This book is a trailblazer on two counts. It's the first short-story anthology of thrillers ever done, and it's the first publication of a new professional organization: International Thriller Writers, Inc.

By nature writers tend to be loners, happy with their work, their families and a few close friends. But we also yearn occasionally for collegiality. For years we've all said to one another, "Why don't we organize?" Then in June 2004, Barbara Peters, of the legendary Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona, held the first-ever thriller conference in the United States. She invited six writers- Lee Child, Vince Flynn, Steve Hamilton, Gayle Lynds, David Morrell and Kathy Reichs-and one editor, Keith Kahla, of St. Martin's Press, to give presentations about the various aspects of writing and publishing thrillers. Clive Cussler spoke at the luncheon.

With only two weeks to publicize the event, Barbara thought she'd be lucky if a hundred people registered. In the end some 125 attended and, to everyone's surprise, not all were there to learn about writing. Many were readers who wanted to meet some of their favorite thriller authors. Here for the first time was concrete evidence of what most of us had long suspected: there was a demand among fans for a thriller writers' organization, too. If we held conventions, readers would likely attend, as well as us. And if we awarded prizes-there have never been awards specifically for thriller books, stories and films in the English language-that interest would only grow.

On the last day of the conference, in the sunny restaurant at the Biltmore Hotel in Scottsdale, several of the attendees stood around talking. Gayle Lynds, a highly accomplished thriller writer, mentioned that she thought the conference indicated the time had come to create an association for thriller writers. Adrian Muller, a journalist and freelance conference organizer, pointed out that the association should not be limited to the United States. Barbara Peters said she'd be willing to hold another, larger convention. Realizing that she'd almost committed herself, Gayle quickly announced, "I can't organize this alone, though." Her husband, the incomparable Dennis Lynds, added, "She's right. She can't." Barbara merely smiled and said, "Pull in David Morrell. He's perfect."

And that's what happened.

Adrian Muller volunteered to send out e-mails to every thriller author he could find to see if there was enough interest among writers to form a group. A few days later, Gayle and David had a long telephone call, discussing their workloads and a potential thriller organization that would be international in scope. They agreed to jointly head the effort, and over the summer of 2004 Adrian, David and Gayle talked and exchanged e-mails. Adrian arranged with Al Navis, who was orchestrating Bouchercon 2004, the great congregation of mystery readers and writers, to assign a room in which the thriller authors could meet.

The response to Adrian's e-mail was impressive. Author after author said that an association was a great idea. A meeting was held on October 9 in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and, after many discussions, International Thriller Writers, Inc. was born. In November 2004, members were solicited. That response was likewise incredible. Currently there are over four hundred members, with combined sales exceeding 1,600,000,000 books.

This is all quite astonishing, and fitting because thrillers provide such a rich literary feast. There are all kinds. The legal thriller, spy thriller, action-adventure thriller, medical thriller, police thriller, romantic thriller, historical thriller, political thriller, religious thriller, high-tech thriller, military thriller. The list goes go on and on, with new variations constantly being invented. In fact, this openness to expansion is one of the genre's most enduring characteristics. But what gives the variety of thrillers a common ground is the intensity of emotions they create, particularly those of apprehension and exhilaration, of excitement and breathlessness, all designed to generate that all-important thrill. By definition, if a thriller doesn't thrill, it's not doing its job.

Thrillers, though, are also known for their pace, and the force with which they hurtle the reader along. They're an obstacle race in which an objective is achieved at some heroic cost. The goal can be personal (trying to save a spouse or a long-lost relative) or global (trying to avert a world war) but often it's both. Perhaps there's a time limit imposed, perhaps not. Sometimes they build rhythmically to rousing climaxes that peak with a cathartic, explosive ending. Other times they start at top speed and never ease off. At their best, thrillers use scrupulous research and accurate details to create environments in which meaningful characters teach us about our world. When readers finish a thriller, they should feel not only emotionally satisfied but also better informed-and hungry for the next riveting tale.

Henry James once wrote, "The house of fiction has many windows." That observation certainly applies to thrillers, and this anthology is an excellent example. When Gayle Lynds suggested producing it, International Thriller Writers, Inc. sent out a call to its members for stories. Many replied, and thirty were ultimately selected for inclusion. I was contacted about acting as editor and readily agreed, while Steve Berry, another ITW member and thriller author, took on the responsibility of managing director.

When the book proposal was finally shopped by agent Richard Pine, himself an ITW member, several publishers expressed interest and, after a bidding war, MIRA Books acquired the rights.

Generously, each of the contributors to this book donated his or her story. Only ITW will share in the royalties, the proceeds earned going into the corporate treasury to fund the expansion of this worthwhile organization. The theme of this anthology is simple. Each writer has used a familiar character or plotline from their body of work and crafted an original story. So you have something known, along with something new. As you'll see, the variations are captivating, as the writers' imaginations soared. Each story is prefaced by an introduction from me that sets up the writer, his or her work and the story. At the book's end, there are short biographies of each contributor. What a pleasure it was to read the stories as they came in, and it's my hope that you'll likewise relish the tales.

So prepare to be thrilled. And enjoy the experience.

Lee Child's debut novel was Killing Floor, a first-person narrative introducing his series character Jack Reacher, and although clearly a fast-paced thriller it shared characteristics with the classic limited-universe Western. At the time Child was also an experienced media professional, aware that his second book had to be written before significant reaction to his first had even been received. To avoid stereotyping- which can affect a writer as much as any performer-Child determined to make his second book, Die Trying, as different as possible, albeit part of the same series. His plan was to stake out a wide "left field, right field" territorial span between books one and two, one in which the rest of the series could happily roam. Therefore Die Trying featured third-person narration and a classic high-stakes, multi-strand thriller structure. But, in its first draft, that structure went one strand too far. There was a character-James Penney-who had an appealing introduction and backstory, but who clearly didn't have any valid place to go. So Penney wasn't featured in the completed novel. Instead, he languished on Child's hard drive until a request came from an obscure British anthology for a short story. Child repackaged Penney's narrative and added a prequel-style ending, featuring a brief glimpse of Jack Reacher's early career. The story was published, but with limited distribution. Now it comes to life again, revised and renewed, in hopes of reaching a wider audience.

The process that turned James Penney into a completely different person began thirteen years ago, at one in the afternoon on a Monday in the middle of June, in Laney, California. A hot time of day, at a hot time of year, in a hot part of the country. The town squats on the shoulder of the road from Mojave to L.A. Due west, the southern rump of the Coastal Range Mountains is visible. Due east, the Mojave Desert disappears into the haze. Very little happens in Laney. After that Monday in the middle of June thirteen years ago, even less ever did.

There was one industry in Laney. One factory. A big spread of a place. Weathered metal siding, built in the sixties. Office accommodations at the north end, in the shade. The first floor was low grade. Clerical functions took place there. Billing and accounting and telephone calling. The second story was high grade. Managers. The corner office on the right used to be the personnel manager's place. Now it was the human resources manager's place. Same guy, new title on his door.

Outside that door in the long second-floor corridor was a line of chairs. The human resources manager's secretary had rustled them up and placed them there that Monday morning. The line of chairs was occupied by a line of men and women. They were silent. Every five minutes the person at the head of the line would be called into the office. The rest of them would shuffle up one place. They didn't speak. They didn't need to. They knew what was happening.

Just before one o'clock, James Penney shuffled up one space to the head of the line. He waited five long minutes and stood up when he was called. Stepped into the office. Closed the door behind him. The human resources manager was a guy called Odell. Odell hadn't been long out of diapers when James Penney started work at the Laney plant.

"Mr. Penney," Odell said.

Penney said nothing, but sat down and nodded in a guarded way. "We need to share some information with you," Odell said. Penney shrugged at him. He knew what was coming. He heard things, same as anybody else.

"Just give me the short version, okay?" he said. Odell nodded. "We're laying you off." "For the summer?" Penney asked him. Odell shook his head. "For good," he said.

Penney took a second to get over the sound of the words. He'd known they were coming, but they hit him like they were the last words he ever expected Odell to say.

"Why?" he asked.

Odell shrugged. He didn't look as if he was enjoying this. But on the other hand, he didn't look as if it was upsetting him much, either.

"Downsizing," he said. "No option. Only way we can go." "Why?" Penney said again.

Odell leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. Started the speech he'd already made many times that day.

"We need to cut costs," he said. "This is an expensive operation. Small margin. Shrinking market. You know that."

Penney stared into space and listened to the silence breaking through from the factory floor. "So you're closing the plant?"

Odell shook his head again. "We're downsizing, is all. The plant will stay open. There'll be some maintenance. Some repairs, overhauls. But not like it used to be."

"The plant will stay open?" Penney said. "So how come you're letting me go?"

Odell shifted in his chair. Pulled his hands from behind his head and folded his arms across his chest defensively. He had reached the tricky part of the interview.

"It's a question of the skills mix," he said. "We had to pick a team with the correct blend. We put a lot of work into the decision. And I'm afraid you didn't make the cut."

"What's wrong with my skills?" Penney asked. "I got skills. I've worked here seventeen years. What's wrong with my damn skills?"

"Nothing at all," Odell said. "But other people are better. We have to look at the big picture. It's going to be a skeleton crew, so we need the best skills, the fastest learners, good attendance records, you know how it is."

"Attendance records?" Penney said. "What's wrong with my attendance record? I've worked here seventeen years. You saying I'm not a reliable worker?"

Odell touched the brown file folder in front of him.

"You've had a lot of time out sick," he said. "Absentee rate just above eight percent."

Penney looked at him incredulously.

"Sick?" he said. "I wasn't sick. I was post-traumatic. From Vietnam."

Odell shook his head again. He was too young. "Whatever," he said. "That's still a big absentee rate." James Penney just sat there, stunned. He felt like he'd been hit by a train.

"We looked for the correct blend," Odell said again. "We put a lot of management time into the process. We're confident we made the right decisions. You're not being singled out. We're losing eighty percent of our people."

Penney stared across at him. "You staying?"

Odell nodded and tried to hide a smile but couldn't.

"There's still a business to run," he said. "We still need management."

There was silence in the corner office. Outside, the hot breeze stirred off the desert and blew a listless eddy over the metal building. Odell opened the brown folder and pulled out a blue envelope. Handed it across the desk.

"You're paid up to the end of July," he said. "Money went in the bank this morning. Good luck, Mr. Penney."

The five-minute interview was over. Odell's secretary appeared and opened the door to the corridor. Penney walked out. The secretary called the next man in. Penney walked past the long quiet row of people and made it to the parking lot. Slid into his car. It was a red Firebird, a year and a half old, and it wasn't paid for yet. He started it up and drove the mile to his house. Eased to a stop in his driveway and sat there, thinking, in a daze, with the engine running.

He was imagining the repo men coming for his car. The only damn thing in his whole life he'd ever really wanted. He remembered the exquisite joy of buying it. After his divorce. Waking up and realizing he could just go to the dealer, sign the papers and have it. No discussions. No arguing. He'd gone down to the dealer and chopped in his old clunker and signed up for that Firebird and driven it home in a state of total joy. He'd washed it every week. He'd watched the infomercials and tried every miracle polish on the market. The car had sat every day outside the Laney factory like a bright red badge of achievement. Like a shiny consolation for the shit and the drudgery. Whatever else he didn't have, he had a Firebird.

He felt a desperate fury building inside him. He got out of the car and ran to the garage and grabbed his spare can of gasoline. Ran back to the house. Opened the door. Emptied the can over the sofa. He couldn't find a match, so he lit the gas stove in the kitchen and unwound a roll of paper towels. Put one end on the stove top and ran the rest through to the living room. When his makeshift fuse was well alight, he skipped out to his car and started it up. Turned north toward Mojave.

His neighbor noticed the fire when the flames started coming through the roof. She called the Laney fire department. The firefighters didn't respond. It was a volunteer department, and all the volunteers were in line inside the factory, upstairs in the narrow corridor. Then the warm air moving off the Mojave Desert freshened up into a hot breeze, and by the time James Penney was thirty miles away the flames from his house had set fire to the dried scrub that had been his lawn. By the time he was in the town of Mojave itself, cashing his last paycheck at the bank, the flames had spread across his lawn and his neighbor's and were licking at the base of her back porch.

Like any California boomtown, Laney had grown in a hurry. The factory had been thrown up around the start of Nixon's first term. A hundred acres of orange groves had been bulldozed and five hundred frame houses had quadrupled the population in a year. There was nothing really wrong with the houses, but they'd seen rain less than a dozen times in the thirty-one years they'd been standing, and they were about as dry as houses can get. Their timbers had sat and baked in the sun and been scoured by the dry desert winds. There were no hydrants built into the streets. The houses were close together, and there were no windbreaks. But there had never been a serious fire in Laney. Not until that Monday in June.

