There were groans coming from most of the guys on the ground, but I was too relieved to see Temple sitting up on her own to worry about them.

  Once I was sure the two survivors had driven away, I scrambled to her side. "Hey there, Fancy. How do you feel?"

  She moaned, clutching her head. "Hurt." She dabbed at her face, glanced down at her chest. "What happened?"

  I unbuttoned her shirt, pulled it off, and used it to gently wipe at the cut across her chest, which was long and messy but not deep. "We got knocked off the road."

  She hissed. "How do they keep finding us?"

  I wiped at the cut to her face, which was even more minor, a little nick across her forehead. "That's what I want to fucking know. You're gonna be okay. A couple cuts, and you'll ache for awhile, but nothing damaged that I can see."

  She eyed me. "You're bleeding too."

  I thumbed more shells into the chamber of the shotgun. "Yeah, well, nothing to worry about. Cuts and bruises like you." I stood up. "Stay here a minute."

  I trotted over to the nearest guy moaning on the ground and put my foot into his shoulder. I kicked him over onto his back, and then stuck the gun barrel in his face. "You speak English, dickhead?"

  He'd taken the shotgun slug to the chest. His vest had absorbed some of the impact, but he was still in a bad way--those vests will stop a lot, but not a twelve-gauge from close range.

  He glared up at me, spat at me. "Fuck you, fuckhead," he said in a Bronx accent.

  "Guess that's a yes." I knelt beside him, drew my KA-Bar from the sheath and stuck the point under his chin. "Listen, I really don't wanna do this in front of the lady, but I will if I have to, yeah? All you gotta do is tell me how you fuckers keep finding us."

  He laughed, wheezing, coughing blood. "You must be dense." He laughed again. "You think you're winning? You don't know shit. You can't get away. You can kill some of us, but trust me when I say Cain is just playing with you. He'll find you. And he'll make you pay."

  I pushed a little harder. "Save the tough talk, numbnuts. How's he finding me? Talk, or I'll gut you like a fish."

  I could feel Temple watching. That tempered me, just a little.

  The guy laughed again. "Do what you want. I don't give a shit. He'll find you."

  "He's a piece of shit gangster. What's he gonna do? Feed me to the fishes?"

  Another derisive, wet, sucking laugh. "You don't know shit," he repeated. "You think this is about that rich bitch over there? You must be dumber than you look. Cain is more than you'll ever know."

  "Ooh...ominous." I sheathed the KA-Bar, wishing Temple wasn't here so I could just pop the fucker in the head and be done with it. "Let me guess, he has a secret lab on a secret island, and he's got a nefarious plan to take over the world."

  That fucking laugh again. "If ignorance is bliss, you must be the happiest shithead on the planet."

  I gave a disgusted huff, and then left him to bleed out; it wouldn't be long. I went back to Temple and helped her to her feet then got her back into her shirt. I snagged the duffel bag from the ground, grabbed one of the AR-15s and some magazines from the back of the Tahoe, and led Temple to the remaining Jeep.

  "HE'LL FIND YOU!" Came a shout, with another of those wet, gurgling laughs.

  Temple tried to look back, but I hauled her in a near run to the Jeep. "What did he mean by that?" She asked, clearly trying not to sound hysterical.

  "Nothing."

  Temple whacked me on the arm, which stung, because that was the arm that had been opened earlier. "Don't bullshit me, Duke."

  I shoved her into the passenger seat and rounded the hood to hop behind the wheel. Thankfully the keys were still in the ignition. The engine started with a burly rumble, and I peeled out in a wide arc, bumping up the incline and back onto the empty highway.

  "He's full of shit. Talking some nonsense about how Cain will find us, he's playing with us, blah blah fucking blah."

  Temple's frown was worried. "Normally I'd call that bullshit too, but it does seem like they just...know where we are, or where we're going. They just keep showing up out of the blue. It doesn't make any sense."

  I scratched my jaw, and then shifted my torso, testing the sting of the various cuts and aches. "Yeah, you've got a point. And I've been pretty damn lucky the last couple times they've showed up. They underestimate me, and I pull out the win by the skin of my teeth. But my luck's gonna run out sooner or later. You can only get into so many outnumbered gunfights before someone gets in a lucky shot, and it only takes one."

