"I followed the van to the bridge." Herman is a bit breathless as he comes in and I close the door behind him. "From what I could see, they were in the clear."

I check my watch. "I'll give them twenty minutes and then I'm gonna call Harry or Sarah, and make sure they got there okay. What I'm afraid of is if he knows they're on the run he may try to make his move now."

"I don't think so," says Herman. "My two guys in the van are armed and they know what they're doing. Once he and Sarah get on the road, Harry's got the shotgun. If you want, I can have one of my guys go with them, just for the first night or so."

"No. I'm just worried that maybe we missed something," I tell him.

"No. I think we got it covered," says Herman.

"The luggage is in the car."

"Good," he says. "Then we better make tracks." He starts to head down the hall.

"Did you see anybody watching the house?" I ask.

"No. And I went around the block on my way back. A few cars parked at the side of the road, but I slowed way down and didn't see anybody inside any of 'em."

He stops just inside the kitchen door, turns, and looks at me. "You sure you got everything you need?" he says. "'Cause once we leave we don't want to have to come back."

"I think so. I got the laptop for communications, cell phone, cords and wires for everything, credit cards and cash. I took nine thousand out of the bank. You think that's enough?"

"I'm hoping we don't have to go out of the country. Can't take more than ten thousand if we do," he says.

"That's what I thought."

"What about your pa.s.sport?" he says.

"d.a.m.n it. Knew I forgot something. It's up in the safe."

"What about Sarah's? Did she take it?" I'm already headed down the hall toward the stairs.

"No, it's there too. I'm sure," I tell him.

"Get 'em both. That way we can send it to her if she needs it."

I'm wondering what else I may have forgotten.

Five minutes later we're in the car backing down the driveway. The house is locked and the alarm is set. I punch the b.u.t.ton and the garage door starts to slide down.

"I packed a box of extra ammo if we need it," I tell him.

"Coulda saved the weight. We blow through more than half a clip, we'll know we're in real trouble," he says. "Where are you supposed to meet her?"

"L.A. A hotel out near the airport. Joselyn's flying in tomorrow afternoon."

"Joselyn, is it?" Herman looks over at me and smiles. "I a.s.sume she has other business out here?"

"Not that I know of."

"You must have made an impression," he says.

"Business," I tell him. "She has information I want. I have information she wants. Nothing more."

"You don't have to convince me." Herman is still smiling. "I met the lady, remember? You had me lock her out of my office. Nice looking as I recall."

I ignore him.

"I hope this meeting isn't too close to the airport." He fills the void as I shift into drive and head down the street.

"What's wrong with the airport?"

"We'll have to shed the firearms the minute we get near a plane. And while I'm not personally too fussy, the permits to carry are only good in California."

"So that means we use the car as long as we can," I say.

"That's good, 'cause any big hops, and we're gonna be traveling naked," he says.

Liquida smiled to himself as he watched the car cruise by the house, the lawyer at the wheel. He was standing in the empty living room looking through the blinds with binoculars in his hand. It was the same house, the one that was for sale when he'd scoped out the two girls a few days earlier.

He was flattered by all of the sleight of hand, the trouble Madriani and his friends had gone to. He wondered if the guys from the van actually cleaned any of the carpets.

They could have saved themselves the trouble. Liquida knew they were on the move the minute he got out of bed that morning and checked his computer. The only reason he came by today was because he was curious.

Did they really think he had nothing better to do than sit there and watch them twenty-four/seven? Liquida was a busy man. There was always somebody new to be killed. He had to work for a living, unlike some people who could stay home and hide in their houses.

Killing the blonde had put a bolt of lightning up their collective a.s.ses. They'd turned the lawyer's house into a bunker. And now they were all packing guns. This was like trying to run with a load of lead in their pockets. They couldn't fly, not commercial, not with all the metal. The guns would tend to keep them grounded and offered little protection as far as Liquida was concerned. He liked to work in close with something sharp.