James Penney's neighbor called the fire department for the second time after her back porch disappeared in flames. The fire department was in disarray. The dispatcher advised her to get out of her house and just wait for their arrival. By the time the fire truck got there, her house was destroyed. And the next house in line was destroyed, too. The desert breeze had blown the fire on across the second narrow gap and sent the old couple living there scuttling into the street for safety. Then Laney called in the fire departments from Lancaster and Glendale and Bakersfield, and they arrived with proper equipment and saved the day. They hosed the scrub between the houses and the blaze went no farther. Just three houses destroyed, Penney's and his two downwind neighbors. Within two hours the panic was over, and by the time Penney himself was fifty miles north of Mojave, Laney's sheriff was working with the fire investigators to piece together what had happened.

They started with Penney's place, which was the upwind house, and the first to burn, and therefore the coolest. It had just about burned down to the floor slab, but the layout was still clear. And the evidence was there to see. There was tremendous scorching on one side of where the living room had been. The Glen-dale investigator recognized it as something he'd seen many times before. It was what is left when a foam-filled sofa or armchair is doused with gasoline and set afire. As clear a case of arson as he had ever seen. The unfortunate wild cards had been the stiffening desert breeze and the proximity of the other houses.

Then the sheriff had gone looking for James Penney, to tell him somebody had burned his house down, and his neighbors'. He drove his black-and-white to the factory and walked upstairs, past the long line of people and into Odell's corner office. Odell told him what had happened in the five-minute interview just after one o'clock. Then the sheriff had driven back to the Laney station house, steering with one hand and rubbing his chin with the other.

And by the time James Penney was driving along the towering eastern flank of Mount Whitney, a hundred and fifty miles from home, there was an all-points-bulletin out on him, suspicion of deliberate arson, which in the dry desert heat of southern California was a big, big deal.

It's no accident that five of James Grippando's ten thrillers are legal thrillers featuring Jack Swyteck, an explosive criminal defense lawyer. Grippando is a lawyer himself, though fortunately with far fewer demons than Jack. What's it like to be Jack? Simply imagine that your father is Florida's governor, your best friend was once on death row and your love life could fill an entire chapter in Cupid's Rules of Love and War (Idiot'sEdition). Throw in an indictment for murder and a litany of lesser charges, and you'll begin to get the picture.

Readers of the Swyteck series know that Jack is a self-described half-Cuban boy trapped in the body of a gringo. That's a glib way of saying that Jack's Cuban-born mother died in childbirth, and Jack was raised by his father and stepmother, with no link whatsoever to his Cuban heritage. Grippando is not Cuban, but he considers himself an "honorary Cuban" of sorts. His best friend since college was Cuban born and that family dubbed him their otro hijo, other son. Quite remarkable, considering that Grippando grew up in rural Illinois and spoke only "classroom" Spanish. When he first arrived in Florida, he had no idea that Cubans made better rice than the Chinese, or that a jolt of Cuban coffee was as much a part of midafternoon in Miami as thunderclouds over the Everglades. He'd yet to learn that if you ask a nice Cuban girl on a date, the entire family would be waiting at the front door to meet you when you picked her up. In short, Grippando- like Jack Swyteck-was the gringo who found himself immersed in Cuban culture.

In Hear No Evil, the fourth book in the Swyteck series, Jack Swyteck travels back to Cuba to discover his roots. Naturally, he runs into a mess of trouble, all stemming from a murder on the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Grippando prides himself on his research, and threw himself into all things Cuban when researching the thriller. At the time it was impossible to speak to anyone about the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay without the problem of the detainees dominating the conversation. It was then that Grip-pando came across a forty-year-old plan-Operation Northwoods-which, in the hands of someone with an extremely devious mind, could cause a mountain of trouble.

So was born this story.

In Operation Northwoods, Jack and his colorful sidekick, Theo Knight, find themselves in the heat of a controversy after an explosion at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba-an explosion that rocks the world.

6:20 a.m., Miami, Florida

J. A. Konrath is relatively new to the thriller scene. The Lieutenant Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels series features a forty-something Chicago cop who chases serial killers. Konrath's debut, Whiskey Sour, was a unique combination of creepy chills and laugh-out-loud moments. Bloody Mary and Rusty Nail used the same giggle-then-cringe formula-likable heroes in scary situations. Konrath believes that a lot of the fun in writing a thriller series comes from the supporting characters. People are defined by the company they keep. Jack has a handful of sidekicks who both help and hinder her murder investigations.

Phineas Troutt is one of the helpful ones.

Introduced in Whiskey Sour, Phin operates outside the law as a problem solver-someone who takes illegal jobs for big paydays. Jack is never quite sure what Phin does to earn a living. Konrath himself didn't know, but thought it would be fun to find out.

Forsaking the cannibals, necrophiles, snuff filmers and serial killers of his Jack Daniels books, Epitaph revolves around a more familiar and accessible evil-street gangs. The result is something grittier, darker and more intimately violent than the series that spawned Phin. No tongue in cheek here. No goofy one-liners. Konrath has always enjoyed exploring where shadows hide when the sun goes down, but this time there's no humorous safety net. What motivates a man to drop out of society and kill for money? Is there a tie between morality and dignity? And most important of all, what is Phin loading into the shells of that modified Mossberg shotgun?

Let the body count begin.

There's an art to getting your ass kicked.

Guys on either side held my arms, stretching me out crucifixion style. The joker who worked me over swung wildly, without planting his feet or putting his body into it. He spent most of his energy swearing and screaming when he should have been focusing on inflicting maximum damage.

Amateur.

Not that I was complaining. What he lacked in professionalism, he made up for in mean.

He moved in and rabbit-punched me in the side. I flexed my abs and tried to shift to take the blow in the center of my stomach, rather than the more vulnerable kidneys.

I exhaled hard when his fist landed. Saw stars.

He stepped away to pop me in the face. Rather than tense up, I relaxed, trying to absorb the contact by letting my neck snap back.

It still hurt like hell.

I tasted blood, wasn't sure if it came from my nose or my mouth. Probably both. My left eye had already swollen shut.

"Hijo calvo de una perra!"

You bald son of a bitch. Real original. His breath was ragged now, shoulders slumping, face glowing with sweat.

Gangbangers these days aren't in very good shape. I blame TV and junk food.

One final punch-a halfhearted smack to my broken nose- and then I was released.

I collapsed face-first in a puddle that smelled like urine. The three Latin Kings each took the time to spit on me. Then they strolled out of the alley, laughing and giving each other high fives.

When they got a good distance away, I crawled over to a Dumpster and pulled myself to my feet. The alley was dark, quiet. I felt something scurry over my foot.

Rats, licking up my dripping blood.

Nice neighborhood.

I hurt a lot, but pain and I were old acquaintances. I took a deep breath, let it out slow, did some poking and prodding. Nothing seemed seriously damaged.

I'd been lucky.

I spat. The bloody saliva clung to my swollen lower lip and dribbled onto my T-shirt. I tried a few steps forward, managed to keep my balance, and continued to walk out of the alley, onto the sidewalk, and to the corner bus stop.

I sat.

The Kings took my wallet, which had no ID or credit cards, but did have a few hundred in cash. I kept an emergency fiver in my shoe. The bus arrived, and the portly driver raised an eyebrow at my appearance.

"Do you need a doctor, buddy?"

"I've got plenty of doctors."

He shrugged and took my money.

On the ride back, my fellow passengers made heroic efforts to avoid looking at me. I leaned forward, so the blood pooled between my feet rather than stained my clothing any further. These were my good jeans.

When my stop came up, I gave everyone a cheery wave goodbye and stumbled out of the bus.

The corner of State and Cermak was all lit up, twinkling in both English and Chinese. Unlike NYC and L.A., each of which had sprawling Chinatowns, Chicago has more of a Chinablock. Blink while you're driving west on Twenty-second and you'll miss it.

Though Caucasian, I found a kind of peace in Chinatown that I didn't find among the Anglos. Since my diagnosis, I've pretty much disowned society. Living here was like living in a foreign country-or a least a square block of a foreign country.

I kept a room at the Lucky Lucky Hotel, tucked between a crumbling apartment building and a Chinese butcher shop, on State and Twenty-fifth. The hotel did most of its business at an hourly rate, though I couldn't think of a more repulsive place to take a woman, even if you were renting her as well as the room. The halls stank like mildew and worse, the plaster snowed on you when you climbed the stairs, obscene graffiti lined the halls and the whole building leaned slightly to the right.

I got a decent rent: free-as long as I kept out the drug dealers. Which I did, except for the ones who dealt to me.

I nodded at the proprietor, Kenny-Jen-Bang-Ko, and asked for my key. Kenny was three times my age, clean-shaven save for several black moles on his cheeks that sprouted long, white hairs. He tugged at these hairs while contemplating me.

"How is other guy?" Kenny asked.

"Drinking a forty of malt liquor that he bought with my money."

He nodded, as if that was the answer he'd been expecting. "You want pizza?"

Kenny gestured to a box on the counter. The slices were so old and shrunken they looked like Doritos. "I thought the Chinese hated fast food." "Pizza not fast. Took thirty minutes. Anchovy and red pepper." I declined.

My room was one squeaky stair flight up. I unlocked the door and lumbered over to the bathroom, looking into the cracked mirror above the sink.

Ouch.

My left eye had completely closed, and the surrounding tissue bulged out like a peach. Purple bruising competed with angry red swelling along my cheeks and forehead. My nose was a glob of strawberry jelly, and blood had crusted black along my lips and down my neck.

It looked like Jackson Pollock had kicked my ass.

I stripped off the T-shirt, peeled off my shoes and jeans, and turned the shower up to scald.

It hurt but got most of the crap off.

After the shower I popped five Tylenol, chased them with a shot of tequila and spent ten minutes in front of the mirror, tears streaming down my face, forcing my nose back into place.

I had some coke, but wouldn't be able to sniff anything with my sniffer all clotted up, and I was too exhausted to shoot any. I made do with the tequila, thinking that tomorrow I'd have that codeine prescription refilled.

Since the pain wouldn't let me sleep, I decided to do a little work.

Using a dirty fork, I pried up the floorboards near the radiator and took out a plastic bag full of what appeared to be little gray stones. The granules were the size and consistency of aquarium gravel.

I placed the bag on the floor, then removed the Lee Load-All, the scale, a container of gunpowder, some wads and a box of empty 12-gauge shells.

Everything went over to my kitchen table. I snapped on a fresh pair of latex gloves, clamped the loader onto my countertop and spent an hour carefully filling ten shells. When I finished, I loaded five of them into my Mossberg 935, the barrel and stock of which had been cut down for easier concealment.

I liked shotguns-you had more leeway when aiming, the cops couldn't trace them like they could trace bullets, and nothing put the fear of God into a guy like the sound of racking a shell into the chamber.

For this job, I didn't have a choice.

By the time I was done, my nose had taken the gold medal in throbbing, with my eye coming close with the silver. I swallowed five more Tylenol and four shots of tequila, then lay down on my cot and fell asleep.

With sleep came the dream.

It happened every night, so vivid I could smell Donna's perfume. We were still together, living in the suburbs. She was smiling at me, running her fingers through my hair.

"Phin, the caterer wants to know if we're going with the split-pea or the wedding-ball soup."

"Explain the wedding-ball soup to me again."

"It's a chicken stock with tiny veal meatballs in it."

"That sounds good to you?"

"It's very good. I've had it before."

"Then let's go with that."

She kissed me; playful, loving.

I woke up drenched in sweat.

If someone had told me that happy memories would one day be a source of incredible pain, I wouldn't have believed it. Things change.

Sun peeked in through my dirty window, making me squint. I stretched, wincing because my whole body hurt-my whole body except for my left side, where a team of doctors had severed the nerves during an operation called a chordotomy. The surgery had been purely palliative. The area felt dead, even though the cancer still thrived inside my pancreas. And elsewhere, by now.

The chordotomy offered enough pain relief to allow me to function, and tequila, cocaine and codeine made up for the remainder.

I dressed in some baggy sweatpants, my bloody gym shoes (with a new five-dollar bill in the sole) and a clean white T-shirt.

I strapped my leather shotgun sling under my armpits and placed the Mossberg in the holster. It hung directly between my shoulder blades, barrel up, and could be freed by reaching my right hand behind me at waist level.

A baggy black trench coat went on over the rig, concealing the shotgun and the leather straps that held it in place.

I pocketed the five extra shells, the bag of gray granules, a Glock 21 with two extra clips of.45 rounds and a six-inch butterfly knife. Then I hung an iron crowbar on an extra strap sewn into the lining of my coat, and headed out to greet the morning.

Chinatown smelled like a combination of soy sauce and garbage. It was worse in the summer, when stenches seemed to settle in and stick to your clothes. Though not yet seven in the morning, the temperature already hovered in the low nineties. The sun made my face hurt.

I walked up State, past Cermak, and headed east. The Sing Lung Bakery had opened for business an hour earlier. The manager, a squat Mandarin Chinese named Ti, did a double take when I entered.