  "That's what I'm afraid of." She craned her head to look back at the scene we were leaving, the overturned SUV, the bodies scattered around it. "How many were there this time?"

  "Eight." I rubbed the back of my neck. "And they're getting better every time."

  "But you're the best, right?"

  I wasn't sure if she was joking or not; I shrugged. "In most situations, yeah. But there's always someone better, somebody luckier. And it don't matter how lucky or how good you are, they send enough guys, catch me with no cover and no backup, it won't matter what I do. This shit is becoming a lot more serious than I assumed at first."

  "So what do we do?"

  I sighed. "Same plan as before. I've got to connect with my guys. This is too much for me to deal with solo. There's shit going on I'm not smart enough to figure out--I just don't have all the information. I need Lear and Anselm and Puck. I need Thresh, goddammit. With that motherfucker by my side I can fuckin' wreck the world. These jackasses won't stand a chance. But on my own...trying to keep you safe? My options are limited."

  "So where do we go?" she asked. "How do you reach them?"

  "Harris has his main compound not too far from here. Couple hours drive at most. I'm gonna head there. If he's not there Layla should be, and she can reach him."

  I dialled Harris's personal cell phone number, but it went straight to voicemail--unsurprising given that he only used his encrypted satellite phone when he was on assignment. Problem was, I didn't have that number memorized.

  I dialled Thresh, got his voicemail. Dialled Anselm, got his voicemail.

  "Goddammit, nobody is fucking answering!" I shouted in frustration.

  Finally, I tried Lear. He never answered his damn phone, although he'd usually call back if you left a message.

  It rang half a dozen times, and then, thank god, he answered. "Hello? Who's this?"

  "Lear, it's Duke. What the fuck is going on, man? Nobody is answering their damn phones."

  "Duke? Shit, man, it's good to hear from you. You went AWOL, we've all been trying to find you."

  "Yeah, well, things are completely FUBAR, Lear--"

  "You're telling me," he interrupted. "I've been scrambling for days, trying to find you, trying to dig up intel on Cain, trying to track down Thresh--it's nuts, man. Look, I gotta go. Harris is waiting for my call."

  "Lear, wait a second. I'm in deep shit, still, I need--"

  "Can you get to the compound?"

  "I'm on the way there already, but--"

  "Anselm is at the compound. He can sort you out. I really gotta go, man. Harris is the air circling, waiting for this intel. Get to the compound and talk to Anselm."

  And then the fucker hung up. I wondered what the chances were he'd even tell Harris he talked to me; when Lear was in hyper mode, he's completely one-track, and forgets pretty much everything except what he was working on. I tossed the phone aside in frustration.

  "Stupid tech monkey," I growled.

  We drove in tense, awkward silence, and then finally, after almost an hour of that, Temple swiveled her head to look at me.

  "Duke, about earlier--" she started.

  I took her hand. "We can talk later. Try to rest, yeah? It's been an awful few hours."

  She eyed me levelly, and then nodded. "Fine. But I have things to say to you."

  I grinned. "I'd be disappointed if you didn't."

  Temple rolled her eyes at me, and then reclined the seat and was soon snoring softly.

  I was glad she could sleep; she seemed to be dealing with this mess better than anyone had a right to. I wasn't sure I'd be sleeping any time soon, but that was a little different.

  She was taking up a lot of my headspace, and even more worryingly, heart-space....something I hadn't thought I even possessed. Yet she was digging in there and rearranging all my ideas, setting up shop somewhere inside my chest.

  I just had to keep us both alive long enough to figure this shit out.

  *

  We reached Harris's compound two and a half hours later. The main gate was closed, as always, but there was a keypad, and every A1S employee had a personal keycode. The gate was a good ten feet high, made of solid black iron, connected to an eight foot high stone wall extending to either side into the thick stand of pine trees surrounding the compound. You couldn't see the buildings from the gate, and the stone wall continued a good hundred feet into the woods in both directions, where it transitioned from there to a fifteen foot high steel prison fence topped with razor wire. The entire compound was surrounded by fencing, with the gate as the only way in and the only way out, and it was heavily fortified, electrified, monitored, and alarmed.

