Pit Stop

Glen Garber had been given his coffee, but was still waiting for an order of chicken nuggets for his daughter, Kelly, when a woman raced into the restaurant screaming that some guy was on fire in the parking lot.

They’d pulled in off the interstate at around the halfway point of their trip. Glen was being asked to bid on a farmhouse renovation about two hours out of Milford. It was Saturday, so he invited Kelly to come along for the ride. Not just because he liked her company, but because he wasn’t going to leave a ten‑year‑old on her own for the day. Glen had been paranoid enough when his wife, Sheila, was still alive, but being a single dad had upped his anxiety levels.

He always wanted to know where Kelly was. Every minute of every day. He could just imagine how much she’d appreciate this when she was well into her teenage years.

When Kelly saw the signs for an upcoming service center, she announced that she was so hungry she thought she might die.

“We wouldn’t want that,” her father said. “I guess I could use a coffee. I’ll make a quick pit stop.”

Turned out not to be so quick. Given that it was Saturday, and the middle of summer, the lot was packed, and the lineup deep when they went into the restaurant. When they finally reached the counter, Glen placed their order. The girl ringing up the sale said the nuggets would take a few minutes, but she had his coffee to him in seconds. Glen wrapped his hand around the takeout cup and quickly let go.

“Yikes,” he said. “We’ll be up there before this is cool enough to drink.” He put the tip of his index finger on the bottom lip, and his thumb on the edge of the plastic lid.

“Where’s my nuggets?” Kelly asked.

“The girl said they’d just take a–”

That was when the woman screamed, “He’s on fire! There’s a man on fire!”

The first thing Glen thought was, no way! A car on fire, maybe. Wasn’t unheard of for a car to overheat here along the interstate, especially when it was pushing ninety degrees out there. But a man in flames? That didn’t sound right.

The second thing he thought was, he had a fire extinguisher in his pickup, a Ford F‑150 with the words GARBER CONTRACTING, MILFORD plastered on the doors. Should he run out, grab the extinguisher from behind the driver’s seat, and try to help this guy, assuming what this woman said was true?

Yeah, maybe. Except he wasn’t about to leave Kelly all by herself in a crowded, roadside fast‑food joint, where someone could grab a kid, toss her in a car, and be God knows where in ten minutes.

“Honey,” he said to her, “we’re going to the truck.”

“What about my–?”

But by the way her dad pulled her arm, she knew something bad was going on. She hadn’t only heard the woman screaming about that guy, she could feel the anxiety sweeping the room. People trying to decide what to do. Whether to stay in there, flock to the window and gawk, or run outside and get a front‑row seat.

Glen guided Kelly quickly to the door, pushing past people, butting in ahead of them to get outside. Coming out of the air‑conditioning, the midday heat hit them like a warm, smothering blanket.

“Over there,” Kelly said, pointing.

A crowd had formed a couple of car lengths away from the pumps. Waves of heat riffled through the air. Glen let go of Kelly’s arm, reached into his pocket for the remote, and hit the button to unlock his truck as they approached it.

He brought Kelly around to the passenger’s side. She was more than big enough to hop in herself, but her father gave her enough of a boost that she was nearly tossed across the seat. He reached over her and placed his coffee into one of the cup holders between the seats.

Then he went around to the driver’s side, opened the door, and reached behind the seat to grab the red cylinder he always kept there. Doing construction, you were just as likely to need one of these at a work site as you were to put out a car fire.

“Stay here,” Glen said firmly. “Lock the doors.”

“I’ll die with the windows up,” Kelly said. “It’s a million degrees in here.”

He hopped in long enough to engage the ignition, without firing up the engine, and power down the windows, leaving the key inserted in the steering column. “Keep the doors locked just the same.”

Glen, extinguisher in his right hand, ran toward the commotion.

People screaming.

He pulled the pin on the extinguisher, then got his left hand under the cylinder for support, and shouldered his way through the onlookers.

Good God.

It was hard to tell with the flames, but it was, indeed, a man. In his thirties, probably, maybe two hundred and fifty pounds, dressed in sandals and a T‑shirt and a pair of those cargo shorts with the oversized pockets.

Not exactly a Tibetan monk setting himself ablaze.

If the man had been flailing earlier, he’d given up by the time Glen had arrived, now down on the pavement, his body crumpling in on itself as the flames consumed him. But that didn’t stop Glen from taking a few quick shots with the extinguisher.

The people who’d gathered round backed away, mouths still open in horror. But a couple of them had screamed and shifted their gaze to something else, and were looking no less shocked.

Glen managed to tear his eyes away from the dead man to see what could possibly be distracting these people from a sight as ghastly as this. It wasn’t exactly every day you came upon a man on fire.

A man was staggering out of the men’s room, which was off on one side of the restaurant. He had blood across his face and held one hand against his temple, and was teetering unsteadily on his feet, barely able to walk. But even from this far, Glen could make out a fierce determination in the man’s face.

He didn’t have too much time to dwell on it. The next thing he heard wrenched his heart out and squeezed the life out of it.

It was a sound he was well familiar with.

The starter drive of a Ford F‑150.

His Ford F‑150.

He snapped his gaze away from the injured man in time to see his truck charge out of its parking spot and roar off in the direction of the interstate.

* * *

Sean Reilly couldn’t see clearly.

His eyes weren’t functioning properly. Not yet, not with the blood streaked across them, and the little information they were filtering in was being processed by a concussed brain.

A direct hit from a toilet tank cover usually had that effect.