"Phin! Your face is horrible!" He rushed around the counter to meet me, hands and shirt dusty with flour.

"My mom liked it okay."

Ti's features twisted in concern. "Was it them? The ones who butchered my daughter?" I gave him a brief nod.

Ti hung his head. "I am sorry to bring this suffering upon you. They are very bad men."

I shrugged, which hurt. "It was my fault. I got careless."

That was an understatement. After combing Chicago for almost a week, I'd discovered the bangers had gone underground. I got one guy to talk, and after a bit of friendly persuasion he gladly offered some vital info; Sunny's killers were due to appear in court on an unrelated charge.

I'd gone to the Daly Center, where the prelim hearing was being held, and watched from the sidelines. After matching their names to faces, I followed them back to their hidey-hole.

My mistake had been to stick around. A white guy in a Hispanic neighborhood tends to stand out. Having just been to court, which required walking through a metal detector, I had no weapons on me.

Stupid. Ti and Sunny deserved someone smarter.

Ti had found me through the grapevine, where I got most of my business. Phineas Troutt, Problem Solver. No job too dirty, no fee too high.

I'd met him in a parking lot across the street, and he laid out the whole sad, sick story of what these animals had done to his little girl.

"Cops do nothing. Sunny's friend too scared to press charges."

Sunny's friend had managed to escape with only ten missing teeth, six stab wounds and a torn rectum. Sunny hadn't been as lucky.

Ti agreed to my price without question. Not too many people haggled with paid killers.

"You finish job today?" Ti asked, reaching into his glass display counter for a pastry.

"Yeah."

"In the way we talk about?" "In the way we talked about."

Ti bowed and thanked me. Then he stuffed two pastries into a bag and held them out.

"Duck egg moon cake, and red bean ball with sesame. Please take." I took.

"Tell me when you find them."

"I'll be back later today. Keep an eye on the news. You might see something you'll like."

I left the bakery and headed for the bus. Ti had paid me enough to afford a cab, or even a limo, but cabs and limos kept records. Besides, I preferred to save my money for more important things, like drugs and hookers. I try to live every day as if it's my last.

After all, it very well might be.

The bus arrived, and again everyone took great pains not to stare. The trip was short, only about two miles, taking me to a neighborhood known as Pilsen, on Racine and Eighteenth.

I left my duck egg moon cake and my red bean ball on the bus for some other lucky passenger to enjoy, then stepped out into Little Mexico.

It smelled like a combination of salsa and garbage.

There weren't many people out-too early for shoppers and commuters. The stores had Spanish signs, not bothering with English translations: zapatos, ropa, restaurante, tiendas de comestibles, bancos, telefonos de la celula. I passed the alley where I'd gotten the shit kicked out of me, kept heading north, and located the apartment building where my three amigos were staying. I tried the front door.

They hadn't left it open for me.

Though the gray paint was faded and peeling, the door was heavy aluminum and the lock solid. But the jamb, as I'd remembered from yesterday's visit, was old wood. I removed the crowbar from my jacket lining, gave a discreet look in either direction and pried open the door in less time than it took to open it with a key, the frame splintering and cracking.

The Kings occupied the basement apartment to the left of the entrance, facing the street. Last night I'd counted seven-five men and two women-including my three targets. Of course, there may be other people inside that I'd missed.

This was going to be interesting.

Unlike the front door, their apartment door was a joke. They apparently thought being gang members meant they didn't need decent security.

They thought wrong.

I took out my Glock and tried to stop hyperventilating. Breaking into someone's place is scary as hell. It always is.

One hard kick and the door burst inward.

A guy on the couch, sleeping in front of the TV Not one of my marks. He woke up and stared at me. It took a millisecond to register the gang tattoo, a five-pointed crown, on the back of his hand.

I shot him in his forehead.

If the busted door didn't wake everyone up, the.45 did, sounding like thunder in the small room.

Movement to my right. A woman in the kitchen, in panties and a Dago-T, too much makeup and baby fat.

"Te vayas!" I hissed at her.

She took the message and ran out the door.

A man stumbled into the hall, tripping and falling to the thin carpet. One of mine, the guy who'd pinned my right arm while I'd been worked over. He clutched a stiletto. I was on him in two quick steps, putting one in his elbow and one through the back of his knee when he fell.

He screamed falsetto.

I walked down the hall in a crouch, and a bullet zinged over my head and buried itself in the ceiling. I kissed the floor, looked left, and saw the shooter in the bathroom; the guy who had held my other arm and laughed every time I got smacked.

I stuck the Glock in my jeans and reached behind me, un-slinging the Mossberg.

He fired again, missed, and I aimed the shotgun and peppered his face.

Unlike lead shot, the gray granules didn't have deep penetrating power. Instead of blowing his head off, they peeled off his lips, cheeks and eyes.

He ate linoleum, blind and choking on blood.

Movement behind me. I fell sideways and rolled onto my back. A kid, about thirteen, stood in the hall a few feet away. He wore Latin Kings colors; black to represent death, gold to represent life.

His hand ended in a pistol.

I racked the shotgun, aimed low.

If the kid was old enough to be sexually active, he wasn't anymore.

He dropped to his knees, still holding the gun. I was on him in two steps, driving a knee into his nose. He went down and out.

Three more guys burst out of the bedroom. Apparently I'd counted wrong.

Two were young, muscular, brandishing knives. The third was the guy who'd worked me over the night before. The one who'd called me a bald son of a bitch.

They were on me before I could rack the shotgun again.

The first one slashed at me with his pig-sticker, and I parried with the barrel of the Mossberg. He jabbed again, slicing me across the knuckles of my right hand.

I threw the shotgun at his face and went for my Glock.

He was fast.

I was faster.

Bang bang and he was a paycheck for the coroner. I spun left, aimed at the second guy. He was already in midjump, launching himself at me with a battle cry and switchblades in both hands.

One gun beats two knives.

He took three in the chest and two in the neck before he dropped.

The last guy, the guy who'd broken my nose, grabbed my shotgun and dived behind the couch.

Chck chck. He ejected the shell and racked another into the chamber. I pulled the Glock's magazine and slammed a fresh one home.

"Hijo calvo de una perra!"

Again with the bald son of a bitch taunt. I worked through my hurt feelings and crawled to an end table, tipping it over and getting behind it.

The shotgun boomed. Had it been loaded with shot, it would have torn through the cheap particleboard and turned me into ground beef. Or ground hijo calvo de una perra. But at that distance, the granules didn't do much more than make a loud noise.

The banger apparently didn't learn from experience, because he tried twice more with similar results, and then the shotgun was empty.

I stood up from behind the table, my heart a lump in my throat and my hands shaking with adrenaline. The King turned and ran. His back was an easy target.

I took a quick look around, making sure everyone was down or out, and then went to retrieve my shotgun. I loaded five more shells and approached the downed leader, who was sucking carpet and whimpering. The wounds in his back were ugly, but he still made a feeble effort to crawl away.

I bent down, turned him over and shoved the barrel of the Mossberg between his bloody lips.

"You remember Sunny Lung," I said, and fired.

It wasn't pretty. It also wasn't fatal. The granules blew out his cheeks and tore into his throat, but somehow the guy managed to keep breathing.

I gave him one more, jamming the gun farther down the wreck of his face.

That did the trick.

The second perp, the one I'd blinded, had passed out on the bathroom floor. His face didn't look like a face anymore, and blood bubbles were coming out of the hole where his mouth would have been.

"Sunny Lung sends her regards," I said.

This time I pushed the gun in deep, and the first shot did the trick, blowing through his throat.

The last guy, the one who made like Pavarotti when I took out his knee, left a blood smear from the hall into the kitchen. He cowered in the corner, a dishrag pressed to his leg.

"Don't kill me, man! Don't kill me!"

"I bet Sunny Lung said the same thing."

The Mossberg thundered twice; once to the chest, and once to the head.

It wasn't enough. What was left alive gasped for air.

I removed the bag of granules from my pocket, took out a handful and shoved them down his throat until he stopped breathing.

Then I went to the bathroom and threw up in the sink.

Sirens wailed in the distance. Time to go. I washed my hands, and then rinsed off the barrel of the Mossberg, holstering it in my rig.

In the hallway, the kid I emasculated was clutching himself between the legs, sobbing.

"There's always the priesthood," I told him, and got out of there.

Heather Graham has spent her life in the Miami area and frequently uses her home arena as the setting in her novels. She sometimes considers that it's quite a bit like living in a theater of the absurd. Where else can you mix such a cosmopolitan, big-city venue with traces of a distant past? The place has it all. Snowbirds blending with the Old South. The Everglades, where proud tribes of Native Americans still live. And the sultry "river of grass," which affords deadly opportunities for the drug trade and convenient hiding spots for bodies that may never surface again.

Graham loves her hometown, the water, boating, and one of her main passions, scuba diving. She says that loving Miami is like loving a child. You have to accept it for the good and bad. Graham is known for creating locations that live and breathe-becoming as much a character in her books as the people who propel them. A multi-award-winning author, continually reaching New York Times and USA TODAY lists, she's glad to work in several venues, including vampire, historical, ghost and suspense. Whatever time or place she's dealing in, Graham loves to keep her readers on edge. With The Face in the Window she takes characters from her thriller, The Island, and sets them in the midst of an unexpected storm with unexpected consequences.

Lightning flashed. Thunder cracked.

It might have been the end of the world.

And there, cast eerily in the window, pressed against it, was a face. The eyes were red; they seemed to glow, like demon eyes. There was a split second when it seemed the storm had cast up the very devil to come for her.

Startled, Beth Henson let out a scream, backing away from the image, almost tripping over the coffee table behind her. The brilliant illumination created by the lightning faded to black, and along with it, the image of the face.

Beyond the window, darkness reigned again.

A lantern burned on the table, a muted glow against the shadowed darkness of night. The storm had long since blown out the electricity as it should have removed other inhabitants from the area. The wind railed with the sharpness of a banshee's shriek, even though the hurricane had wound down to tropical-storm strength before descending upon the lower Florida Keys.

Instinctive terror reigned in Beth's heart for several long seconds, then compassion overrode it. Someone was out there, drenched and frightened in the storm. She had gone to the window to see if she could find any sign of Keith. He had left her when their last phone communication with the sheriff had warned them that Mrs. Peterson-one of the few full-time residents of the tiny key-had failed to evacuate. She wouldn't leave for a shelter, not when the shelters wouldn't allow her to bring Cocoa, her tiny Yorkie. Okay, so Cocoa could be a pain, but she and Keith could understand the elderly woman's love for her pup and companion, and Beth had convinced Keith they could listen to a bit of barking.

The appearance of the face in the window was followed by a banging on the door. Beth jumped again, startled. For a moment, she froze. What if it was a serial killer? Normally, she would never just open a door to anyone.

But the pounding continued, along with a cry for help. She sprang into action, chiding herself. Someone was out there who needed shelter from the storm. Some idiot tourist without the sense to evacuate when told to. And if that someone died because she was too frightened to give aid in an emergency…

And how ridiculous. Sure, the world had proven to be a rough place, with heinous and conniving criminals. But to assume a serial killer was running around in the midst of what might have been a killer storm was just ludicrous.

She hurried forward, hand firmly on the door as she opened it against the power of the wind. Again, compassion surged through her as the soaked and bedraggled man came staggering in, desperately gasping for breath. He was a thin man with dark, wet hair that clung to his face and the back of his neck. When he looked at Beth, his eyes were wide and terrified. He offered her a faltering smile. "God bless you! You really must be an angel!" he cried.

Beth drew the quilted throw from the sofa and wrapped it around the man's shoulders, demanding, "What were you doing out there? How could you not have heard the evacuation orders issued for all tourists?"

He looked at her sheepishly. "Please, don't throw me back out," he told her. "I admit, I was on a bender in Key West." He staggered to his feet. "When I realized we were told to go, I started out, but my car was literally blown off the road. Then I saw light. Faint light-your place. God must look after fools. I mean…if you don't throw me out." He was tall and wiry, perhaps about thirty. She realized, when not totally bedraggled, he was surely a striking young fellow, with his brilliant blue eyes and dark hair.

"I'm not going to throw you out," she told him.

He offered her a hand suddenly. "I'm Mark Egan. A musician. Maybe you've heard of my group? We're called Ultra C. Our first CD just hit the stores, and we were playing the bars down in Key West. You haven't heard of me-or us?" he said, disappointed.

"No, I'm afraid I haven't."

"That's okay, I guess most of the world hasn't," he said.

"Maybe my husband will have heard of you. He's in Key West often and he really loves to listen to local groups."

He offered her his engaging grin once again. "It doesn't mat-ter-you're still wonderful. You're an angel-wow, gorgeous, too."

"Thanks. I can give you something dry to put on. My husband is somewhat larger than you are, but I'm sure you can make do."

"Your husband? Is he here?"

She felt a moment's unease. "Yes, of course. He's just.bat-tening down a few things. He's around, close," she said.

