Widow felt a surge go through her body, and her hand squeezed his back. But it was weak. And then it went completely limp.

  His military training had kicked in, and he attempted CPR. He checked her airway. It was clear, and he breathed into her mouth. He rotated between pumping her chest to get her heart beating and breathing air into her lungs. He repeated the cycle over and over.

  More people were walking over and staring. He tried CPR for a long time, waiting for EMTs, with no luck.

  He put his ear to her chest one last time and listened for her heartbeat, but there was nothing. Her eyes were wide open, staring blankly at the sky beyond.

  Claire Hood was dead.

  The woman from Kill Team B watched from the car, which was parked across the street, near a playground for kids from the nearby neighborhood. She looked at her partner and said, "It looks like she passed out… or may be dead."

  He said, "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "I think she's dead. She was talking to that big guy, and she just dropped dead."

  "Are you serious?"

  "Yeah. Take a look."

  The guy from her team leaned forward in his seat and craned his head and looked past her. He watched for a moment as the stranger stood over the old bird and stared down at her.

  "He's not that big," said the guy.

  "He's pretty big. Bigger than you."

  "Pfft. No way! I can take him!"

  "I didn't say you couldn't. I just said he was bigger."

  "Taller, maybe."

  She asked, "So now what the hell do we do?"

  "Call the boss, I guess."

  She nodded and pulled her phone out. She unlocked it and dialed the number. Their boss wasn't really a boss. He was the Principal.

  She hit the last-dialed number and then put the phone to her ear and listened as the phone rang and rang. After several rings, a voice finally answered.

  The voice said, "Yes?"

  "We have some news."

  "Wait. I'm not in a secure location."

  She waited and eyeballed back at what was happening with the stranger and Claire Hood. The stranger was trying to listen to her heartbeat. Other passengers were gathering around to help or to watch, and now the view was being obstructed.

  The guy from Kill Team B said, "What's he saying?"

  "Nothing. Yet."

  Then the voice came back on and said, "Go ahead."

  She said, "We've gotta problem."

  "What happened?"

  "It looks like she passed out."

  "Passed out?"

  "Yeah. We followed her to a bus station back in El Paso, and we followed her bus. Now we're in Rough Creek."

  "Rough Creek?"

  "Yeah. I never heard of it either. It looks like she's on her way to the target."

  "And she passed out?"

  "Maybe."

  "What do you mean, maybe? Did she pass out or not?"

  "It looks like it may be worse than that."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I think she might be dead. There're sirens now. An ambulance is headed this way."

  The voice said, "Damn it! We've got to know where she was going."

  The woman said, "We were going to follow her bus."

  "Now, what will you do?"

  The woman said, "She was talking with this guy."

  "What guy?"

  "I don't know… some guy. Like a total stranger."

  "What did she tell him?"

  The woman said, "I don't know. But they talked for a long time."

  "Is he a cop?"

  She said, "I don't think so. But he's a big guy. He's got a look about him."

  The voice asked, "What kind of look?"

  "Like a do-gooder."

  "I see. Wait for the ambulance and see what happens. Call me back." And the voice hung up the phone.

  The woman slipped the phone back into her pocket and looked at her partner. She shrugged and said, "We wait."

  A local cop showed up at the scene after the paramedics. He was a young guy on patrol by himself. He looked ex-military. Widow wasn't sure which branch, but he'd guess it was US Army. The guy was too muscular to be Air Force and had a look like he'd seen battle. And Marines usually hang on to that jarhead look. Although he could've been wrong on that account. Having a jarhead would signify the Marine Corps, but not having one meant nothing.

  He took over the CPR from Widow and had the same result. After a few more minutes, he reluctantly stopped and shook his head. Claire Hood was definitely dead.

  The officer was nice, but thorough. He seemed to take the entire episode seriously. He asked the right questions. And he took witness statements. And he determined there was no foul play here and that Claire Hood had died from natural causes.

  He told Widow to give his phone number in case his department needed to ask further questions. Widow didn't want to get into it, so he told another lie. He gave him the phone number for NCIS in Quantico, Virginia, which was an actual place and the home of NCIS training.

  The other lies Widow had told the officer weren't things he was proud of, and he wasn't even sure lying was the right thing to do. He told the cop that all they did was talk small talk. She talked about her grandchildren like grandparents do, and he told her about his life in the military. They just shot the breeze and nothing else.

  He wasn't sure he should tell lies to a police officer. What he should've done was told him the story she'd told and been on his way. But Widow wasn't the kind of guy to let wrongs go.

  After the officer was done with him and the paramedics had taken Claire's body away, Widow was left alone on the same bench. He sat in the seat next to the one she'd been sitting in. He leaned forward with his eyes planted on the concrete.

  "He took my Jemma," she had said.

  "I can't tell the cops," she had said.

  Jemma's mother was dying in a hospital back in El Paso. Cancer. Now who would get Jemma back? It was none of Widow's business, not really.

  In the background, he heard the guy in the ticket booth's voice again, announcing another bus departing.

  He said, "Last call for Shreveport, Louisiana."