He glanced around as he advanced, willing his head to clear up, trying to process whatever inputs he could pick up from the scene around him. He could make out a small crowd gathered off to his left. He could hear panicked screams and sobbing coming from them. And then the smell hit him, a horrific smell that he instantly recognized. A putrid, sickly‑sweet smell that was unique and traumatizing to anyone who’d ever suffered the misfortune of coming across it. Mercifully, most people hadn’t. Then again, most people weren’t FBI field agents for whom the worst horrors the human mind could dream up were just part and parcel of the job.

Reilly saw the rising smoke and instantly guessed what must have happened there. He also knew who had to be responsible for it – the same man who had left him for dead in the men’s toilet – and as anger spiked through him from that realization and morsels of clarity tumbled into his mind, he heard a man yelling out, “Kelly!”

He saw a man burst out from among the crowd and charge off across the lot, chucking a fire extinguisher he was carrying. Reilly’s instincts shifted all his attention away from the crowd and locked onto that man, and he willed his legs to propel him faster as he chased after him.

The man stopped by a row of parked cars that were lined up outside the restaurant, and again screamed out the name, a reverberating scream that seemed to emanate from the very pit of his soul. He was glancing ahead, down the interstate, then his head darted left and right as Reilly caught up with him.

The man must have heard and sensed Reilly. He spun around to face him, one arm raised high, its fist balled offensively and ready to pummel.

“My daughter,” he growled, his face burning with fear and fury. “She’s gone!”

Reilly raised his hands defensively. “Wait a sec–”

“Kelly!” the man hollered again. “My girl, she was in my truck. It was right here, and now it’s gone. Heading for the highway!”

Reilly understood.

First, another innocent victim burned alive. A distraction, Reilly figured, to allow the man he was after to get away.

Now this.

This guy’s daughter, abducted.

All because of him.

His own fury took over.

“It was locked,” the man spat out as he shot another glance down the highway. “But the key was in it. The windows were down.”

Reilly held both hands in front of him, his fingers splayed open in a holding, calming gesture. “You have a phone?” he asked the girl’s father.

The man seemed momentarily confused by this. “What?”

“Do you have a phone on you?”

The man nodded and patted his jacket and pants before pulling out a cell phone from a back pocket.

Reilly snatched it from him. “Is it locked?”

Uncertainly, the man said, “No. Who the hell are you?”

Reilly dodged the question, nodded, and bolted away from him. There was no time to waste. Every second counted. He scanned the forecourt and settled on a small, burgundy station wagon that was just pulling out of its parking spot, and without so much as a split‑second’s hesitation, he beelined for it and placed himself right in its path, intercepting it with his arms spread wide and waving to the driver to stop.

The car squealed to a halt, coming to rest less than a foot from Reilly. He didn’t pause. He spun around the car and flung the driver’s door open, then reached in and pulled the vehicle’s sole, confused occupant – a seventies stalwart in round sunglasses and a faded Steely Dan concert T‑shirt – out of the car.

“FBI, sir. I’m gonna need your car,” he told him as he threw himself behind the wheel.

Without waiting for an answer, Reilly pulled the creaking door shut, threw the car into drive, and charged off–

Only to slam on his brakes as a figure stepped in front of the car, blocking his way.

The father. Standing there, staring down Reilly with an unsettling cocktail of anger and confusion.

Within seconds, he had pulled the passenger’s door open and slid in next to Reilly.

Reilly studied him for a beat.

“You said FBI?” the man said.

“Yes,” Reilly replied.

The man took a breath, then said, “Drive.”

Reilly nodded, turned to face the open road, and did just that.

* * *

When Kristoff saw the parked truck with the little girl sitting on the passenger’s side, he figured there was a chance the keys were in it. He spotted her after he’d splashed some gas on that fat guy at the pumps, tossed a match his way. Poof! Guy went up like a marshmallow you’d held over the campfire too long.

While everyone was running over to see the show, he scanned the lot. He figured a guy on fire would prompt some people to bail from their vehicles without taking the time to grab their keys. That was when he saw the Ford, with the kid inside.

Kristoff sprinted toward it, clutching the brushed aluminum cylinder still in his hand. He’d had to let go of it long enough to whack that FBI agent in the head with the toilet tank cover, but he had it back in his hand now. Nearly a foot long, about two inches in diameter, it looked like a common Thermos. But there was no coffee or tea in it. No, what was inside it was definitely not something you’d want to drink. Not first thing in the morning. Not ever.

But Reilly sure wanted it.

And Kristoff definitely wanted to hang on to it. Its contents were worth a great deal to him. Worth killing for.

Stealing a truck with a kid inside it, that’d be the least of his crimes by the time this was over.

When he reached the truck, he grabbed the door handle so hard he nearly ripped off a nail when he discovered it was locked. But the window was down, so all Kristoff had to do was reach in and pull the lock up.

The kid shouted, “Hey! This isn’t your truck!”

Well, no kidding.

He jumped in behind the wheel, hoping the key would be in the ignition. Hallelujah, praise the Lord, there it was. He half chuckled to himself. The very notion of thanking God, when he had with him the means to destroy so much of what the Lord had created.

He stomped one foot down hard on the brake, turned the key, got the engine going. He tucked the aluminum cylinder on the seat between his thigh and the center console.

The kid wouldn’t stop yammering. “Stop it!” she shouted. “This is my dad’s truck! Get out!”

Threw it into drive and hit the gas.