  Beyond the gate, the narrow dirt road wound away out of view, disappearing into the trees. Eventually the woods gave way to open space around the house and various other buildings of the compound, but even that was under constant watch. The compound encompassed a good portion of the foothills in which this place was nestled, and from several points in those hills a sniper could settle in and keep a hawkish eye on the whole compound--which I knew for a fact was something Anselm often took upon himself to do quite frequently, his big old Barrett fifty cal rifle in hand.

  But I was nervous. This wasn't my car, which meant Anselm was likely to shoot first and worry about wondering how I got past that gate later; Anselm didn't take well to unannounced visitors.

  I took a deep breath and hoped for the best, then entered my keycode. The gate swung open on silent hinges admitting the Jeep, and then closed again seconds after I was through. The cameras didn't follow me, I noticed, which meant they were recording but were not necessarily being actively monitored--not good news, because someone watching the camera would see me and alert Anselm not to send a fifty caliber slug through my skull.

  I pulled carefully through the woods, emerging into the opening holding my breath. I made it twenty feet, fifty...a hundred...

  And then a fountain of dirt exploded ten feet in front of the hood, and second five feet away--a clear message to halt. Those bursts of dirt were HUGE, and definitely from Anselm's Barrett. A fifty caliber slug from a Barrett would go straight through the engine block like a hot knife through melted butter from a thousand yards; I've seen what it does to a human, and that's a nasty, nauseating image I know I'll never forget. I tapped the brakes to stop the Jeep, exited the Jeep slowly, hands up, standing in the open door where I'd be visible.

  "It's me, numbnuts!" I shouted.

  I heard a distant, shrill, two-note whistle, an acknowledgment from Anselm. Thank fuck. I got back behind the wheel and pulled forward again, Temple still snoring. Five minutes later, I was braking outside Harris and Layla's house. It was a sprawling, custom-built ranch, single story, and it looked deceptively ordinary. It wasn't ordinary, though, at all--Harris didn't do anything in half measures. The main, visible level consisted of maybe three thousand square feet, enough to be roomy yet small enough to be cozy, considering it was just the two of them. Really, the house looked like any old Colorado ranch home, and the main level supported that illusion. It was what was hidden underneath that was unusual: a massive underground bunker, literally fortified against nuclear warfare, coded to Harris and Layla's palm and voiceprints alone. The bunker contained enough weapons and ammo to take on a medium-sized third world country's army, plus extra living quarters and enough rations to last seven or eight people for a year. Outside the house, there was a huge, custom-built barn.

  Well...barn is a misleading term. We called it a barn but it was, in fact, an airplane hangar capable of housing several full-sized aircraft, and it usually housed at least one plane in it at any given time. Aircraft were Harris's hobby and, like everything else, he didn't do it half-assed. He had WWI biplanes, WWII fighters, a MiG, an F-4 Phantom, and a Huey all from the Vietnam era, and several generic, less exciting single and double engine private prop planes, plus his six-person Gulfstream.

  Some guys restored hot rods or bought vacation properties; Nick Harris restored fighter jets and bought heavy weaponry.

  He'd personally restored each one of the vintage aircraft, and was licensed to fly anything that would go up in the air, from passenger jets to fighter jets, from helos to prop planes. Not only licensed, but one of the most talented pilots I've ever met. A little known fact about those fighters he owned: he'd procured, somehow, machine gun ammunition and rockets for all them. As in, if he wanted to, he could carry out his own goddamn airstrike. I wasn't sure even Layla knew he had another bunker underneath the larger, more nondescript hangar by the runway, which contained his stock of heavy duty ordinance--rockets, grenades, fifty and thirty-eight caliber machine gun ammo, a few crates of SAMs, and that was just what I'd personally inventoried.

  The man was legitimately ready for war.

  I kicked open the door of the Jeep, checked to see that Temple was still out, and decided to leave her be for the moment. Let her sleep, she needed it. I had a feeling shit was about to get seriously wicked.