  Which was Widow's bus. He listened to the announcement one last time. Other than lying to a police officer, which he had done, he had also committed another crime. He'd obstructed justice because, just then, he opened his hand and stared at Claire Hood's bus ticket. She had been headed to Laredo and then to Romanth, northwest on the border with Mexico.

  Widow watched as the last passenger for his Shreveport bus boarded, and the driver closed the doors. The tired bus coughed as it reversed out of the terminal and then drove forward. He watched it drive off, past the service drive, and down to the highway.

  About fifteen minutes later, he was boarding a bus to Laredo. His pass had the name Claire Hood written on it, but the bus driver didn't look too closely at the name on the stub. He just tore it and handed Widow the long end.

  Widow stepped onto the bus and sat in the back. He closed his eyes and tried to get some sleep.

  The woman from Kill Team B called the Principal and said, "The stranger got on the wrong bus."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean, the guy behind the counter said he bought a ticket to go to Louisiana."

  "But he didn't get on that bus?"

  The woman said, "No. He got on another one. He must've used the old lady's ticket."

  "Follow him. He must know where the target is."

  "We're already tailing the bus now. It's headed to Laredo."

  The voice on the other end said, "Good. Stay with him."

  Then there was a click, and dead air followed.

  "So? What do we do?" asked her partner.

  "We stay with the stranger. He'll lead us to the target."

  7

  Widow fell asleep on the bus to Laredo about an hour after they had turned onto Eighty-Three South. He woke up three hours later when a loud gunshot sound rang through the cabin.

  Widow’s eyes darted open. He looked around, his primal senses on high alert, like he had been sleeping in his own bed and suddenly someone fired a gun in his house. But his alertness died down quickly at the realization that the sound hadn't been a gunshot because if it had, all the other passengers would've reacted and none of them had. Instead, they all appeared to be annoyed.

  He sat up. He had planted himself in a seat next to the window—on the driver's side. No one sat in the chair next to him. The bus was only half full. Maybe a little more, but not much.

  He knew that the left side of his face must've been red because he had fallen asleep with his face against the window.

  The bus skirted to the left, and the loud sound of scraping metal and the scrape of concrete blasted through the interior of the bus. Widow realized they had blown a tire.

  He looked at the bus driver, who was a bald black guy with a blue ball cap. He seemed competent. Without looking over his shoulder, he shouted back to everyone, "Blown tire! It's okay!"

  He pulled the bus over to the shoulder of a highway Widow didn't know the name of. He hadn't been paying attention to the drive, but it was definitely a highway and not an interstate. That was obvious.

  The bus driver struggled with the steering, and the bus skidded to a stop on the shoulder. The remaining tires stopped hard, and the brakes squealed, and dust rose from the sandy shoulder. The driver put the gear into park and switched on the hazard lights. He stood up and said, "Okay, everybody. Y'all stay put. I'm gonna check out the damage, and I'll be back."

  Widow looked around and saw that most of the passengers were older people—not senior citizens—but most were over fifty. There were some kids and two teenagers, both girls. No one else looked like they could change a bus tire, like Widow. So, being the guy he was, he figured he'd better volunteer for the job. Widow reached his arms up, extending them as far as he could, and stretched. He twisted his torso to the left and then to the right to loosen himself up and wake up his body. He scooted over to the seat next to him and then stood up in the aisle and walked to the front of the bus.

  The other passengers watched him as he went.

  Widow followed the aisle to the front and stepped off the bus. He looked left and then right. The highway was basically in the middle of nowhere, or at least that was what it appeared. The landscape wasn't quite desert, but wasn't quite anything else either. There were some patches of grass here and there, and some trees off in the distance, but then there was also dry desert-like land as well.

  To the south, he saw a road sign that said there was a town called Third Crossing seven miles away. It was the next exit. At least there was a town nearby, in case he decided just to walk. Seven miles wasn't that bad.

  But he didn't want to get ahead of himself.

  He walked around the front of the bus and heard the engine humming. He stepped past it and onto the gravel on the shoulder and saw that the driver was bent over, studying the blown tire. It was one of the back driver's side tires.

  Widow approached and saw that it wasn't bad, because bad would show it had some chance of survival. This was worse.

  The tire was completely shredded. It had been removed almost completely, like a shotgun had blown it off. There were fleshy strips of it left on the rim, but not much. And the rim looked entirely bent, probably because the bus was too heavy to be driving sixty miles an hour on it.

  The driver had removed his ball cap and was rubbing his head.

  Widow stepped five feet from him and stopped. He said, "It looks bad."

  The driver turned and looked up at him. He stood up and said, "That's the understatement of the year."

  Widow asked, "No chance of throwing on a spare?"

  The driver shook his head from side to side in big movements. He said, "There's no way in hell."

  Widow said, "Not even if I help you?"

  The driver said, "No. Can't happen."

  Widow said nothing.

  The driver said, "I couldn't let ya—insurance thing. And I'm not supposed to because we're in Texas, and Texas has a union for us drivers. Ya see?"

  Widow stayed quiet.