"I hope he doesn't stay out too long. It's brutal. Hey, you guys don't keep a car here?" he asked.

An innocent question? she wondered.

"Yes, we have a car," she said, determined not to explain further. "I'm Beth Henson," she said, and offered him a hand. They shook. His grip was more powerful than what she had expected. "Hang on, I'll get you those clothes," she said.

She picked up one of the flashlights and headed for the bedroom. She couldn't help looking over her shoulder, afraid that he had followed her. He hadn't. She went to the closet and decided on an old pair of Keith's jeans and a T-shirt. Best she could do. She brought them back out and handed them to the dripping man. "Bathroom is the first door on the left, and here's a flashlight."

"Thanks. Truly, you are an angel!" he said, and walked down the hall.

James Siegel says the most common question he's asked by readers is, Where do you get your ideas? His standard answer is, I don't know-do you have any? The real answer, of course, is, Everywhere. Siegel tends to write about ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. Being a self-described "ordinary person," Siegel doesn't find it hard to place himself in the protagonist's shoes. Riding the Long Island railroad for instance-where attractive women would sometimes occupy the seat beside him-sent Siegel into reveries of what if? That ended up as Derailed-the story of an ordinary ad guy whose life goes awry when he meets a woman on the train. Adopting kids in Colombia gave him the notion for Detour, where an adoption goes terribly, murderously wrong. And then there was the day he was lying in a massage room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. The masseuse touched his neck and said, What's bothering you? Siegel's response: How do you know something's bothering me? And she said, Because I'm an empath.

Siegel was puzzled.

An empath? What's that?

I sit in a dark motel room.

It's pitch-black outside, but I've pulled the shades down tight anyway, so she won't see me when she walks in. So she'll be sure to turn away from me to switch on the light.

I don't like the dark.

I live on Scotch and Ambien so I never have to stare at it, because sooner or later it becomes the dark of the confessional and I'm eight years old again. I can smell the garlic on his breath and hear the rustle of his clothing. For a moment, I'm a shy, sweet-natured, baseball-crazy boy again, and I physically shrink away from what's coming.

Then everything turns red and the world's on fire.

I look back in anger, because anger is what I've become-a fist of a man.

Anger is what cost me my home, and anger is what put me into court-ordered therapy, and anger is what finally kicked me off the LAPD and into hotel security, where I can be angry without killing anyone.

Not yet.

You've heard of the hotel I work in. It's considered top-shelf and is patronized by various Hollywood wannabes and occasional bona fide celebrities. As downward spirals go, mine hasn't sucked me to the bottom yet, only to Beverly and Doheny.

I get to wear a suit and earpiece, something like a Secret Service man. I get to stand around and look semi-important and even give orders to the hotel employees who don't get to wear suits.

She was a masseuse in the hotel spa.

Kelly.

She was known for her deep-tissue and hot stone. I first talked to her in the basement alcove where I went to be alone-but I'd noticed her before that. I'd heard the music seeping out of her room on my way to the back elevators, and when she entered the basement to grab a smoke, I complimented her on her taste. Most of the hotel masseuses were partial to Enya, to Eastern sitar or the monotonous sound of waves lapping sand. Not her. She played the Joneses-Rickie Lee and Nora and Quincy, too, on occasion.

"Do your customers like it?" I asked her. She shrugged. "I don't know. Most of them are just trying to not get a hard-on."

"Occupational hazard, I guess?"

"Oh, yeah."

She was pretty, certainly. But there was something else, a palpable aura that made it feel humid even in full-blast air-conditioning.

I believe she noticed the ugly swelling on the knuckles of my right hand, and the place in the wall where I'd dented it.

"Bad day?"

"No. Pretty ordinary."

She reached out and touched my face, fanning her fingers across my right cheek. Which is more or less when she told me she was an empath.

I won't lie and tell you that I knew what an empath was.

A look had come over her when she touched my face-as if she'd felt that part of me which I rarely touch myself, and then only in the dark before the Johnny Walker has worked its magic.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"For what?"

"For whatever did this to you."

This is what an empath can do-their special gift. Or curse, depending on the day.

I learned all about empaths from her over the next few weeks. As we talked in the basement, or bumped into each other on the way into the hotel, or grabbed smokes outside on the corner.

Empaths touch and know. They feel skin and bone but they touch soul. They see through their hands. Everything-the good, the bad and the truly ugly.

She saw more ugly than she wanted to.

The ugliness had begun to get to her, to send her into a very dark place.

It was one of her customers, she explained.

"Mostly I just see emotions," she confided, "you know, happiness, sadness, fear-longing-all that. But sometimes…sometimes I see more…I know who they are, understand?"

"No. Not really."

"This guy-he's a regular. The first time I touched him, I had to pull my hands away. It was that strong." "What?"

"The sense of evil. Like touching-I don't know…a black hole." "What kind of evil are we talking about?" "The worst."

Later, she told me more. We were sitting in a bar on Sunset having drinks. Our first date, I guess. "He hurts kids," she said.

I felt that special nausea. The kind that used to subsume me back in the confessional, when he would come for me, that dark wraith of hurt. The nausea that came when my little brother dutifully followed me into altar-boyhood and I kept my mouth zipped tight like a secret pocket. Don't tell…don't tell. There's a price for not telling. It was paid years later, on the afternoon I found my sweet, sad brother hanging from a belt in our childhood bedroom. Over his teenage years, he'd furiously sought solace in various narcotics, but they could only do so much.

"How do you know?" I asked Kelly.

"I know. He's going to do something. He's done it before."

When I told her she might want to report him to the police, she shot me the look you give to intellectually challenged children.

"Tell them I'm an empath? That I feel one of my clients is a pedophile? That'll go over well."

She was right, of course. They'd laugh her out of the station.

It was maybe a week later, after this customer had come and gone from his regular appointment and Kelly was looking particularly miserable, that I volunteered to keep an eye on him.

"How?"

We were lying in my bed, having taken our relationship to the next level as they say, both of us using sex as a kind of opiate, I think-a way to forget things.

"His next appointment?" I asked her. "When is it?"

"Tuesday at two."

"Okay, then."

James Rollins's Sandstorm (2003) and Map of Bones (2004), were departures from his usual work. His prior thrillers were all stand-alones, with a separate cast of characters. But in these two, Rollins introduced his first series with recurring characters. He pursued that course based on input from his readers and from personal desire. For years, fans had contacted him and asked questions about various cast members from his earlier thrillers. What became of Ashley and Ben's baby after Subterranean (1999)? What is the next port of call for the crew of the Deep Fathom (2001)?

Eventually, Rollins came to realize that he wanted to know those answers, too. So he challenged himself to construct a series-something unique and distinct. He wanted to build a landscape of three-dimensional characters and create his own mythology of these people, to watch them grow over the course of the series, balancing personal lives and professional, some succeeding, some failing. Yet at the same time, Rollins refused to let go of his roots. Trained as a biologist with a degree in veterinary medicine, his new series, like his previous thrillers, folded scientific intrigue into stories of historical mystery. His new characters belong to Sigma Force, an elite team of ex-Special Forces soldiers retrained in scientific disciplines (what Rollins jokingly describes as "killer scientists who operate outside the rule of law"). Finally, from his background as a veterinarian, the occasional strange or exotic animal often plays a significant role in the plot.

And this short story is no exception.

Here, Rollins links his past to the present. He brings forward a minor character, one of his personal favorites, from his earlier stand-alone thriller Ice Hunt (2003). Joe Kowal-ski, a naval seaman, is best described as someone with the heart of a hero but lacking the brainpower to go with it. So how does Seaman Joe Kowalski end up being recruited by such an illustrious team as Sigma Force?

As they say…dumb luck is better than no luck at all.

He wasn't much to look at.even swinging upside down from a hog snare. Pug-nosed, razor-clipped muddy hair, a six-foot slab of beef hooked and hanging naked except for a pair of wet gray boxer shorts. His chest was crisscrossed with old scars, along with one jagged bloody scratch from collarbone to groin. His eyes shone wide and wild. And with good reason.

Two minutes before, as Dr. Shay Rosauro unhitched her glide-chute on the nearby beach, she had heard his cries in the jungle and come to investigate. She had approached in secret, moving silently, spying from a short distance away, cloaked in shadow and foliage.

"Back off, you furry bastard…!"

The man's curses never stopped, a continual flow tinged with a growled Bronx accent. Plainly he was American. Like herself. She checked her watch. 8:33 a.m.

The island would explode in twenty-seven minutes. The man would die sooner.

The more immediate threat came from the island's other inhabitants, drawn by the man's shouts. The average adult mandrill baboon weighed over a hundred pounds, most of that muscle and teeth. They were usually found in Africa. Never on a jungle island off the coast of Brazil. The yellow radio collars suggested the pack were once the research subjects belonging to Professor Salazar, shipped to this remote island for his experimental trials. Mandrillus sphinx were also considered frugivo-rous, meaning their diet consisted of fruits and nuts.

But not always.

They were also known to be opportunistic carnivores.

One of the baboons stalked around the trapped man: a charcoal-furred male of the species with a broad red snout bordered on both sides by ridges of blue. Such coloration indicated the fellow was the dominant male of the group. Females and subordinate males, all a duller brown, had settled to rumps or hung from neighboring branches. One bystander yawned, exposing a set of three-inch-long eyeteeth and a muzzle full of ripping incisors.

The male sniffed at the prisoner. A meaty fist swung at the inquisitive baboon, missed, and whished through empty air.

The male baboon reared on its hind legs and howled, lips peeling back from its muzzle to expose the full length of its yellow fangs. An impressive and horrifying display. The other baboons edged closer.

Shay stepped into the clearing, drawing all eyes. She lifted her hand and pressed the button on her sonic device, nicknamed a shrieker. The siren blast from the device had the desired effect.

Baboons fled into the forest. The male leader bounded up, caught a low branch and swung into the cloaking darkness of the jungle.

The man, still spinning on the line, spotted her. "Hey…how about…?"

Shay already had a machete in her other hand. She jumped atop a boulder and severed the hemp rope with one swipe of her weapon.

The man fell hard, striking the soft loam and rolling to the side. Amid a new string of curses, he struggled with the snare around his ankle. He finally freed the knotted rope.

"Goddamn apes!"

"Baboons," Shay corrected.

"What?"

"They're baboons, not apes. They have stubby tails."

"Whatever. All I saw were their big, goddamn teeth."

As the man stood and brushed off his knees, Shay spotted a U.S. Navy anchor tattooed on his right bicep. Ex-military? Maybe he could prove handy. Shay checked the time.

8:35 a.m.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. "My boat broke down." His gaze traveled up and down her lithe form.

She was not unaccustomed to such attention from the male of her own species.even now, when she was unflatteringly dressed in green camouflage fatigues and sturdy boots. Her shoulder-length black hair had been efficiently bound behind her ears with a black bandanna, and in the tropical swelter, her skin glowed a dark mocha.

Caught staring, he glanced back toward the beach. "I swam here after my boat sank."

"Your boat sank?"

"Okay, it blew up."

She stared at him for further explanation.

"There was a gas leak. I dropped my cigar-"

She waved away the rest of his words with her machete. Her pickup was scheduled at the northern peninsula in under a half hour. On that timetable, she had to reach the compound, break into the safe and obtain the vials of antidote. She set off into the jungle, noting a trail. The man followed, dragged along in her wake.

"Whoa…where are we going?"

She freed a rolled-up poncho from her daypack and passed it to him.

He struggled into it as he followed. "Name's Kowalski," he said. He got the poncho on backward and fought to work it around. "Do you have a boat? A way off this friggin' island?"

She didn't have time for subtlety. "In twenty-three minutes, the Brazilian navy is going to firebomb this atoll."

"What?" He checked his own wrist. He had no watch.

She continued, "An evac is scheduled for wheels up at 8:55 a.m. on the northern peninsula. But first I have to retrieve something from the island."

"Wait. Back up. Who's going to firebomb this shithole?"

"The Brazilian navy. In twenty-three minutes."

"Of course they are." He shook his head. "Of all the goddamn islands, I had to shag my ass onto one that's going to blow up."

Shay tuned out his diatribe. At least he kept moving. She had to give him that. He was either very brave or very dumb.

"Oh, look…a mango." He reached for the yellow fruit.

"Don't touch that."

"But I haven't eaten in-?"

"All the vegetation on this island has been aerial sprayed with a transgenic rhabdovirus." He lowered his hand.

"Once ingested, it stimulates the sensory centers of the brain, heightening a victim's senses. Sight, sound, smell, taste and touch."

"And what's wrong with that?"

"The process also corrupts the reticular apparatus of the cerebral cortex. Triggering manic rages."

A growling yowl echoed through the jungle behind them. It was answered by coughing grunts and howls from either flank.

"The apes.?"

"Baboons. Yes, they're surely infected. Experimental subjects." "Great. The Island of Rabid Baboons."