Kristoff glanced in the mirror, saw the crowd of people gathered around that hapless traveler. It was hard to feel bad for the man. In many ways, he was lucky. He got to go first. He was spared the misery that would befall everyone later.

“Stop!” the girl screamed.

He glanced over at her. Maybe nine, ten years old. Sweet‑looking kid, really. Reminded him of his niece. Best not to think of her, or any other members of his family. This wasn’t the time to get sentimental.

The girl suddenly leaned over, tried to grab at the key in the steering wheel, turn it back.

Kristoff brought down his hand, fast, hitting the girl at the wrist. She yelped, withdrew her hand, pushed herself tight up against the passenger’s door. She was starting to whimper.

“Shut up!” he yelled at her. “Shut up or I’ll throw you out.”

Which was exactly what he wanted to do, but wanting it and being able to do it were two different things. He couldn’t reach all the way across and open the door and shove her out. Not at nearly eighty miles per hour, which he was now traveling, and his foot easing down even harder on the accelerator. If he wanted to ditch the kid, he’d have to pull over to the shoulder, run around to the other side, and drag her out.

Not a bad idea, actually. But he’d lose time.

There wasn’t much time before he was to make the rendezvous.

But if there was no one on his tail…

He glanced into the rearview mirror again.

He’d already passed several cars since leaving the service station. No one else out here on the interstate was driving any faster than he was.

But there was a car coming up from behind. Growing larger in the mirror.

A burgundy car, a station wagon it looked like, judging from the roof racks. But a small car. Maybe he hadn’t hit Reilly hard enough on that goddamn head of his. Maybe the son of a bitch had commandeered a car and was coming after him.

Maybe having the kid wasn’t a liability after all. The kid was leverage. What was Reilly going to do? Run him off the road? Shoot out his tires? Run the risk of killing somebody’s little girl?

Then again, you could never predict what Reilly would do. He was the kind of guy who saw the bigger picture. Who might figure one dead girl was better than millions.

Kristoff reached down, felt the cylinder by his thigh. Felt its power.

He turned to the girl, who was still whimpering. “Hey, come on, stop that. But you can’t try to take out the key while we’re moving. You could get us both killed.”

The girl sniffed, wiped the tears from her cheeks. Her eyes were wide with fear.

“So, kid,” he said, “what’s your name?”

“Kelly,” she whispered.

“Kelly. Nice name. Better do up your seat belt, Kelly. Gonna be a wild ride.”

* * *

Reilly had the pedal pressed down as far as it would go, but it still wasn’t enough. The car, a Chevy Vega Kammback station wagon from the seventies with wood‑grain sides and a burgundy vinyl interior that had to be a health hazard in itself, was struggling to get above sixty. Still, he thought, it could have been worse. He could have commandeered an AMC Gremlin. Or a Pacer. Or pretty much anything with an AMC badge on it, for that matter.

Up ahead, the F‑150 was receding alarmingly, a fact that wasn’t lost on the Ford’s owner, who was now sitting ramrod‑straight next to Reilly, his eyes lasered on the vehicle his daughter was in.

“He’s getting away,” the man blurted. “Why didn’t you just hijack a scooter? Would have been faster.”

Reilly frowned and squeezed the pedal harder, hoping to coax an extra mile per hour or two from the Chevy’s asthmatic engine. It was no use. The Vega’s speedometer probably hadn’t swung past the half‑century mark in decades – if ever. The faint smell of pot and patchouli that impregnated its interior only served to confirm this.

“Fuel,” Reilly asked. “How much have you got in your tank?”

The man’s face creased as he thought for a quick moment, then said, “It’s low. Less than a quarter full. I was going to fill up after we ate.”

Reilly asked, “So what are we talking about, distance‑wise? How far can he get?”

The man thought again for a beat, then said, “Seventy, eighty miles, maybe?”

Reilly glanced at the Vega’s fuel gauge. It was almost half full. He processed this. Given the speed the F‑150 was traveling at, that suggested an hour’s driving time. And with the F‑150 pulling away at a rate of ten or fifteen miles per hour – or more – it would soon be out of sight, despite the flat terrain and the more or less straight road they were hurtling – well, gliding – down.

He had to find a way to bridge that gap. Quickly.

“Who is this guy?” the man asked. “What the hell’s going on?”

Reilly glanced across at him. The man was alarmed enough. “He’s a person of interest. We need to stop him.”

The man stared at him, his eyes wide with disbelief. “Seriously?” he raged. “That’s it? You’re going to stonewall me with some kind of ‘it’s classified’ bullshit? That guy’s got my daughter. He’s got Kelly.”

Reilly’s guts tightened. He could understand the man’s anger. He’d only recently been through something similar himself, with his now five‑year‑old son, Alex. He looked at the man and could just feel the fear and worry that had to be coursing through him.

“The only thing you need to know right now is that I will do everything in my power to get your daughter back,” Reilly said. “That’s priority one. Everything else has to follow on from that. Okay?”

Even as the words left his lips, he was twisting inside, pained by the knowledge that he was partly lying. Of course, the man’s daughter would be a priority. Just not the priority. Of course, he’d do everything in his power to get her back safely. But ultimately – ultimately – the man Reilly only knew by his online avatar – Faustus – had the potential to unleash a lot of damage. Lethal damage. He needed to be neutralized.