Liquida knew something was up the minute the other lawyer's car moved in the middle of the night-3:42 in the morning to be precise. It went from the parking lot behind the lawyer's apartment to a location in downtown San Diego.

This was strange because for two days running, the car's owner had been shacked up in Madriani's house, barricaded with the rest of them.

Since Madriani and the investigator were in the car that just went by, Liquida figured that the girl and the other partner must have been in the van. He knew the house was empty. He'd watched Madriani going to all of the windows, locking everything up. It didn't take a law degree to figure out where the van was headed. Liquida could take care of business, watching his computer, until the other lawyer's car, the one in San Diego, started to move again. There was nowhere they could hide that he couldn't find them. If they crawled under a rock, Liquida and his stiletto would be there waiting for them.

TWENTY-FOUR.

The phone rang in his study and Bart Snyder picked it up. "h.e.l.lo."

"Mr. Snyder?"

"Speaking."

"Volney Dimmick here. Got your message. Sorry I couldn't get back to you sooner. I've been meaning to dictate a report and get it off to you, but I've been so d.a.m.n busy..."

"Don't worry about the report. Tell me what you found out." Snyder was no rube. The fact that Joe Wallace, the young FBI agent, had refused to share information wasn't going to slow him down.

Dimmick was a private investigator in a Washington, D.C., agency known as the Brownstone Group. Brownstone had a reputation for cherry-picking many of their employees from key government agencies, including the FBI, CIA, and Defense Department. They were well connected. Besides investigations they did consulting and had a number of high-profile clients, including some major corporations. Snyder knew that if you couldn't get information one way, you could always get it another.

"We're still working on it but we have some information," said Dimmick. "First off, the police are now operating on the theory of foul play, that your son's death was not an accidental overdose."

"I knew it," said Snyder. "What did they find?"

"This is confidential," said Dimmick.

"I understand."

"If word leaks, the police will know where it came from and it's going to be very difficult to get further details."

"Yeah, I know. What did they find out?"

"The point of injection was on the back of the hand," said Dimmick, "which is very unusual, especially for somebody who is inexperienced in shooting up. The veins can be harder to find. So you have to ask yourself why he would pick that location instead of the inside of the forearm."

"That's it?" said Snyder.

"No," said Dimmick. "It was the fact that the injection was in the back of the left hand that caught their attention."

"Jimmie was left-handed," said Snyder.

"Correct," said Dimmick. "He'd need his left hand to operate the syringe. If he was going to shoot up, he'd do it in the back of the right hand."

"That's why the police asked me whether Jimmie was right-or left-handed," said Snyder.

"Evidently. And there's more. Forensics found loose hair and fibers on the body. The fibers didn't match anything your son was wearing that day, and the way they laid on the surface of his clothing indicated that they were transferred after he was on the bed. Long and short of it is somebody else was in the room when your son died, and no doubt was handling the syringe."

"Good work," said Snyder. "Did you get any information on the Mexican?"

"Nothing solid. No mug shots, no rap sheet, but according to our sources at DEA, drug enforcement, he does exist. Up until about a year ago he was one of the Tijuana cartels' major bada.s.s soldiers. Word is he would kill anybody for a fee and was highly efficient at what he did. Of course, if he was involved in your son's murder, he stepped in it."

"How could he know Jimmie was left-handed?" said Snyder.

"Good point."

"You said up until a year ago he worked for the cartel. Who's he working for now?"

"According to the information he's always been freelance, but the cartel was his princ.i.p.al client. According to DEA he's branched out. He was involved last year, you probably read about it, in that attack outside the North Island Naval Air Station near San Diego."

"I'll be d.a.m.ned," said Snyder.

"What is it?"

"Never mind." Suddenly the pieces started to snap together, the Internet research he'd done on Madriani. His name had popped up in connection with the same event. And according to Madriani, Liquida was after him. "Go on," said Snyder.

"It's not exactly clear what Liquida's involvement was in the San Diego thing, but word is he's now hiring out to multinational terror groups. I don't know if you remember, back in the seventies, Carlos the Jackal. It's like that except without the ideology. Apparently, according to our sources, the only thing Liquida believes in is money."