Ignoring him, she pointed toward a whitewashed hacienda sprawled atop the next hill, seen through a break in the foliage. "We need to reach that compound."

The terra-cotta-tiled structure had been leased by Professor Salazar for his research, funded by a shadowy organization of terrorist cells. Here on the isolated island, he had conducted the final stages of perfecting his bioweapon. Then two days ago, Sigma Force-a covert U.S. science team specializing in global threats- had captured the doctor in the heart of the Brazilian rain forest, but not before he had infected an entire Indian village outside of Manaus, including an international children's relief hospital.

The disease was already in its early stages, requiring the prompt quarantine of the village by the Brazilian army. The only hope was to obtain Professor Salazar's antidote, locked in the doctor's safe.

Or at least the vials might be there.

Salazar claimed to have destroyed his supply.

Upon this assertion, the Brazilian government had decided to take no chances. A storm was due to strike at dusk with hurricane-force winds. They feared the storm surge might carry the virus from the island to the mainland's coastal rain forest. It would take only a single infected leaf to risk the entire equatorial rain forest. So the plan was to firebomb the small island, to burn its vegetation to the bedrock. The assault was set for zero nine hundred. The government could not be convinced that the remote possibility of a cure was worth the risk of a delay. Total annihilation was their plan. That included the Brazilian village. Acceptable losses.

Anger surged through her as she pictured Manuel Garrison, her partner. He had tried to evacuate the children's hospital, but he'd become trapped and subsequently infected. Along with all the children.

Acceptable losses were not in her vocabulary.

Not today.

So Shay had proceeded with her solo op. Parachuting from a high-altitude drop, she had radioed her plans while plummeting in free fall. Sigma command had agreed to send an emergency evac helicopter to the northern end of the island. It would touch down for one minute. Either she was on the chopper at that time.or she was dead.

The odds were fine with her.

But now she wasn't alone.

The side of beef tromped loudly behind her. Whistling. He was whistling. She turned to him. "Mr. Kowalski, do you remember my description of how the virus heightens a victim's sense of hearing?" Her quiet words crackled with irritation.

"Sorry." He glanced at the trail behind him.

"Careful of that tiger trap," she said, stepping around the crudely camouflaged hole.

"What-?" His left foot fell squarely on the trapdoor of woven reeds. His weight shattered through it.

Shay shoulder-blocked the man to the side and landed atop him. It felt like falling on a pile of bricks. Only, bricks were smarter.

She pushed up. "After being snared, you'd think you'd watch where you were stepping! The whole place is one big booby trap."

She stood, straightened her pack and edged around the spike-lined pit. "Stay behind me. Step where I step."

In her anger, she missed the trip cord.

The only warning was a small thwang.

She jumped to the side but was too late. A tethered log swung from the forest and struck her knee. She heard the snap of her tibia, then went flying through the air-right toward the open maw of the tiger trap.

She twisted to avoid the pit's iron spikes. There was no hope.

Then she hit.bricks again.

Kowalski had lunged and blocked the hole with his own bulk. She rolled off him. Agony flared up her leg, through her hip, and exploded along her spine. Her vision narrowed to a pinprick, but not enough to miss the angled twist below her knee.

Kowalski gained her side. "Oh, man…oh, man…"

"Leg's broken," she said, biting back the pain.

"We can splint it."

She checked her watch. 8:39 a.m.

Twenty-one minutes left.

He noted her attention. "I can carry you. We can still make it to the evac site."

She recalculated in her head. She pictured Manuel's shit-eating grin.and the many faces of the children. Pain worse than any broken bone coursed through her. She could not fail.

The man read her intent. "You'll never make it to that house," he said.

"I don't have any other choice."

"Then let me do it," he blurted out. His words seemed to surprise him as much as it did her, but he didn't retract them. "You make for the beach. I'll get whatever you want out of the goddamn hacienda."

She turned and stared the stranger full in the face. She searched for something to give her hope. Some hidden strength, some underlying fortitude. She found nothing. But she had no other choice.

"There'll be other traps."

"I'll keep my eyes peeled this time."

"And the office safe…I can't teach you to crack it in time." "Do you have an extra radio?" She nodded.

"So talk me through it once I get there."

She hesitated-but there was no time for even that. She swung her pack around. "Lean down."

She reached to a side pocket of her pack and stripped out two self-adhesive patches. She attached one behind the man's ear and the other over his Adam's apple. "Microreceiver and a sub-vocal transmitter."

She quickly tested the radio while explaining the stakes involved.

"So much for my relaxing vacation under the sun," he mumbled. "One more thing," she said. She pulled out three sections of a weapon from her pack. "A VK rifle. Variable Kinetic." She quickly snapped the pieces together and shoved a fat cylindrical cartridge into place on its underside. It looked like a stubby assault rifle, except the barrel was wider and flattened horizontally.

"Safety release is here." She pointed the weapon at a nearby bush and squeezed the trigger. There was only a tiny whirring cough. A projectile flashed out the barrel and buzzed through the bush, severing leaves and branches. "One-inch razor-disks. You can set the weapon for single shot or automatic strafe." She demonstrated. "Two hundred shots per magazine."

He whistled again and accepted the weapon. "Maybe you should keep this weed whacker. With your bum leg, you're going to drag ass at a snail's pace." He nodded to the jungle. "And the damn apes are still out there."

"They're baboons.and I still have my handheld shrieker. Now get going." She checked her watch. She had given Kowal-ski a second timepiece, calibrated to match. "Nineteen minutes."

He nodded. "I'll see you soon." He moved off the trail, vanishing almost instantly into the dense foliage.

"Where are you going?" she called after him. "The trail-"

"Screw the trail," he responded through the radio. "I'll take my chances in the raw jungle. Fewer traps. Plus, I've got this baby to carve a straight path to the mad doctor's house."

Shay hoped he was right. There would be no time for backtracking or second chances. She quickly dosed herself with a morphine injector and used a broken tree branch for a crutch. As she set off for the beach, she heard the ravenous hunting calls of the baboons.

She hoped Kowalski could outsmart them.

The thought drew a groan that had nothing to do with her broken leg.

Gayle Lynds did not intend to start a series. When she wrote her first book, Masquerade, in the mid-1990s, she was simply creating a modern espionage thriller. But in those early post-Iron Curtain days, not only was there serious discussion in Congress about dissolving the CIA, the New York Times eliminated its regular review column titled, "Spies & Thrillers." Within book publishing, the spy novel was declared as dead as the cold war.

Still, Masquerade became a New York Times bestseller. A great adventure story, it was infused with fascinating doses of history and psychology. In an odd way, Sarah Walker, the heroine, was Lynds. Both were magazine journalists, but Sarah had the misfortune to have an uncle who was a notorious assassin called the Carnivore, although she did not know this. In the novel, Asher Flores, the hero, is a CIA man of the fascinating ilk-charming, terribly smart, with the soul of a rogue. Together, Sarah and Asher must unearth the Carnivore.

Lynds went on to publish two more stand-alone thrillers, Mesmerized and Mosaic, and collaborated with Robert Lud-lum to create the Covert-One series. Through it all, she continued to receive mail from fans who wanted her to bring back Sarah, Asher and the Carnivore. So The Coil, a novel about the Carnivore's only child, Liz Sansborough, was born. A former CIA operative, Liz had played a pivotal role in Masquerade, just as Sarah and Asher would play pivotal roles in The Coil.

Liz and Sarah are two matched flames, not only in appearance but in spirit, with quick wit and the sort of personal courage that is both admirable and sometimes daunting. Costarring with Liz in The Coil is Simon Childs of MI6. For him, the "M" means maverick. Hotheaded and coolly charming, Simon reflects Lynds's endless fascination with politics- he's a penetration agent in the antiglobalization movement.

Lynds's latest espionage thriller is The Last Spymaster, and will be followed by another book in the Carnivore series. The Hunt for Dmitri is part of that continuum.

It's a Liz Sansborough story.

Which means the Carnivore must appear, too.

The French never got enough credit. The Germans never got enough control. The Romanians had a guilt complex. And the Americans hadn't a clue. As the good-natured slanders continued, Liz Sansborough, Ph.D., peered around the Faculty Club for her close friend and colleague Arkady Albam. He was late.

The dimly lit bar was packed, every table filled. The rich aromas of wine and liquor were intense. As glasses clinked, a world atlas of languages electrified the air. Academics all, they were celebrating the conclusion of a highly successful international conference on cold war political fallout, post-9/11, which she had helped to organize. Still, there was no sign of Arkady.

The economist from the University of London grinned pointedly at Liz-the only American in their group. "I hear Russia's economy is so rotten that the Kremlin has had to sack dozens of its American moles."

"Only because we don't sell ourselves cheap." She grinned back at him. "Moscow can afford to keep your MI6 turncoats on the payroll forever."

As laughter erupted, the sociologist from the Sorbonne nodded at the empty bar stool beside Liz and asked in French, "Where's Arkady? He isn't here to defend his country!"

"I've been wondering, too." Liz's gaze swept the lounge once more.

Arkady was a visiting scholar in Russian history, on campus here at the University of California at Santa Barbara since January. They had met soon after he arrived, when he sat beside her at a mass faculty meeting, peered at the empty seat on his other side, then introduced himself to her. "I'm the new kid," he said simply. They discovered a shared European sensibility, a love of movies, and that each had pasts neither would discuss. In her mind, she could see his kindly wrinkled face, feel the touch of his fingertips on her forearm as he leaned toward her with an impish smile to impart some piece of wisdom or gossip.

The problem was, he was elderly-almost seventy years old- and so unwell the past week that he had missed all of Monday's events, including his own seminar. He had phoned to tell her, but stubbornly refused to see a doctor.

As the lighthearted banter continued, and more people arrived, there was still no Arkady. He was never late. Liz speed-dialed his number on her cell phone. No answer again. Instead of leaving another message, she toasted her colleagues farewell and wound through the throngs to the door. His apartment was only minutes away. She might as well look in on him.

The night sky was dull black, the stars pinpricks, remote. Liz hurried to her car, threw her shoulder bag across the front seat, turned on the ignition and peeled out, speeding along streets fringed with towering palms until at last she parked in front of Arkady's building. He lived in 2C. In a rare admission, he had joked once that he preferred this "C" to the one that referred to the Cellar, Soviet intelligence's name for the basement in the Lubyanka complex where the KGB executed dissidents and spies and those who crossed them. He barely escaped, he had told her, then refused to say more, his profile pinched with bad memories.

Liz ran upstairs and knocked. There was no answer. His drapes were closed, but a line of light showed in a center gap. She knocked again then tried the knob. It turned, and she cracked open the door. Just inside, magazines were strewn in piles. A lamp lay on its side, its ceramic base shattered. Her chest tightened. "Arkady? Are you here?"

The only sound was the ticking of the wall clock. Liz opened the door wider. Books lay where they had been yanked from shelves, spines twisted. She peered around the door-and saw Arkady. His brown eyes were wide and frightened, and he seemed small, shriveled, although he was muscular and broad-chested for his age. He was sitting in his usual armchair, drenched in the light of his tall, cast-iron floor lamp.

She drank in the sight of him. "Are you all right?"

Arkady sighed. "This is what greeted me after the last seminar." He spoke English with an American accent. "It's a mess, isn't it?" He still wore his battered tweed jacket, his gray tie firmly knotted against his throat. His left hand held a blue envelope, while the other was tucked inside his jacket as if clutching at his heart. He was a man of expressive Rus disposition and ascetic Mongol habits and was usually vibrant and talkative.

She frowned. "Yes, but you didn't answer my question. Are you hurt?"

When he shook his head, experience sent her outside to the balcony again. A gust of wind rustled the leaves of a pepper tree, cooling her hot face. As she inspected the street and parked cars, then the other apartment buildings, uneasy memories surged through her, transporting her back to the days she had been a CIA NOC-nonofficial cover operative-on roving assignment from Paris to Moscow. No one at the university knew she had been CIA.

Seeing nothing unusual, she slipped back inside and locked the door. Arkady had not moved. In the lamplight, his thick hair and heavy eyebrows were the muted color of iron shavings.

"What happened, Arkady? Who did this? Is anything missing?"

He shrugged, his expression miserable.

Liz walked through the kitchen, bedroom and office. Nothing else seemed out of place. She returned to the living room.

Arkady rallied. "Sit with me, dear Liz. You're such a comfort. If I'd been blessed with a daughter, I'd want her to be you."

His words touched her. As a psychologist, she was aware of her desire for this older man's attention, that he had become a surrogate father, a deep bond. Her real father was her most closely guarded secret: He was an international assassin with a code name to match his reputation-the Carnivore. She hated what he had done, what he was. That his blood flowed through her veins haunted her-except when she was with Arkady.

She sank into her usual armchair, where only the low reading table separated them. "Have you phoned the sheriff's department?"

He shrugged. "There's no point."

"I'll call for you."