Reilly hoped it would never come down to it, never reach a point where a binary decision had to be made, where it would have to be one or the other but not both. Some decisions were too horrific to contemplate. At Quantico, during training, they referred to them as Coventry moments, after the widely accepted but false story that during World War II, Churchill had allowed the city to be sacrificed and not have it evacuated so as not to let the Germans know that his men had broken the Nazis’ Enigma code and knew about the devastating raid to come. It was nonsense, of course. The code‑breakers hadn’t known that the target was Coventry. Still, the story had become widely accepted, and the myth endured.

Reilly hoped there wasn’t a Coventry moment waiting for him.

The man didn’t seem convinced by Reilly’s words. “You bet your ass she’s priority one. I’ll see to that.”

Reilly held the man’s gaze, and nodded. “What’s your name?”

“Garber. Glen Garber. You?”

“Sean Reilly.”

“That your real name, or is that also classified?”

Reilly shrugged. “It’s real.”

“Where’s the rest of your men?” Garber asked. “Don’t you at least have a partner or something? You guys work in twos, right?”

Reilly grimaced. Under normal circumstances, Garber was right. But this case had been anything but normal right from the get‑go. “I’ve been undercover and I didn’t have a phone,” he told Garber. “Then things happened real quick. I had to improvise. I was hoping to connect with my people from the service center.”

“But you didn’t?”

Reilly shook his head. “We’re on our own.”

“Well, you’ve got a phone now,” Garber told him. “Use it. Get help.”

But Reilly already had another idea. “I will,” he said. “But first, tell me this. Does you daughter have a cell phone on her?”

Garber’s expression clouded, then morphed from confusion to concern. “Yes, she does, but – why?”

Reilly handed him back his phone. “Call her.”

* * *

Kelly couldn’t take her eyes off the man.

When you’re a kid, everyone tells you to be wary of strangers. She was old enough now to realize anyone could present a threat, but when she was younger, she imagined strangers as evil‑looking people. Long, pointy noses, devil ears. Thick eyebrows and bad teeth.

This man just looked like an ordinary person. He could have been someone her dad worked with, one of his crew that built and fixed houses.

But there was something about the eyes. They were cold.

Worse than cold. They were dead.

When the man glanced over at her, and she looked into those eyes, she thought about when her dad took her to the Central Park Zoo on one of their trips into the city. She and her dad did everything together since her mom had died. She remembered the reptile exhibit, and how when they looked through the glass, you couldn’t tell if they were really looking at you or not.

Creepy eyes.

She noticed something else about him, too. He kept touching that cylinder, the thing that looked like a narrow Thermos, that was tucked between his thigh and the center console.

Kelly was thinking about that when the sound of her own cell phone made her jump. It was in her small purse, which was on the seat beside her.

“That you?” Kristoff asked, his head snapping right.

“Yeah.” She took out the phone, looked at it, saw that it was her dad. She couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to her to call him before now, but she was so scared, she wasn’t thinking straight.

“Well,” Kristoff said, “you better answer it.”

She did. “Dad! A man stole the truck! I’m in the truck!”

Glen said, “I know, sweetheart. I’m with a… I’m with a policeman. We’re following you. Are you okay? Has he hurt you?”

Kelly glanced at the man. “He hit my arm when I tried to take out the key. But it doesn’t hurt that much.”

“Honey, everything’s going to be okay. We just have to figure out how–”

“Give me the phone,” Kristoff said to Kelly. When she hesitated, his eyes narrowed and his voice dropped an octave. “Now.”

Kelly handed it over. Kristoff put it to his ear and said, “You’re the kid’s dad?”

“No,” said Reilly. “It was. Now it’s me.”

Kristoff smiled. “That’s you in that little wagon behind me, isn’t it? The Vega? Those things didn’t run when they were new forty years ago. Unless it’s got a rocket launcher on it, I think you’re screwed.”

“Let the kid go, Faustus. Keep the truck but let the kid out.”

Kristoff chuckled. “I think when I hit you in the head you suffered some kind of brain damage.”

“You pull over, and I’ll pull over at the same time. There’ll be half a mile between us. Let the kid out. I’ll drop her dad off. Then it’ll just be you and me. We don’t need a whole lot of collateral damage here.”

That prompted a second chuckle from Kristoff. “Seriously? The collateral damage I had in mind amounts to a lot more than one little girl.” He leaned harder on the accelerator. “You’re getting smaller in my rearview. You’re gonna have to pedal harder.”

The Ford edged up toward eighty‑five. The truck cleared a stand of trees, and parked there, tucked in behind them, was a state police car.

Kelly whipped her head around to see the car as they sped past it, then said to the man, “I think he had radar. You’re gonna get a ticket,” with a hint of satisfaction, like he was really in trouble now.

“Son of a bitch,” Kristoff said, tossing the phone into a tray in the console. He glanced in his mirror. The police car was shooting out of its hiding spot and hitting the highway, back tires drifting.

Siren on, lights flashing.

* * *

In the Vega, Reilly said, “Son of a bitch.”

“What?” Garber said. “He’s got the cops after him. Isn’t that a good thing?”

Reilly said nothing.

* * *

“Looks like we’re going to have some fun,” Kristoff said.

The cruiser was one of those souped‑up Crown Vics, an Interceptor. Kristoff knew he could outrun Reilly’s commandeered Vega, but the cruiser was another matter.

It was gaining on him. Gaining on him fast.

He couldn’t outrun it, and he couldn’t outhandle it. But one thing this Ford had over the Crown Vic was bulk.

Maybe Kristoff could run it off the road. But he’d have to let it catch him first.

Kelly was twisted around in her seat, watching the cruiser close the distance.