  The driver said, "Ya see, it's a matter of the union. I ain't supposed to change tires this bad or do mechanical work on the bus while en route. In dis situation, I gotta call it in."

  Widow asked, "And then what?"

  The driver said, "Then we wait. They send out a tow truck and another bus."

  Widow asked, "How long will that take?"

  The driver said, "Well, the tow truck will probably take an hour. But the other bus? I don't know. Could take all afternoon."

  Widow nodded and looked up and down the highway again.

  A car passed.

  Widow said, "Well, then I don't think I'll hang out for that."

  The driver said, "Ya can't leave. I ain't allowed to take your luggage out of the bus until the backup bus arrives."

  Widow said, "I don't have luggage."

  The driver said, "Well if you leave, you can't get a refund or transfer your ticket."

  Widow didn’t pay for the pass. It was Claire’s, and she was dead now. She didn’t need a refund. Even so, he felt bad about wasting her money. Besides that, he didn’t want to wait for hours and hours in the middle of Texas. That seemed like a heftier price to pay than the money. Widow viewed time as being like money because it could be spent, but there were no refunds on time. So he nodded at the bus driver and turned and headed south toward the sign for Third Crossing.

  They drove the same highway as the bus the stranger had been on, and they had been along the side of the bus when the tire had blown out. They drove a white Dodge Charger, not an inconspicuous vehicle, but fast and reliable, and it seated four comfortably. And the Principal was footing the bill on the vehicle they rented.

  The woman had picked out the car because she liked fast cars, but the other guy was the one who drove it.

  They passed the broken-down bus and didn't stop to offer help because they didn't want the stranger to identify them.

  "Now, what the hell do we do?"

  "I guess we go to the next town and wait," the woman said.

  "Wait for what?"

  "I guess for them to replace the bus with a new one."

  "That could take hours."

  "So what?"

  The guy asked, "What if he walks?"

  She said nothing.

  "What if he gets a ride? And we're in the next town? We'll lose him."

  "I don't know. Should we just park off on the shoulder and watch him?"

  "Look around. The land is flat and empty. He'll make us for sure."

  The woman said, "Then I don't know. Where the hell do we go?"

  "We go to the next town. We can get some gas and a couple of coffees. Then we come back and pass on the other lane."

  "You're right."

  Kill Team B headed on to the next town.

  Two and a half miles later, Widow was again covered in sweat. The heat seemed to get hotter, and the air seemed to get drier, and the sun seemed to have gotten closer to the earth. His body was telling him the temperature was rising and rising, and maybe it was time to make better decisions instead of blindly following the path ahead. He recalculated his decision-making process. Maybe he should follow the weather instead of just picking a choice based on no established yardstick for deciding.

  Widow wore a tight, black, long-sleeved shirt that was probably meant for yoga, which was okay by his standards because it was getting hotter the farther he went on. The shirt was cotton and thin. He had plenty of breathing room in it. He thought about taking it off, but he didn't know what kind of impression that would give to drivers who might give him a ride.

  On the one hand, Widow enjoyed good luck with women drivers in the past—he was young, and he knew he wasn't a bad-looking guy. He was far from pretty, but he was in good shape from all the walking, and he ate about as healthy as any American. Widow was blessed with good genes and was a naturally big guy. He had naturally shredded abs like the side of a brick house. He had broad shoulders, and from the back, his shoulders and torso looked like an upside-down equilateral pyramid, the kind made from giant stones and decades of slave labor.

  On the downside, Widow had tattoos. He discovered after leaving NCIS that he had quite an addiction to ink and he started with a sleeve tattoo and learned that he really enjoyed getting them. Widow’s chest and arms and shoulders were tattooed—no facial tattoos or neck tattoos or any of that nonsense. He believed you should be able to cover tattoos. Even though he didn't plan on having another professional career in his life, he still thought it was best not to have tattoos that might hinder his ability to get a job. Occasionally, he still had to do casual labor. You couldn't get around America these days without money.

  He also had the three ugly field scars from being shot in the upper back. Amazingly, he survived, and the bullets hadn't caused any irreversible damage because his ribcage had done exactly what it was designed to do—protect his vitals. Although it hurt like hell and he was hospitalized for a long period of time. He recalled the months and months of physical and psychological therapy required by the NCIS and naval law that he had to endure.

  Widow continued to walk south on the highway. He left his shirt on because the drivers who passed would most likely be men, and most men wouldn't pick up a hitchhiker who looked the way he looked with his shirt off.

  He realized then that he was giving the whole premise of walking shirtless far too much thought. The heat must have been getting to him.

  It was only five seconds later when he heard the sound that was the very best sound he could've heard at that moment. It was the sound of a car slowing behind him—tires over gravel, the calm hum of a car air conditioner, and the low whistle of good brakes.

  Widow turned and saw a white Chevy Tahoe with green markings and letters on it. It was covered in dust and sand and had large tinted windows and four doors. On the top was a thick, low light bar, all one solid color. In the bright daylight, Widow couldn't tell the exact color, but a guesstimation told him it was all red because the vehicle was a United States Border Patrol SUV, and he didn't think they used blue in their light bars. But he couldn't be sure about that.