Arkady gave his head a rough shake. "Too dangerous. He'll be back."

She stared. "Too dangerous? Who'll be back?"

Arkady handed her the blue envelope he had been holding. She turned it over. The postmark was Los Angeles.

"Ignore that," he told her. "The letter was sent originally from Moscow to New York in a larger envelope. A friend there opened it and put the letter into another big envelope and mailed it to Los Angeles. That's where my address was added."

Liz pulled out folded stationery. Inside were three tiny dried sunflowers. In Russia, an odd number of blooms was considered good luck. The writing was not only different, it was in the Cyrillic alphabet-Russian.

"Dearest," it began. She peered up at him.

"It's from my wife, Nina." He looked past her to another time, another life. "She wouldn't escape with me. We'd never had children, and she knew I could take care of myself. She said she'd rather have me alive far away than dead in some Moscow grave." He paused. "I suspect she knew I'd have a better chance alone."

Liz took a long breath. With the stationery in one hand, and the sunflowers on the palm of the other, she bent her head and read. The letter recounted the ordinary life of an ordinary woman living on a small pension in a tiny Moscow flat. "I've enclosed three pressed sunflowers, my love," the letter finished, "to remind you of our happy times together. You are in my arms forever."

Liz gazed a moment longer at the dried blossoms, now the color of desert sand. She folded the letter and slid the flowers back inside.

Arkady looked at her alertly, as if hoping she would say something that would rectify whatever had happened, what he feared might happen.

"It's obvious Nina loves you a lot," she told him. "Surely she can join you now." "It's impossible."

She frowned. "I don't understand what's going on."

"Nina and I decided before I left that if either of us ever suspected our mail was being read, we'd write that we were enclosing three sunflowers. Some snooper must've thought they'd fallen out, so he covered himself by adding them. The mistake confirms what Nina surmised, and it fits with this." He gestured at the damage around them. "I thought I was being followed yesterday and today. The vandalism proves he's here. And it's a message that he can have someone in Moscow scrub Nina to punish me if I try to escape now. He knows I know that."

Liz remembered an official statement during the Communist show trial of Boris Arsov, a Bulgarian defector: The hand of justice is longer than the legs of the traitor. A few months later, Arsov was found dead in his prison cell. The Kremlin had been relentless about liquidating anyone who escaped. Even today, some former operatives prowled the globe for those they felt had betrayed the old Soviet Union.

"You expect him to kill you," she said woodenly.

"You must go, Liz. I accept my fate."

"Who is this man?"

"A KGB assassin called Oleg Olenkov. He's a master of impersonation and recruiting the unsuspecting. Even after the Soviet Union dissolved, he hunted me. So I decided to become Arkady Albam-I thought he'd never look for me in academia. But for him, eliminating me is personal." He peered at her. "My name is actually Dmitri Garnitsky. I was a dissident. Those were desperate times. Do you really want to hear?"

"Tell me." Liz's eyes traveled from window to door and back again. "Quickly." As her gaze returned to Arkady, a small, strange smile vanished from his face. A smile she had never seen. For an uncomfortable instant, she was suspicious.

I n 1982, Michael Palmer, then a practicing E.R. physician on Cape Cod, exploded on the literary scene with his first thriller, The Sisterhood, which made the New York Times bestseller list and was translated into thirty-three languages. Since then, he has written nine more thrillers of medical suspense. Palmer attended Wesleyan University with Robin Cook, and the two of them performed their residencies at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital at the same time. Later, Michael Crichton's work and Cook's success with Coma inspired Palmer to write and, between the three writers, the genre of medical suspense became firmly established.

Palmer sees the thriller as distinct from classic detective stories. Two of his favorites are William Goldman's Marathon Man and James Grady's Six Days of the Condor. In Palmer's thrillers, his protagonists are drawn into the story because of something they do professionally. They are not detectives and are not out to solve mysteries. Rather, their goals are simply to be the best physicians they can be. They're usually pulled into the story against their wills and eventually must defeat the forces impinging on their lives, or be destroyed in the process. Of course, along the way, a catharsis occurs, but what also distinguishes Palmer's work is a frightening aspect that leaves readers wondering if such a thing could actually happen to them.

Palmer has never before collaborated with another writer on a project, but Disfigured is coauthored with Daniel James Palmer, the middle of his three sons. Daniel is a professional songwriter, musician and software manager. Disfigured was actually Daniel's brainchild. And although Maura, the protagonist, is not a physician, the theme is medical, and like most of Michael Palmer's main characters, she's drawn unwillingly into the story.

We have your son. The picture enclosed is not a fake, this is not a hoax, and we cannot be bought. If you want to see your son alive again you will read this letter carefully and follow our instructions precisely.

At 4:00 p.m., on June 23, you have face-lift surgery scheduled on your patient, Audra Meadows, of 144 Glenn Cherry Lane, Bel-Air. During the procedure, you will inject 5cc of isopropyl alcohol around the facial nerve on both sides of her face. The resulting paralysis of her facial muscles must be complete and irreversible. If you fail, if she can lift even the corner of her mouth, you will never see your son again.

A copy of this note and photo has been placed on David's bed for your wife to find. Do not alert the authorities or anyone else. Choose to do so and you have sealed David's fate.

Dr. George Hill, the plastic surgeon to the stars, slumped down onto the cool marble of his foyer, his heart pounding. Just minutes before, the persistent ringing of the doorbell had awoken him. The manila envelope was propped against the front door.

Hill pushed himself up and studied the photo of his son. David's hair was shorter than when he saw him last. Was it two months ago? Certainly no more than three. His eyes, always bright and intelligent, were blindfolded. He was sitting on a metal folding chair holding a sign that read:

The Brotherhood of the Rose is a special book for David Morrell. It was his first New York Times bestseller. Later, it was the basis for an NBC miniseries. The "rose" in the title refers to the ancient symbol of secrecy as depicted in Greek mythology. Clandestine councils used to meet with a rose dangling above them and vowed not to divulge what was said sub rosa, under the rose. The "brotherhood" refers to two young men, Saul and Chris, who were raised in an orphanage and eventually recruited into the CIA by a man who acted as their foster father. Having spent time in an orphanage himself, Morrell readily identified with the main characters.

When Brotherhood was completed, Morrell so missed its world that he wrote a similarly titled thriller, The Fraternity of the Stone, in which he introduced a comparable character, Drew MacLane. Still hooked on the theme of orphans and foster fathers (Morrell thinks of this as self-psychoanalysis), he wrote The League of Night and Fog in which Saul from the first thriller meets Drew from the second. Night and Fog is thus a double sequel that is also the end of a trilogy. Morrell intended to write a further thriller in the series and left a deliberately dangling plot thread that was supposed to propel him into a fourth book. But his fifteen-year-old son, Matthew, died from complications of a rare form of bone cancer known as Ewing's sarcoma. Suddenly, the theme of orphans searching for foster fathers no longer spoke to his psyche. Morrell was now a father trying to fill the void left by a son, a theme later explored in several non-Brotherhood novels, especially Desperate Measures and Long Lost.

These many years later, Morrell still receives a couple of requests a week, wanting to know how the plot thread would have been secured and asking him to write more about Saul. When this anthology was planned, Morrell was specifically asked about a new Brotherhood story. He resisted, not wanting to go back to those dark days. But Saul and his wife, Erika, returned to his imagination and refused to leave. The plot thread-an unexplained attack on Saul's village-has been tied. Perhaps both Morrell and his readers will now find closure. There wasn't room to include Drew and his friend, Arlene, but fans will sense them, unnamed, in the background.

One other element is included, too-for what would a Brotherhood story be without the Abelard sanction?

At the start, Abelard safe houses existed in only a half-dozen cities: Potsdam, Oslo, Lisbon, Buenos Aires, Alexandria and Montreal. That was in 1938, when representatives of the world's major intelligence communities met in Berlin and agreed to strive for a modicum of order in the inevitable upcoming war by establishing the principle of the Abelard sanction. The reference was to Peter Abelard, the poet and theologian of the Dark Ages, who seduced his beautiful student Heloise and was subsequently castrated in family retaliation. Afraid for his life, Abelard took refuge in a church near Paris and eventually established a sanctuary called The Paraclete, in reference to the Holy Spirit's role as advocate and intercessor. Anyone who came for help was guaranteed protection.

The modern framers of the Abelard sanction reasoned that the chaos of another world war would place unusual stress on the intelligence operatives within their agencies. While each agency had conventional safe houses, those sanctuaries designated "Abelard" would embody a major extension of the safe house concept. There, in extreme situations, any member of any agency would be guaranteed immunity from harm. These protected areas would have the added benefit of functioning as neutral meeting grounds in which alliances between agencies could be safely negotiated and intrigues formulated. The sanctuaries would provide a chance for any operative, no matter his or her allegiance, to rest, to heal and to consider the wisdom of tactics and choices. Anyone speaking frankly in one of these refuges need not fear that his or her words would be used as weapons outside the protected walls.

The penalty for violating the Abelard sanction was ultimate. If any operative harmed any other operative in an Abelard safe house, the violator was immediately declared a rogue. All members of all agencies would hunt the outcast and kill him or her at the first opportunity, regardless if the transgressor belonged to one's own organization. Because Abelard's original sanctuary was in a church, the framers of the Abelard sanction decided to continue that tradition. They felt that, in a time of weakening moral values, the religious connection would reinforce the gravity of the compact. Of course, the representative from the NKVD was skeptical in this regard, religion having been outlawed in the USSR, but he saw no harm in allowing the English and the Americans to believe in the opiate of the masses.

During the Second World War and the escalating tensions of the subsequent cold war, Abelard sanctuaries proved so useful that new ones were established in Bangkok, Singapore, Florence, Melbourne, Ferlach, Austria and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The latter was of special note because the United States representative to the 1938 Abelard meeting doubted that the sanction could be maintained. He insisted that none of these politically sensitive, potentially violent sites would be on American soil. But he turned out to be wrong. In an ever more dangerous world, the need for a temporary refuge became greater. In a cynical profession, the honor and strength of the sanction remained inviolate.

Santa Fe means Holy Faith. Abelard would approve, Saul Gris-man thought as he guided a nondescript rented car along a dusk-shadowed road made darker by a sudden rainstorm. Although outsiders imagined that Santa Fe was a sun-blistered, lowland, desert city similar to Phoenix, the truth was that it had four seasons and was situated at an altitude of seven thousand feet in the foothills of a range of the Rocky Mountains known as Sangre de Cristo (so-called because Spanish explorers had compared the glow of sunset on them to what they imagined was the blood of Christ). Saul's destination was toward a ridge northeast of this artistic community of fifty thousand people. Occasional lightning flashes silhouetted the mountains. Directions and a map lay next to him, but he had studied them thoroughly during his urgent flight to New Mexico and needed to stop only once to refresh his memory of landmarks that he'd encountered on a mission in Santa Fe years earlier. His headlights revealed a sign shrouded by rain: Camino de la Cruz, the street of the cross. Fingers tense, he steered to the right along the isolated road.

There were many reasons for an Abelard safe house to have been established near Santa Fe. Los Alamos, where the atomic bomb was invented, was perched on a mountain across the valley to the west. Sandia National Laboratories, a similar research facility important to U.S. security, occupied the core of a mountain an hour's drive south near Albuquerque. Double agent Edward Lee Howard eluded FBI agents at a sharp curve on Corrales Street here and escaped to the Soviet Union. Espionage was as much a part of the territory as the countless art galleries on Canyon Road. Many of the intelligence operatives stationed in the area fell in love with the Land of Enchantment, as the locals called it, and remained in Santa Fe after they retired.

The shadows of pinon trees and junipers lined the potholed road. After a quarter mile, Saul reached a dead end of hills. Through flapping windshield wipers, he squinted from the glare of lightning that illuminated a church steeple. Thunder shook the car as he studied the long, low building next to the church. Like most structures in Santa Fe, its roof was flat. Its corners were rounded, its thick, earth-colored walls made from stuccoed adobe. A sign said, Monastery of the Sun and the Moon. Saul, who was Jewish, gathered that the name had relevance to the nearby mountains called Sun and Moon. He also assumed that in keeping with Santa Fe's reputation as a New Age, crystal-and-feng-shui community, the name indicated this was not a traditional Catholic institution.

Only one car, as dark and nondescript as Saul's, was in the parking lot. He stopped next to it, shut off his engine and headlights, and took a deep breath, holding it for a count of three, exhaling for a count of three. Then he grabbed his over-the-shoulder travel bag, got out, locked the car and hurried through the cold downpour toward the monastery's entrance.

Sheltered beneath an overhang, he tried both heavy-looking wooden doors but neither budged. He pressed a button and looked up at a security camera. A buzzer freed the lock. When he opened the door on the right, he faced a well-lit lobby with a brick floor. As he shut the door, a strong breeze shoved past him, rousing flames in a fireplace to the left. The hearth was a foot above the floor, its opening oval in a style known as kiva, the crackling wood leaning upright against the back of the firebox. The aromatic scent of pinon wood reminded Saul of incense.