“You better pull over,” she told him. “You’re gonna get a huge ticket. And he’s going to put you in jail for stealing my dad’s truck.”

“Shut up.”

The cruiser was coming up in the passing lane, siren continuing to wail. When it was only a car length behind, the officer behind the wheel was pointing to the shoulder, ordering Kristoff to pull over.

Kristoff hit the brakes. Once, hard.

The Interceptor was suddenly alongside.

Which was when Kristoff cranked the wheel suddenly to the left, ramming the pickup truck’s front fender into the cruiser.

The Interceptor swerved over to the left shoulder, the left wheels rolling over the rounded edge. At that point, the driver couldn’t right it, couldn’t regain control and get the car back onto the pavement.

The cruiser barreled into the grassy median, spun around twice before coming to a halt in a spray of dirt and dust and grass.

Kristoff was looking in the driver’s door mirror, smiling. “I think your dad’s gonna be pissed about his fender,” he said, and glanced over at Kelly.

He didn’t like what he saw.

Kelly was holding the cylinder. While Kristoff had been occupied with the cruiser, she’d reached over the console and grabbed it.

Now she was clutching it in her right hand, holding it up by the open window.

“Let me out,” Kelly said. “And give my dad back his truck.”

* * *

“Christ!”

Half a mile back, Glen Garber’s heart imploded as he watched the police cruiser’s high‑speed tussle with his pickup truck. He watched helplessly, his fingers squeezing the armrest until all the blood had rushed out of them, as the cars collided – then he breathed out as the cruiser spun off to the side and disappeared in a cloud of dust in the median.

He glanced left at Reilly, who was also fixated on the drama up ahead. “You need to call your people and get them to back off. You can’t put Kelly at risk with another face‑off like that. This guy – what was it you called him, Faustus? – he’s not gonna give up lightly, is he?”

“I didn’t expect him to.”

Glen pointed angrily at the phone. “Then call your people. They need to steer clear of him. We’ve got a phone link into him, we can speak to him. Negotiate. I don’t know, just – no more of this Fast and Furious bullshit. My kid’s in that truck.”

Reilly peeled his eyes off the receding pickup truck long enough to take in Garber’s scowling face, then stared ahead again and nodded.

“I’ll send out an alert. Make sure no one engages him. But we can’t just let him ride off into the sunset. Even if he does let your daughter go. We need to make both things happen. We need to get her back, but we also need to grab him.”

“Why?” Garber shot back. “Kelly’s the only thing that matters here. Even if he gets away, you’ll find him again. You guys always do.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It is for me. We get Kelly back. Priority one, remember? Then you use your drones and your keyword surveillance and facial recognition software and all the other tricks you guys have these days and you go in and grab him. After I have my daughter back.”

Reilly grimaced. He hated moments like this. He wanted to say something to get this man to understand the seriousness of the matter, the utterly unthinkable consequences that might well occur if his quarry were to get away. But he couldn’t tell him everything. Not when it was that classified. Not when security protocols dictated who could know the truth and who couldn’t.

Garber seemed to read his hesitation, as he pressed on. “Who is this guy? And what kind of a name is Faustus? I mean, Christ, it sounds like something Stan Lee dreamed up.”

“I wish it was,” Reilly said.

“So who is he?”

Reilly weighed his words carefully. “He’s a guy with a grudge. A really big grudge. And right now, he’s got the means to get himself some serious payback.”

Garber went quiet for a second, then said, “A grudge? Against who?”

Reilly slid a glance across at him. “Everyone.”

* * *

Up ahead, Kristoff had to fight to yank his eyes off the canister in the girl’s hands and make sure he kept the truck on the road. That damn girl – after everything he’d been through, after everything he’d done to get to where he was now, even if it was in the middle of nowhere, far from the nearest big city where he could unleash the demon he’d risked everything to get his hands on – she had it in her power to ruin it all.

He couldn’t let that happen.

“Give me that canister, Kelly,” he rasped. “Give it back, right now.”

“No,” she fired back angrily.

What the hell kind of a kid is this? he fumed inwardly. A stab of admiration cut through the rage he felt. She was a tough kid, and he liked that. Better than some sniveling, pathetic crybaby, he thought. A kid with some gusto in her. Good for her.

Still, it wouldn’t distract him from doing whatever it took to get the canister back. Even if that meant snapping her neck with his bare hands.

He couldn’t just reach out and grab it. She was holding it right by the open window. He couldn’t risk her throwing it out of the car, which is what she was threatening to do.

The canister was supposed to be strong, able to withstand a considerable impact. But flying out of a car at eighty miles per hour, hitting the pavement, maybe getting run over by a car behind them–

No, that would not be good.

There would come a time when he’d be happy for the contents of that canister to hit the atmosphere, but not just yet.

Kristoff wouldn’t mind a little time to get away first. Didn’t want to be downwind and all that.

So he needed to persuade this kid, who was starting to get very annoying, to be very respectful of that canister.

“Kelly,” he said, mustering as much calmness into his tone as he could, “you need to give it back to me. You want to know why?”

She scowled at him, a fierce determination radiating out of her face – but some uncertainty broke through, and after a moment, she said, “Why?”

“Well, right now, the reason I need you, the reason you’re still alive, is because of that canister. You’re kind of my safety net. My way of making sure the cops stay off my back and let me get to where I’m going. But if I don’t have that canister you’re holding in your hand, well then I don’t need to go there anymore. Which means I don’t need you anymore.”

