“What’s your plan?” He cranked up the heater and defrosters while she backed out of the parking space.
“Get out of Denver with all haste.”
He had the wet, singed clothes on his back, his wallet and quickly dwindling options. “I hope you have something a little more detailed in mind.” Her lips were pursed and quirked to the side, a sure sign she was thinking. “Go on, spill it.” Maybe he’d get lucky and she’d give him something he could work with. “You used to like having a sounding board.”
She peered up at the gray sky and he thought this time she might keep her theories to herself. “I’m wondering how you bribe Mother Nature?”
“Pardon me?”
“The storm almost took down your plane.”
“You saw the landing?”
She nodded. “The storm certainly gives an assassin the advantage since you’d be trapped here overnight.”
“Disadvantage,” he argued. “The storm traps the assassin, too.”
She slid a look his way as she merged onto the Interstate. “I’m not the assassin.”
He wanted to believe her. “Says the woman who dropped me off at a car rigged to explode.”
“Relax. I would have been beside you if I hadn’t been picking my way through the snow. It took me back to that night in Germany.”
Recalling the way she’d fiddled with the contents of her pockets, he reached across the seat and searched her.
Conditions were so bad, she had to keep both hands on the wheel and couldn’t counter his search, but she called him all kinds of names in the interim. He didn’t find a remote for the destroyed car, but his fingers closed on a small, flat disk sealed in a thick plastic envelope the size of a quarter.
“Not the assassin?” He held it up then snatched it back when she made a grab. The car swerved and a loud rumble growled around them as the tires rolled over the grooved pavement meant to alert a drifting driver.
“Not the assassin,” she insisted. “That is just a light sedative. I brought it along in case you weren’t inclined to cooperate.”
“Any other surprises planted on you?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Yes, he would. Her sly smile wasn’t encouraging his trust but it was stirring other feelings he had no business allowing just now.
“Thomas, I know it looks bad,” she said, her tone quiet and serious. “But I am on your side.”
“I can’t even call in my people to assess the device,” he grumbled.
“But—”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Everyone I trust is at the top of a mountain.” Without a phone, he couldn’t immediately reach the offices in D.C. He leaned forward, trying to see anything through the storm. “A mountain I can’t even see. We should stop and buy a phone,” he added, spotting a bright neon sign for a superstore.
“Not just yet.”
He swiveled in his seat. “We’ve got a tail?”
“No. But I’d rather put the airport farther behind us before either one of us swipes a credit card.”
Thomas took it as a bad sign that he hadn’t been thinking about that. Sure, he’d flown out here for a wedding and left business to his deputy director, Emmett Holt, but that didn’t give him the luxury of being rattled by events.
“What the hell does the Initiative committee want with me that couldn’t wait until Monday?”
“I can’t tell you right this minute.”
“Jo—” He couldn’t finish the threat. She jerked the wheel right and nearly lost control of the car in an effort to get to the exit ramp.
“Tail?”
“Yes.” She laid on the horn and blew through the light at the end of the ramp. “There’s a gun taped under your seat.”
She pulled a hard left at the next corner and, with him reaching for the gun, his head rapped the door. On a curse, he powered down the window. Maybe the blast of cold air would have the added benefit of an ice pack.
“Stay in the left lane,” he ordered. Thankfully traffic was sparse with the storm keeping most sane people safe inside. “Let him get closer.”
“Are you nuts?”
“I’m open to better ideas.” When she slowed down, he assumed she didn’t have another suggestion.
The car pulled up beside them. The heavily tinted glass made it impossible to identify the driver, but the dark, menacing barrel of the handgun poking out of the back window made the intent clear enough.
He was ready to shoot out the front tire when Jo muscled the SUV into a spin. Like a boxer going for the knockout punch, she used her bigger vehicle against the smaller sedan, connecting and driving the vehicle into a traffic light post. The impact crumpled the hood of the sedan and left them disabled in the roadway.
She shifted into Reverse and for a split second he thought she intended to ram the other car again, but she turned the steering wheel and sped away.
In the side mirror he caught the flash of a gun muzzle and braced for impact, but the bullets went high and wide.
They were alone as she turned the corner and revved the engine to make the next light. Finally they were back on the Interstate and going westbound this time. They were headed into the storm, but maybe conditions would improve as they worked their way up the mountain while the storm rolled east and out over Denver.
Chapter Four
5:55 p.m.
Jason wasn’t the first on the scene of the explosion, but he was the first who had any idea what he was looking at. He flashed his badge and picked up what clues were available to the trained observer. The few people in the area of the explosion didn’t have much useful information. One man noticed a cab leaving the row at about the same time. He thought the backseat had been empty.
No one saw a man or woman leaving the scene, but Jason knew Director Casey wouldn’t have advertised his escape. And the snowfall, while melted away by the heat of the explosion, was coming down fast enough to blur any footprints leading away from the area.
Jason searched anyway. He looked at several empty spaces, making notes of the locations in case he could get a look at the video surveillance.
Studying the lot, he turned a full circle. Whoever had parked the car had done so with careful thought to the cameras and shuttle stops. That smacked of someone organized like DeRossi.
He