He turned toward a counter on the right, behind which a young man in a priest's robe studied him. The man had ascetic, sunken features. His scalp was shaved bare. "How may I help you?"

"I need a place to stay." Saul felt water trickle from his wet hair onto his neck.

"Perhaps you were misinformed. This isn't a hotel."

"I was told to ask for Mr. Abelard."

The priest's eyes changed focus slightly, becoming more intense. "I'll summon the housekeeper." His accent sounded European but was otherwise hard to identify. He pressed a button. "Are you armed?" "Yes."

The priest frowned toward monitors that showed various green-tinted night-vision images of the rain-swept area outside the building: the two cars in the parking lot, the lonely road, the juniper-studded hills in back. "Are you here because you're threatened?"

"No one's pursuing me," Saul answered.

"You've stayed with us before?"

"In Melbourne."

"Then you know the rules. I must see your pistol."

Saul reached under his leather jacket and carefully withdrew a Heckler & Koch 9mm handgun. He set it on the counter, the barrel toward a wall, and waited while the priest made a note of the pistol's model number (P2000) and serial number.

The priest considered the ambidextrous magazine and slide release mechanisms, then set the gun in a metal box. "Any other weapons?"

"A HideAway knife." Modeled after a Bengal tiger's claw, the HideAway was only four inches long. Saul raised the left side of his jacket. The blade's small black grip was almost invisible in a black sheath parallel to his black belt. He set it on the counter.

The priest made another note and set the knife in the box. "Anything else?"

"No." Saul knew that a scanner built into the counter would tell the priest if he was lying.

"My name is Father Chen," a voice said from across the lobby.

As thunder rumbled, Saul turned toward another man in a priest's robe. But this man was in his forties, Chinese, with an ample stomach, a round face and a shaved scalp that made him resemble Buddha. His accent, though, seemed to have been nurtured at a New England Ivy League university.

"I'm the Abelard housekeeper here." The priest motioned for Saul to accompany him. "Your name?" "Saul Grisman." "I meant your code name." "Romulus."

Father Chen considered him a moment. In the corridor, they entered an office on the right, where the priest took a seat behind a desk and typed on a computer keyboard. He read the screen for a minute, then again looked at Saul, appearing to see him differently. "Romulus was one of the twins who founded Rome. Do you have a twin?"

Saul knew he was being tested. "Had. Not a twin. A brother of sorts. His name was…" Emotion made Saul hesitate. "Chris."

"Christopher Kilmoonie. Irish." Father Chen gestured toward the computer screen. "Code name Remus. Both of you were raised in an orphanage in Philadelphia. The Benjamin Franklin School for Boys. A military school."

Saul knew he was expected to elaborate. "We wore uniforms. We marched with toy rifles. All our classes-history, trigonometry, literature, et cetera-were related to the military. All the movies we saw and the games we played were about war."

"What is the motto of that school?"

"'Teach them politics and war so their sons may study medicine and mathematics in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music and architecture.'"

"But that quotation is not from Benjamin Franklin."

"No. It's from John Adams."

"You were trained by Edward Franciscus Eliot," Father Chen said.

Again, Saul concealed his emotions. Eliot had been the CIA's director for counterespionage, but Saul hadn't known that until years later. "When we were five, he came to the school and befriended us. Over the years, he became.I guess you'd call him our foster father, just as Chris and I were foster brothers. Eliot got permission to take us from the school on weekends-to baseball games, to barbecues at his house in Falls Church, Virginia, to dojos where we learned martial arts. Basically, he recruited us to be his personal operatives. We wanted to serve our father."

"And you killed him."

Saul didn't answer for a moment. "That's right. It turned out the son of a bitch had other orphans who were his personal operatives, who loved him like a father and would do anything for him. But in the end he used all of us, and Chris died because of him, and I got an Uzi and emptied a magazine into the bastard's black heart."

Father Chen's eyes narrowed. Saul knew where this was going. "In the process, you violated the Abelard sanction."

"Not true. Eliot was off the grounds. I didn't kill him in a sanctuary."

Father Chen continued staring.

"It's all in my file," Saul explained. "Yes, I raised hell in a refuge. Eventually Eliot and I were ordered to leave. They let him have a twenty-four-hour head start. But I caught up to him."

Father Chen tapped thick fingers on his desk. "The arbiters of the sanction decided that the rules had been bent but not broken. In exchange for information about how Eliot was himself a mole, you were given unofficial immunity as long as you went into exile. You've been helping to build a settlement in Israel. Why didn't you stay there? For God's sake, given your destructive history, how can you expect me to welcome you to an Abelard safe house?"

"I'm looking for a woman."

Father Chen's cheeks flared with indignation. "Now you take for granted I'll supply you with a prostitute?"

"You don't understand. The woman I'm searching for is my wife."

Father Chen scowled toward an item on the computer screen. "Erika Bernstein. A former operative for Mossad."

"The car in the parking lot. Is it hers?"

"No. You said you're searching for her?"

"I haven't seen her in three weeks. Does the car belong to Yusuf

Habib?"

As thunder again rumbled, Father Chen nodded. "He is a guest."

"Then I expect Erika to arrive very soon, and I'm not here to cause trouble. I'm trying to stop it."

A buzzer sounded. Frowning, Father Chen pressed a button. The image on the monitor changed to a view of the lobby. Saul felt blood rush to his heart as a camera showed Erika stepping from the rain into the lobby. Even in black and white, she was gorgeous, her long dark hair tied back in a ponytail, her cheekbones strong but elegant. Like him, she wore running shoes and jeans, but in place of his leather coat, she had a rain slicker, water dripping from it.

Saul was out of the office before Father Chen could rise from his chair. In the brightly lit lobby, Erika heard Saul's urgently approaching footsteps on the brick floor and swung protectively, hardly relaxing when she saw who it was.

She pointed angrily. "I told you not to come after me."

"I didn't."

"Then what the hell are you doing here?"

"I didn't follow you. I followed Habib" Saul turned toward Father Chen. "My wife and I need a place where we can talk."

"The refectory is empty." The priest indicated the corridor behind them and a door on the left, opposite his office.

Saul and Erika stared at one another. Impatient, she marched past him and through the doorway.

Following, Saul turned on the overhead fluorescent lights. The fixtures hummed. The refectory had four long tables arranged in rows of two. It felt cold. The fish smell of the evening meal lingered. At the back was a counter behind which stood a restaurant-size refrigerator and stainless-steel stove. Next to containers of knives, forks and spoons, there were cups and a half pot of coffee on a warmer. As rain lashed at the dark windows, Saul went over and poured two cups, adding nondairy creamer and the sugarless sweetener Erika used.

He sat at the table nearest her. Reluctant, she joined him. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"Of course I'm not all right. How can you ask that?"

"I meant, are you injured?"

"Oh." Erika looked away. "Fine. I'm fine."

"Except that you're not."

She didn't reply.

"It's not just your son who's dead." Saul peered down at his untasted coffee. "He was my son, too." Again, no reply.

"I hate Habib as much as you do," Saul said. "I want to squeeze my hands around his throat and-"

"Bullshit. Otherwise, you'd do what I'm doing."

"We lost our boy. I'll go crazy if I lose you, also. You know you're as good as dead if you kill Habib here. For breaking the sanction, you won't live another day."

"If I don't kill Habib, I don't want to live another day. Is he here?"

Saul hesitated. "So I'm told."

"Then I'll never get a better chance."

"We can go to neutral ground and wait for him to leave. I'll help you," Saul said. "The hills around here make perfect vantage points. Will a shot from a sniper's rifle give you the same satisfaction as seeing Habib die face-to-face?"

"As long as he's dead. As long as he stops insulting me by breathing the same air I breathe."

"Then let's do it."

Erika shook her head from side to side. "In Cairo, I nearly got him. He has a bullet hole in his arm to remind him. For two weeks, he ran from refuge to refuge as cleverly as he could. Then six days ago, his tactics changed. His trail became easier to follow. I told myself that he was getting tired, that I was wearing him down. But when he shifted through Mexico into the southwestern United States, I realized what he was doing. In the Mideast, he could blend. In Santa Fe, for God's sake, Mideast-erners are rarely seen. Why would he leave his natural cover?

He lured me. He wants me to find him here. I'm sure his men are waiting for me outside right now, closing the trap. Habib can't imagine that I'd readily break the sanction, that I'd gladly be killed just so I could take him with me. He expects me to do the logical thing and hide among the trees outside, ready to make a move when he leaves. If I do, his men will attack. I'll be the target. Dammit, why didn't you listen to me and stay out of this? Now you can't get out of here alive any more than I can." "I love you," Saul said.

Erika stared down at her clenched hands. Her angry features softened somewhat. "The only person I love more than you is.was.our son."

A voice said, "Both of you must leave."

Saul and Erika turned toward the now-open doorway, where Father Chen stood with his hands behind his robe. Saul had no doubt that the priest concealed a weapon.

A door farther along the refectory wall opened. The ascetic-looking priest from the reception counter stepped into the doorway. He, too, had his hands behind his robe.

Saul took for granted that the refectory had hidden microphones. "You heard Erika. Habib has a trap arranged out there."

"A theory," Father Chen replied. "Not proven. Perhaps she invented the theory to try to force me to let the two of you stay."

"Habib's an organizer for Hamas," Erika said.

"Who or what he works for isn't my concern. Everyone is guaranteed safety here."

"The bastard's a psychologist who recruits suicide bombers." Erika glared. "He runs the damn training centers. He convinces the bombers they'll go to paradise and fuck an endless supply of virgins if they blow themselves up along with any Jews they get near."

"I'm aware of how suicide bombers are programmed," Father Chen said. "But the sanctity of this Abelard safe house is all that matters to me."

"Sanctity?" Saul's voice rose. "What about the sanctity of our home? Four weeks ago, one of Habib's maniacs snuck into our settlement and blew himself up in the market. Our home's near the market. Our son…" Saul couldn't make himself continue.

"Our son," Erika said in a fury, "was killed by a piece of shrapnel that almost cut off his head."

"You have my sincerest and deepest sympathy," Father Chen said. "But I cannot allow you to violate the sanction because of your grief. Take your anger outside."

"I will if Habib calls off his men," Erika said. "I don't care what happens to me, but I need to make sure nothing happens to Saul."

Thunder rumbled.

"I'll convey your request," Father Chen said.

"No need." The words came from a shadow in the corridor.

Saul felt his muscles tighten as a sallow face appeared behind Father Chen. Habib was heavyset, with thick dark hair, in his forties, with somber eyebrows and intelligent features. He wore dark slacks and a thick sweater. His left arm was in a sling.

Keeping the priest in front of him, Habib said, "I, too, am sorry about your son. I think of victims as statistics. Anonymous casualties. How else can war be waged? To personalize the enemy is to invite defeat. But it always troubles me when I read about individuals, children, who die in the bombings. They didn't take away our land. They didn't institute laws that treat us as inferiors."

"Your sympathy almost sounds convincing," Erika said.

"When I was a child, my parents lived in Jerusalem's old city. Israeli soldiers patrolled the top of the wall that enclosed the area. Every day, they pissed down onto our vegetable garden. Your politicians have continued to piss on us ever since."

"Not me," Erika said. "I didn't piss on anybody."

"Change conditions, give us back our land, and the bombing will stop," Habib said. "That way, the lives of other children will be saved."

"I don't care about those other children." Erika stepped toward him.

"Careful." Father Chen stiffened, about to pull his hands from behind his robe.

Erika stopped. "All I care about is my son. He didn't piss on your vegetables, but you killed him anyhow. Just as surely as if you'd set off the bomb yourself."

Habib studied her as a psychologist might assess a disturbed patient. "And now you're ready to sacrifice the lives of both you and your husband in order to get revenge?"

"No." Erika swelled with anger. "Not Saul. He wasn't supposed to be part of this. Contact your men. Disarm the trap."

"But if you leave here safely, you'll take their place," Habib said. "You'll wait for me to come outside. You'll attack me."

"I'll give you the same terms my husband gave his foster father. I'll give you a twenty-four-hour head start."

"Listen to yourself. You're on the losing side, but somehow you expect me to surrender my position of strength."

"Strength?" Erika pulled down the zipper on her rain slicker. "How's this for strength?"

Habib gasped. Father Chen's eyes widened. Saul took a step forward, getting close enough to see the sticks of dynamite wrapped around Erika's waist. His pulse rushed when he saw her right thumb reach for a button attached to a detonator. She held it down.

"If anybody shoots me, my thumb goes off the button, and all of us go to heaven, except I don't want any virgin women," Erika said.

"Your husband will die."

"He'll die anyhow as long as your men are outside. But this way, you'll die also. How does it feel to be on the receiving end of a suicide bomb? I don't know how long my thumb can keep pressing this button. When will my hand start to cramp?"