She thought about it for a second. “Which means you can let me go?”

“No,” he replied in a measured, calm tone. “It means I can kill you.” He kept his gaze on her, able to let it linger on her now that the road ahead was relatively straight and flat. “Do you understand? If you want to stay alive – if you want to give me a reason to keep you alive – you need to give it back to me.”

Kelly stared at him, confusion clouding her expression.

“Do you want to die, Kelly?” he asked, his voice taking on a sharper edge. “Do you? Is that what you really want?”

He saw her lower lip quiver as the horrible realization settled into the little girl’s mind. But she didn’t say anything.

“Do you want to die, Kelly?” he asked again, putting more pressure on the accelerator as the interstate began a long, steady hill climb.

The flutter of her lip quickened. Then she dropped her eyes, and shook her head, slowly, from side to side. “No,” she muttered. “I don’t want to die.”

“Then give it back to me,” he said. “Give it back to me and everything will be all right.”

She raised her head to meet his gaze. He nodded to her, gently, and reached out with his right hand open, tilting his head expectantly.

He saw defeat and acceptance flush through her expression, felt the tension ease out of his shoulders and neck as she brought the canister back into the car and rested it on her lap.

“Good girl,” he said.

A sudden thud from behind shook the truck and shoved him off the back of his seat.

“What the–?” He glanced into his rearview mirror, his jaw dropped, then he flung his head around to look out the rear window in disbelief.

It was the police cruiser again, ramming his truck from behind.

Only, this time, it wasn’t carrying any cops.

Reilly was at the wheel, with the kid’s dad sitting next to him.

And he was charging forward again.

* * *

“Are you out of your mind?” Garber asked when Reilly rammed the back of his pickup with the police cruiser. Because the truck sat high in relation to the car, Reilly was hitting the bumper with the top of the cruiser’s grill.

“Need to get his attention,” Reilly said, keeping his eyes straight ahead, his jaw set firmly.

“And get Kelly killed at the same time!” Garber said. “You run him off the road, that truck rolls, whaddya think’s going to happen to her? She’ll get tossed out the window.”

Reilly, eyes still forward, nodded. “She’s got her seat belt on.”

Taking the police car had struck Garber as a pretty good idea. There was no way the Vega was going to catch his truck. When the cruiser went spinning into the median, and Reilly hit the brakes and jumped out, at first Glen thought the FBI agent was checking to see if the cop was okay.

Glen figured the cop could look after himself. It was Kelly that Reilly should be focused on.

But Garber quickly saw that Reilly’s intentions were more pragmatic than compassionate. Reilly was flashing his FBI credentials as he was opening the car door. The cop was awake and reasonably coherent, but his vision was impaired by the blood draining from a gash in his forehead.

“Need your vehicle!” Reilly barked.

The cop said, “What?”

“Is the car operational?” Reilly said. The engine was still running, but the way the car went off the road the steering could be shot to hell.

The cop wiped blood from his eyes to get a look at Reilly’s ID. “I’m not giving up my car to some dumbass fed who–”

Reilly reached into the car and grabbed the man by the shirt and hauled him out of the vehicle, tossing him into the weeds. The cop was going for the weapon at his belt as he fell onto his back in the brush.

“You do not want to shoot a federal officer, pal,” Reilly said, getting behind the wheel as Garber ran around to the other side. “The keys are in the Vega.”

Reilly dropped the transmission lever down into drive and hit the gas. The car moved, grass and stones brushing the undercarriage as he steered it back onto the interstate, tires squealing as they gripped pavement.

Once he had the car lined up he put his foot to the floor and the car moved. Garber looked up for a handle to grab on to as the car accelerated.

“He’s up there, but this’ll catch him,” Reilly said.

“Who is this guy?” Garber asked. “What the hell do you want him for? What’s he done?” Hoping, maybe, that his daughter hadn’t been kidnapped by a serial killer, but some notorious, but nonviolent, embezzler. That might have made him feel, on a panic scale that went from one to ten, only fifteen instead of twenty.

Even if Reilly had believed the father deserved the truth, there was no way he would have given it to him.

Telling someone his daughter was trapped in a car with a man who had the capability to wipe out thousands upon thousands of lives; a man who’d had access to a government germ warfare research project that Washington didn’t even acknowledge existed; a man who believed the best way to get attention for his cause was to start sending messages to the government, under the name “Faustus,” threatening a biological Armageddon – well, telling Glen Garber his daughter was caught up with someone like that was just going to make him a tad anxious, wasn’t it?

So Reilly basically repeated what he’d told the man earlier. “He’s a security threat.”

To which Garber said, “No shit?”

The pickup was looming larger in their windshield. Garber could just make out the top of his daughter’s head through the back window.

Both the truck and the cruiser were pushing a little harder as the highway continued its slow climb.

“So once we catch up, then what?” Garber asked.

Reilly reached into his pocket for Garber’s cell phone, put it to his ear, then glanced at the contractor. “We’re still connected. I can hear background noise. Hey! Faustus! You there?”

He kept the phone pressed to his ear. Listened.

“What?” Garber asked.

“They’re talking about the canister.”

“What canister?”

Reilly shot him a look. “Shh!”

The FBI agent listened a few more seconds. “Shit,” he muttered, and tossed the phone back to Garber.

He put it to his ear, shouted his daughter’s name, as Reilly nudged the car up past a hundred.

The truck was right in front of them.

And then Reilly drove right into it.

Which was when Garber asked him if he was out of his mind.