  I expected Layla to burst out the front door and holler some funny shit at me from the wraparound porch, and I even had a few good comebacks chambered, but she never appeared.

  "What the hell?" I muttered to myself. "Layla! Where you at, bitch?" I bellowed.

  The buzzing rattle of a powerful dirt bike echoed up in the hills, the noise getting louder as it approached. I assumed it was Anselm, but I wasn't about to take any chances. I fetched one of the rifles from the backseat, tracking the incoming dirt bike from across the hood of the Jeep. It appeared after a minute or two, and even though the figure on the bike was wearing all black BDUs and a full-coverage helmet, I knew it was Anselm by the sight of the fucking enormous rifle strapped across his back.

  He braked to a dramatic, arcing rear-tire skid, planted one boot in the dirt and stood up to let the dirt bike lean against his thigh. Tugging off the helmet, he passed a hand through his messy brownish blond hair, smoothing it back across his scalp.

  "Everyone has been searching for you, Duke," Anselm said, by way of greeting. He spoke English more fluently than I did, though he spoke it with a thick German accent, and sometimes he rearranged the grammar in quirky ways.

  "Yeah, well, I ran into some trouble."

  He peered into the passenger window. "And still managed to procure a lady friend."

  "She's not my usual brand of lady friend," I said, tossing the barrel of the rifle onto my shoulder. "And she's part of the trouble."

  Anselm's eyebrow lifted upward which was, for him, kind of like shouting a question. "Meaning?"

  "Meaning, someone whacked me across the back of the head, shot me full of sleepy time drugs, and stuffed me in some shitty ghetto basement in the Denver suburbs. I'd been about to chat up this chick outside the bar, so I guess they decided to not take any chances and just grabbed her too."

  Anselm nodded. "I have much to fill you in with, and we must also call our mutual employer. Thresh is rather worried about you, I should mention."

  "You know what's going on?" I asked.

  "To a degree," he answered. "Cain is making a play for his vengeance."

  "I thought Harris said Cain was a low-level kingpin with more ambition than sense or some shit like that?" I lifted the rifle. "The guys I've been cleaning out haven't been amateurs, man. The last bunch were pro mercs, eight of 'em, well armed and decently trained."

  "They chased Thresh and a...a friend of his all the way into the Everglades, and he barely made it out alive himself. Puck had a run-in of his own, and Lear is hiding somewhere digging for information. We are scattered, my friend. It seems Harris greatly underestimated this Cain individual."

  "Yeah, I talked to Lear, and he hung up on me." What he'd said about Thresh registered, then, belatedly. "Is Thresh okay?"

  "He was wounded in one arm, but nothing life-threatening."

  "But this is serious."

  Anselm nodded. "Ja. Very serious, in my estimation."

  I circled the Jeep to stand nearer Anselm, leaning back against the hood. "I tried questioning one of the mercs but he wouldn't tell me shit, except that Cain isn't what we thought, that we don't know anything and we can't get away. He said Cain will find us. Normally I'd have made him talk, but with Temple watching...?" I shrugged. "Chicks don't dig watching torture, yeah?"

  Anselm chuckled. "No, indeed not."

  "What worries me is how they keep finding us. These guys just...show up, like they know where we are."

  Anselm's features tightened. "That is worrying. You are not ignorant in the art of throwing a shadow."

  "It's really fucking weird, is what it is. We got out of the basement they had us in, and I didn't leave any survivors. Then they found us at my stash house, which nobody knows about--that shit is under an alias, man, and you know I'm careful about keeping those clean and separate. Four guys came after me, and again, I didn't leave any survivors. They found us on the open road, Anselm, on the highway heading this way. Middle of nowhere, just fucking...poof, they appeared and knocked us off the road."

  "And you fought off all eight by yourself? Without sustaining any major injuries?"

  I shrugged. "Got lucky. It was close though. Couple shots nearly had my number, dude, and that shit is starting to fuck with my head."

  Anselm was staring at me. "That is quite worrying, Duke. They should not be able to just find you no matter where you go." He toed down the kickstand and sidled toward me. "It seems too sophisticated and high tech for me to believe this, but...it almost seems as if they put into you a tracker."

  "Like...a tracer? Inside me?"