contest."

We were sitting in the van, parked on the street, with my motorcycle pulled up behind. It was a little cramped in the van's otherwise empty cargo area, with three of us sitting there. Dalby's backpack was between my shoulders and the rear doors, in case I needed to beat a hasty retreat. The .357 rested in my lap, my hand poised on its crosshatched grip.

I ignored what he'd just said. "Where's the rest of your little outfit?"

"We dropped 'em off back at the motel," said the other one. "We didn't want you to feel like we were ganging up on you."

"Wouldn't have mattered. So . . . a contest, you said?" I looked over at the little battery-powered lantern in the middle of the floor. "Correct me if I'm wrong, pal, but people get into contests for fun. That's my understanding. And believe me, in this whole business, I haven't had any fun yet."

"Well, it all depends upon how you consider it "

"I consider almost getting killed as pretty serious. Especially when I'm just trying to do my job for which I'd get paid. For me, that's the real serious part. Just the kind of girl I am."

"This isn't going well." The guy sitting cross-legged next to Jerry shook his head. "I don't even know why we're talking to this person." He had been the one in the pa.s.senger seat, when the van had pulled up next to me at the stoplight. "We're going way off plan here."

"Look, just let me handle it, okay?" Jerry turned back toward me. "You'll have to excuse my partner Simon. He's not really into improvising."

"You need to be." When I looked straight into Simon's moist blue eyes, my gaze made him flinch, Asperger's-style. "That's my free advice. If I couldn't roll with the punches, I'd be dead by now."

Simon didn't say anything, but just looked moody and disgruntled.

"Could we get back on track?" I raised the .357 from my lap, just for emphasis. "You said you had something to tell me something about what I'm delivering " With my other hand, I tugged on one of the shoulder straps of the backpack still slung behind me. "And, yeah, I really would like to hear that bit. But not enough to put up with this c.r.a.p."

"Sure." Jerry made a visible effort to simmer himself down. "But I told you already. It's a contest."

"And I take it that's the way Dalby set it up from the beginning?"

Jerry nodded. "Pretty much."

It was my turn to simmer, at least inside myself. Now I was seriously p.i.s.sed off I hate it when the people I'm working for think it's okay to lie to me. About exactly what the job is, that I'm doing for them. If they'd just be straight up and honest with me, things would nearly always go better for them and me. But when they didn't tell me the truth, that something else was going on, that meant two things. One, I was more likely to stand a chance of getting killed. And two, they seriously underestimated me. Like I wouldn't find out somehow, about their sneaky c.r.a.p. Of the two, that was the one that really annoyed me.

"And the contest," I continued after a moment, "is that I am supposed to try and get this package up to San Francisco, and you're supposed to stop me from making the delivery? That's it?"

"No." He shook his head. "The contest doesn't have anything to do with you well, yeah, it does, but not like that. The contest is between the Alpha Team and the Beta Team. You're just sort of the football between us."