Without a doubt, Reilly thought. Without a doubt.

* * *

When the cop car rammed them from behind, Kelly screamed as her head was snapped back into the headrest. Before she had a chance to turn around and see what had hit them, they were hit a second time.

The canister fell from her lap, hit the floor in front of her, and rolled around on the floor mat.

Now she twisted around in her seat to see what exactly had happened. The cruiser had dropped back a car length, and there, in the passenger seat, was her dad.

“Dad!” she screamed, even though there was no way he could hear her. But she was sure he saw her mouthing the word.

Kelly waved. Her dad waved back.

“Give me that!” Kristoff shouted, pointing to the canister. “Right now!”

He had an idea how he could get Reilly to back off. He’d threaten Reilly the way the kid had been threatening him. With the canister. He’d dangle it out his window, make like he was going to drop it.

Reilly wouldn’t want that to happen.

“I can’t reach it,” Kelly said, straining to bend over, the shoulder strap restricting her mobility.

“Undo the damn belt!”

“My dad says I’m never supposed to take off my seat belt.”

Kristoff gave her a look that said, “Are you kidding me?” Kelly got the message and hit the button to retract the belt, and slid off the end of the seat to reach down for the cylinder.

And as she did this, she thought.

She thought very, very quickly.

Kelly was not like the other kids. Kelly was only ten, but she’d seen and been through some bad things in her short life. The kinds of things that girls her age shouldn’t have to go through.

The big one, of course, was losing her mother. No little girl should lose her mom. And no little girl should lose her mom the way Kelly lost hers.

But that was just the beginning.

Not long after that, someone took a shot at her house. Blew out her bedroom window when she was in the room.

But it got even worse. Before that very, very bad time in her life was over, a man threatened to end her life. And not just any man, but a man she believed to be a good man.

And who got her out of that fix? Well, sure, her dad was there just in time, but it was Kelly herself who took action. It was Kelly who thought of a way to disable that man just long enough for the scales to tip in her favor.

In a split second, too.

Kelly wondered whether a similar opportunity existed now. Something that might give her an edge, buy her enough time for her dad and the policeman to help her out.

That was when her eyes landed on the cup of hot coffee sitting in the center console.

* * *

“Great plan!” Garber shouted. “Ram the truck! Is that right out of the FBI playbook?”

Reilly had to admit to a level of frustration. He had no backup, and he had no weapon. (If there was any good news, he knew Faustus had no weapon, either. He’d checked him for one just before the man got the jump on him.) What he needed was a frickin’ helicopter with lasers, but this wasn’t James Bond.

This was real life.

What he needed now was some kind of break. For the truck to have a flat tire. For it to run out of gas, but based on what Garber’d told him, that was unlikely. A goddamn moose trying to run across the highway right about now would be a blessing.

At least the cruiser was topped up. He needed to get Garber to make some calls, try to get a roadblock established farther up the interstate, or maybe–

What the hell?

The pickup was swerving all over the road.

* * *

Kelly said, “Catch.”

She was perched on the front of her seat, leaning down into the footwell. She had her right hand on the canister and tossed it underhand and to the left, aiming it right toward Kristoff’s face.

“Jesus!” he shouted.

He took his left hand off the wheel to catch the cylinder before it flew out his window, batted it down into his lap. Then it started to roll toward his knees. He wanted to catch it before it dropped by his legs, where it would be rolling around his feet, interfering with his operation of the pedals.

It was during this moment of distraction that Kelly pried the plastic lid off the coffee cup and wrapped her hand around it.

Her dad was right. It would have stayed hot all the way to their destination. How did anyone drink this stuff?

As she whipped it out of the cup holder, some coffee slipped over the edge and onto her fingers, scalding them. It hurt like hell, as her father would be inclined to say, but Kelly didn’t have time to whine about it, because she only had about a tenth of a second to throw this too‑hot‑to‑drink coffee in this bad man’s face.

Which is exactly what she did.

The black liquid arced through the air, splashing across Kristoff’s right cheek and neck and, judging by the way he was throwing his right hand over his eye, that, too.

Kristoff screamed. Not “Jesus!” this time. Just a cry of intense pain and anguish. Primal.

He tried to maintain steering with his left hand, and was still attempting to see the road with his left eye, but the truck was pitching all over the place, and the canister had hit the floor, rolling side to side in time with Kristoff’s erratic steering.

Kristoff took his right hand off his face long enough to make a wild, retaliatory swing in Kelly’s direction, but she had pushed herself up against the door, out of reach, and was thinking about whether to hop over the seat and hide in the narrow space behind them. But she decided against that, figuring that if the truck came to a stop, or even slowed, she needed to be by the door so she could hop out.

Indeed, the truck was slowing. Kristoff had taken his foot off the gas. And given that the truck was heading up a slight grade, it was going to lose speed even more quickly. He hadn’t hit the brake yet, but he couldn’t keep up his recent pace when he couldn’t see where he was going.

After another couple of futile swings at Kelly, the man put his hand back to his face, but then he realized the wounds hurt too much to touch. His right eye remained closed.

He screamed: “You blinded me! You fried my eye, you little bitch!”

Kelly was probably more scared right now than she’d ever been in her life – even more than when that man threatened her a few years ago – but she also felt pretty good. For half a second, she’d wondered whether she’d get in trouble for making a man lose one of his eyes, but then thought her dad would probably be okay with it.

He could be pretty cool about things.

She glanced back through the window, saw the police car still there. Waved at her dad again as the truck lurched from left to right.