"Do they have any idea where he is?"

"No. A man like that doesn't leave forwarding addresses. I may be stepping out of line," said Dimmick, "but I'm not sure exactly why you're doing a parallel investigation with the police. Although I understand that families sometimes just want to stay on top of things. You're paying us, so it's none of my business. But if you want some advice..."

"What's that?"

"If this guy is involved, this Liquida, you do not, repeat, do not want to be looking for him yourself. Leave it to the police."

"Do you know if they're looking for him in connection with Jimmie's death?" said Snyder.

"We ran the name by them, but our sources didn't know," said Dimmick.

"There you go," said Snyder. "What about the other name, Thorn?"

"You were right about that one. The FBI does have an open file on him. We should be able to get some photos, wanted posters, in a day or so. We went to the Internet, but the online Justice Department photos don't go back that far. I have to say the FBI was not terribly helpful," said Dimmick. "But we did find information elsewhere. One of the intelligence agencies has a good-size file on this guy Thorn. And the fact that it's open would indicate to us that they still see him as active."

"Can we get a copy of the file?"

"No chance," said Dimmick. "They won't even let us look at it. But they did give us a few tidbits. They confirmed everything you told me. In fact, they wanted to know where I got the information."

"Did you tell them?"

"Of course not. Thorn, under the name Dean Belden, was subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury in Seattle about ten years ago. But he never showed. He was reported killed in a plane accident shortly afterward, but the accident, according to the authorities, was staged. Thorn was apparently involved in a terrorist plot in D.C., though the details were sketchy and the agency we talked to would not provide clarification. A few months later, U.S. authorities tracked Thorn to Africa, Somalia, where he was in hiding. After that, nothing."

"Any a.s.sociates, contacts, people he knew?" said Snyder.

"No."

"So all they would tell us was what we already knew," said Snyder.

"A few other items," said Dimmick. "Thorn, aka Belden and a score of other aliases, is believed to be Australian. He specializes in weapons technology and transport, mostly aviation. He's done a lot of business with the boneyards over the years."

"What's that?" said Snyder.

"Places out in the desert," said Dimmick. "It's where old planes, commercial jets, go to die. According to the intelligence file, Thorn would buy one under a fresh alias each time. Then he and the plane would disappear overseas somewhere. Scary thing is n.o.body knows what he did with them, whether he sold them, and if so, to whom."

"After 9/11 you would think somebody would be watching this," said Snyder.

"You would think," said Dimmick. "Still, what do you do if there's a buyer, a company with cash, and a seller who has a used plane sitting on the ground? Sooner or later he has two choices, sell it or sc.r.a.p it. From what I understand, the boneyards are over-flowing with grounded planes right now, airline travel being in the pits. According to the information in the intelligence reports, Thorn was partial to four of the boneyards, three of them considered major aviation parking lots and one other smaller one. They think he may have done repeat business at these over the years. One of them is in California, at Victorville; two others are in Arizona, near Tucson; and the fourth is in New Mexico."

Dimmick gave Snyder the details regarding names and specific addresses for these facilities and Snyder took notes.

"Apart from that, intelligence says he's former military, but they wouldn't tell us which country. First hired out as a mercenary to small Third World countries about twenty years ago. Somewhere along the way he turned to the dark side and started taking pay from subnational terror groups."

"It sounds as if he and Liquida are on the same career arc," said Snyder.

"Kinda does, doesn't it? You want me to write it up, put it in a report?" asked Dimmick.

"No, it's not necessary. But I would like you to do one other thing. Is there any way we can find out whether Thorn might have shown up out at any of the boneyards recently, say within the last year or so?" It was a long shot, but the fact that Thorn was b.u.mping around in Washington and showed up in pictures with Jimmie meant that he was back in the world and up to something. There was a chance that somebody at one of the boneyards might recognize him, and if so, it could provide a lead as to what he was up to, or better yet, where he was.