Then she heard the familiar sound of gravel under the tires. She whirled around, saw that they were veering off the pavement onto the shoulder. Kristoff had his foot on the brake. He hung his head low, moved it languidly back and forth, trying to deal with the pain.

When the truck was nearly stopped, Kelly pulled on the door handle, let the door swing wide, and jumped.

* * *

“Kelly!”

Glen Garber screamed when he saw his daughter leap from the passenger’s door of the nearly stopped truck. He bolted from the police cruiser before Reilly had thrown it into park.

Kelly landed in the tall grasses just beyond the shoulder. Her knees buckled, forcing her into a roll, her body tumbling out of view.

Glen ran. “Kelly! Kelly!”

Before he could get to her, her head popped up above the grass. An arm went into the air. “Here!”

Behind him, Garber heard Reilly shout at the top of his lungs: “Run!”

* * *

It wasn’t that Reilly didn’t care about Garber and his kid, but he had a more pressing matter to deal with.

Like the man he knew as Faustus, who had thrown open the driver’s door of the pickup and was stumbling out. But not before reaching for something on the floor ahead of the seat. He emerged, standing there a couple of steps in front of the open door, clutching the cylinder. Raising it above his head.

Whoa.

Reilly didn’t know what the hell had happened in that truck, but half of the man’s face was red and blotchy and blistered and some of the skin looked like it was ready to fall off. His right eye was shut.

Reilly told Garber and his daughter to run.

“I’ll do it!” the man yelled. “I’ll smash it right into the road! I’ll crack this thing wide open. You want that?”

Reilly raised an unthreatening palm.

“Come on,” the FBI agent said. “You’ll take yourself out, too. You’ll never have the fun of seeing your handiwork.”

“Doesn’t much matter now,” he said.

Behind them, other motorists on the highway slowed. A couple honked their horns.

Reilly ignored them, instead staying focused on Faustus. He couldn’t stop himself from asking, “What the hell happened to your face?”

“Hot coffee,” Faustus said. “Maybe I’ll sue.”

Reilly noticed that the truck was moving, ever so gradually. They’d all stopped on a very slight, uphill grade, and the Ford was starting to roll back. Faustus had bailed out of it so quickly he must not have put the shift solidly into park.

By the time Faustus noticed, it was too late to react.

The open driver’s door caught him on the back and threw him down onto the highway like he’d been tackled. The bottom edge of the door hit the back of his head hard enough that he did a face‑plant on the pavement, arms outstretched.

He wasn’t moving. Only his fingers, twitching, releasing their grip on the cylinder, which started to roll along the asphalt toward Reilly, bumping over small stones and irregularities in the surface.

Please don’t have opened, please don’t have opened.

Reilly bolted forward, threw his body over the cylinder, trapped it below his torso, smothering it like it was a grenade. Even though it was not going to explode, it had the potential to do more damage than a thousand grenades. The truck rolled past him to his right, the front wheels turning slightly, angling the truck’s back end toward the ditch.

As it rolled by, Reilly saw Garber and his daughter a good fifty yards away, heading for a wooded area beyond the highway’s edge. Garber glanced back, saw Reilly on the ground, grabbed Kelly by the elbow to stop her.

Reilly could just barely hear him tell her, “Stay here.”

And then he came running.

“Are you hit?” Garber shouted.

“No!”

“What about him?”

“I’m guessing dead. That door hit him hard, and then his head hit the pavement. He hasn’t moved.”

“Why are you lying on–?”

“Have you got a bag in your truck? A plastic bag? A couple of them? Anything airtight?” A thought hit him. “Evidence bags in the cruiser!”

Garber stopped, ran for the police car, grabbed the keys and ran around back to pop the trunk. It took him about fifteen seconds to find what he was looking for. Clear plastic, sealable bags, like oversized sandwich bags. He grabbed a handful and ran back to Reilly as his truck slowly backed into the ditch, the engine still running.

The agent, still keeping his body pressed to the pavement, reached up for a bag. “Give it to me.”

Garber had some sense of how serious the situation was.

“Should I start running again?” he asked.

Reilly grimaced. “Probably not much point. We’re either safe, or we’re not. You couldn’t run fast enough to save yourself.”

He worked the bag under his torso, then, in one swift motion, got up on his knees, shoved the cylinder into it, and sealed the top.

Garber realized he was holding his breath.

“You’ve got the end of the world in that bag, don’t you?”

“Pretty much,” Reilly replied. “Hand me another. I’m going to double bag it. Maybe even triple.”

“Did anything leak out?”

“If we’re still standing a minute from now, I’d say no.”

He reached out a hand to Garber, and he took it. He helped the agent to his feet, and they regarded each other for a moment. Garber kept glancing at his watch.

“Thirty seconds.”

“Give it a little longer,” Reilly said.

“If it happens, what, exactly, will happen?”

“You don’t want to know. The good news is, it’ll be quick.”

Garber kept his eye on his watch. “That’s a minute and a half now.”

“I’d say we’re going to live.” Reilly smiled. “Your kid threw hot coffee in his face?”

Garber nodded.

The smile turned into a grin. “Get her over here.”

Garber waved Kelly in. She arrived, nearly breathless, several seconds later. Shaken, but relieved, too.

Reilly rested his hands on her shoulders. “You are something else.”

Kelly smiled weakly.

“Really, you are,” Sean Reilly said. “You ever need anything, you just name it.”

Kelly thought a moment. She said, “I never did get my chicken nuggets.”