"You're insane."

"As insane as you and your killers. The only good thing about what you do is you make sure those nutcases don't breed. For Saul, I'll give you a chance. Get the hell out of here. Take your men with you. Disarm the trap. You have my word. You've got twenty-four hours."

Habib stared, analyzing her rage. He spoke to Father Chen. "If she leaves before the twenty-four hours have elapsed."

"She won't." Father Chen pulled a pistol from behind his robe.

"To help me, you'd risk being blown up?" Habib asked the priest.

"Not for you. For this safe house. I pledged my soul."

"My thumb's beginning to stiffen," Erika warned.

Habib nodded. Erika and Saul followed him along the corridor to his room. Guarded by the priests, they waited while he packed his suitcase. He carried it to the reception area, moving awkwardly because of his wounded shoulder. There, he used a phone on the counter, pressing the speaker button, touching numbers with the index finger of his uninjured right arm.

Saul listened as a male voice answered with a neutral, "Hello." Rain made a staticky sound in the background.

"I'm leaving the building now. The operation has been postponed."

"I need the confirmation code." "'Santa Fe is the City Different.'" "Confirmed. Postponed."

"Stay close to me. I'll require you again in twenty-four hours."

Habib pressed the disconnect button and scowled at Erika. "The next time, I won't allow you to come close to me."

Erika's thumb trembled on the button connected to the detonator. She nodded toward a clock on the wall behind the reception desk. "It's five minutes after ten. As far as I'm concerned, the countdown just started. Move."

Habib used his uninjured right arm to open the door. Rain gusted in. "I am indeed sorry," he told Erika. "It's terrible that children must suffer to make politicians correct wrongs."

He used his car's remote control to unlock the doors from a distance. Another button on the remote control started the engine. He picked up his suitcase and stepped into the rain.

Saul watched him hurry off balance through shadowy gusts toward the car. Lightning flashed. Reflexively, Saul stepped back from the open door in case one of Habib's men ignored the instructions and was foolish enough to shoot at an Abelard safe house.

Buffeted by the wind, Habib set down his suitcase, opened the driver's door, shoved his suitcase across to the passenger seat, then hurried behind the steering wheel.

Father Chen closed the sanctuary's entrance, shutting out the rain, blocking the view of Habib. The cold air lingered.

"Is that parking lot past the boundaries of the sanction?" Erika asked.

"That isn't important!" Father Chen glared. "The dynamite. That's what matters. For God's sake, how do we neutralize it?"

"Simple." Erika released her thumb from the button.

Father Chen shouted and stumbled away.

But the blast didn't come from Erika's waist. Instead, the roar came from outside, making Saul tighten his lips in furious satisfaction as he imagined his car and Erika's blowing apart. The vehicles were parked on each side of Habib's. The plastic explosives in each trunk blasted a shock wave against the safe house's doors. Shrapnel walloped the building. A window shattered.

Father Chen yanked the entrance open. Slanting rain carried with it the stench of smoke, scorched metal and charred flesh. Despite the storm, the flames of the gutted vehicles illuminated the night. In the middle, Habib's vehicle was blasted inward on each side, the windows gaping, flames escaping. Behind the steering wheel, his body was ablaze.

The rumble of thunder mimicked the explosion.

"What have you done?" Father Chen shouted.

"We sent the bastard to hell where he belongs," Erika said.

In the nearby hills, shots cracked, barely audible in the downpour.

"Friends of ours," Saul explained. "Habib's team won't set any more traps."

"And don't worry about the authorities coming to the monastery because of the explosion," Erika said.

A second explosion rumbled from a distance. "When our friends heard the explosion, they faked a car accident at the entrance to this road. The vehicle's on fire. It has tanks of propane for an outdoor barbecue. Those tanks blew apart just now, which'll explain the blasts to the authorities. Neither the police nor the fire department will have a reason to be suspicious about anything a half mile farther along this deserted road."

By now, the flames in the cars in the parking lot were almost extinguished as the rain fell harder.

"We had no idea there'd be a storm," Saul said. "We didn't need it, but it makes things easier. It saves us from hurrying to put out the flames so the authorities don't see a reflection."

Another shot cracked on a nearby hill.

"We'll help clean the site, of course," Erika said. "The Monastery of the Sun and the Moon will look as if nothing ever happened."

"You violated the sanction." Father Chen raised his pistol. "No. You told us the parking lot wasn't part of the safe house," Saul insisted.

"I said nothing of the sort!"

"Erika asked you! I heard her! This other priest heard your answer! You said the parking lot wasn't important!"

"You threatened an operative within a sanctuary!"

"With what? That isn't dynamite around Erika's waist. Those tubes are painted cardboard. We don't have any weapons. Maybe we bent the rules, but we definitely didn't break them."

The priest glowered. "Just like when you killed your foster father."

Erika nodded. "And now another black-hearted bastard's been wiped from the face of the earth." Tears trickled down her cheeks. "But my son is still dead. Nothing's changed. I still hurt. God, how I hurt."

Saul held her.

"I want my son back," Erika whimpered.

"I know," Saul told her. "I know."

"I'll pray for him," Father Chen said.

"Pray for us all."

Deviant Ways was Chris Mooney's first thriller. In the novel, Mooney introduces a secondary character named Malcolm Fletcher, a mysterious, enigmatic former profiler with strange, black eyes who's hiding from the FBI. Another former profiler, Jack Casey, manages to track Fletcher down and convinces him to assist in a disturbing case-a serial killer who murders families in their sleep and then detonates bombs just as the police arrive. Fletcher, Casey discovers, knows the identity of the killer, who happens to be a former patient from an FBI-sponsored behavioral modification program. By the end of the thriller, Malcolm Fletcher is once again on the run, being hunted by his former employer.

When the book was first published, Mooney was surprised by the number of letters and e-mails he received wanting to know more about Malcolm Fletcher. What happened to him? Was he still being chased by the FBI? What other secrets did Fletcher have? More important, what was Fletcher doing? Mooney himself didn't know the answers to these questions. Fletcher had actually disappeared from Mooney's imagination, so the author went to work on two stand-alone thrillers: World Without End and Remembering Sarah. But the e-mails from readers didn't stop, so Mooney started asking himself those same questions and decided to revisit his popular character. During the process, Mooney discovered he missed Fletcher and the world he inhabited, so he's now exploring the idea of using Fletcher in a potential series.

Here, in Falling, Mooney explores his trademark themes of loss, retribution, and how justice so often depends on one's interpretation. He also introduces a new character, a young woman who has been asked to help set a trap to capture the dangerous former FBI profiler.

So what has Malcolm Fletcher been up to all these years?

Time to find out.

The airport was busy and hot. Marlena had to walk fast to keep up.

"The transmitter is very small, less than half the size of a pencil eraser," Special Agent Owen Lee said. He had the slender build of a swimmer and talked with a slight lisp. "Your job is to plant the transmitter and walk away, and then you can enjoy a few days of R & R here in the Caymans, courtesy of the federal government."

"I still don't understand why you specifically requested me," Marlena said. It was a valid question. She was a lab rat. Her expertise was in forensics not surveillance.

"I asked for a confident young woman, someone who could think on her feet," Lee said. "She also needed to be exceptionally good-looking and Cuban, because this guy has a thing for Cuban women. That's when your name came up."

"Who's the subject?"

"Malcolm Fletcher."

Marlena felt her legs wobble.

Malcolm Fletcher, one of the brightest minds the FBI had ever produced, was now one of the FBI's Most Wanted. Currently he had a two-million-dollar price tag on his head for the deaths of at least three federal agents.

And that was just what the federal government was offering. For years, Marlena had heard rumors of a reward somewhere in the neighborhood of five million dollars being offered by Jean Paul Rousseau. His son, Special Agent Stephen Rousseau, had been part of a failed attempt to apprehend Fletcher. Now Stephen Rousseau was brain dead and still on a feeding tube.

"Judging by your expression, I take it you know who he is."

Marlena nodded, swallowed. "Is it true about his eyes?"

"No pigment at all, totally black," Lee said. "I hear you've applied for the open position in Investigative Support."

"Yes." Marlena was hoping her lab experience would give her an edge over the other applicants competing for the coveted spot inside the Investigative Support Unit, the section of the FBI that deals exclusively with serial murder.

"Capturing Fletcher and bringing him home to justice-this is the kind of case that makes careers. I hope you take directions well."

"You can count on me, sir."

"Good. Now let's go buy you a dress. You're going to a cocktail party."

Both a literary and suspense novelist, Dennis Lynds is credited with bringing the detective novel into the modern age then, twenty years later-in the 1980s-introducing literary techniques that propelled the genre into its current dynamic form. An award winner, Lynds wrote under several pseudonyms, publishing some eighty novels and two hundred short stories. His most famous pen name was Michael Collins. Under that label he created fiction's longest-running detective series, starring the indelible private eye Dan Fortune. The New York Times consistently named Lynds's mysteries among the nation's top ten. One year, it listed two of his titles, each written under a different pseudonym, without realizing he was the author of both. His awards include both the Edgar and the Marlowe Lifetime Achievement.

Lynds also published literary novels and short stories. Five were honored in Best American Short Stories. Then, in the late 1980s and into the 1990s, he pioneered the detective form again, writing books in both third and first person and lacing them with short stories, techniques which today's writers employ regularly.

"Powerful and memorable, [these works] indicate Collins has embarked on a new course after some 60 books," wrote critic Richard C. Carpenter in Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers. "Truly, he is a writer to be reckoned with." Of his most recent short story collection, Fortune's World, the Los Angeles Times commented, "To spin tales as intriguing and thought provoking as these for three decades is a remarkable enough achievement. Even more remarkable is the sustained quality… It takes style to bring that off. Bravery, too, of course."

Iconoclastic, witty and generous, sadly Lynds died August 19, 2005, at the age of eighty-one. Several of his short stories will be published posthumously, including the one here, Success of a Mission. This story was first published in 1968. Since then, it has been nominated for several awards and anthologized. The story is still relevant today in both its triumph and its tragedy.

The minister of defense stood with his back to the room. He faced a large map on the wall of his office.

"They will attack," the minister said. "If we do not know the locations of their ammunition dumps, supply depots and fuel stores, we cannot stop them."

The minister turned. He was a small man with a round face that would have been kindly except for the hard gray surface of his eyes. These hard gray eyes studied the faces of the other two people in the room the way a scientist would study a specimen on a microscope slide.

"That data would only be at army headquarters in their capital, Minister," the tall infantry captain said.

The minister nodded. "Yes. Our man at their headquarters knows that much, has already located exactly where they are in the building."

"He cannot get the data for us, Minister?" the woman asked.

"No. He cannot get into the building. It would be quite impossible in his disguise, and in any case we need him to remain in his present position. His contacts are too low level, and we have no other reliable agents with the necessary experience at their headquarters for a job of this degree of difficulty, sensitivity and importance. There is no time to place an undercover man in the headquarters now. It will have to be a single swift operation from outside army headquarters. Get in, get the data, bring it back without them being aware that we have it."

The woman paled under her olive complexion. There and gone, the quick fear, but it had been there. She was little more than a girl, despite her officer's uniform. Her face was oval, with a small nose, wide and full lips and soft brown eyes. She had been in the army three years, and had killed four men with a knife in the dead of night, but she paled as the minister described what would have to be done at the headquarters of the enemy's army in the heart of enemy country.

The tall man only nodded. "When do we leave?"

His voice, when he said this, was low, and had a faint trace of an accent different from that of the woman and the minister. There was a long scar on his lean, tanned face. The middle finger of his left hand was missing. His almost-black eyes showed no expression.

"In ten minutes, Captain. All your papers are ready," the minister said. "You, Captain Hareet, will be an American automobile salesman on a long-planned combined vacation and business trip that could not be canceled despite the crisis. We have picked you for this job because of your experience, your colloquial American English and your command of Arabic. With some darkening of the skin, your features will also pass as Arab, if that becomes necessary. You know their army and their city."

Captain Hareet nodded. "Yes, sir. I know both only too well to lose a war to them."

The minister faced the girl. "Lieutenant Frank, you will be his wife. Your home is in Santa Barbara, California. You have lived there, and no special regional accent is required for an educated Californian. Standard American will do. Your Arabic will pass in an emergency, but we hope there will be no need. It is hard for a woman to infiltrate in Arab countries."

"Yes, sir," Lieutenant Frank said. The shiver in her voice was so faint no one but a man as trained as the minister, or Captain Hareet, would have caught it, and it disappeared as quickly as it had come. The two men looked at each other, nodded, and then smiled at the woman.

"You are lovers?" the minister asked.

The captain was silent. Lieutenant Frank hesitated for a moment. Then she nodded. "Yes, sir. Paul and I have lived together for over a year. We were lovers before that. We planned to marry soon, but that will have to wait now until after the crisis has passed."

"I am sorry for that, Lieutenant, but it is good that my information is correct."

"Is such information necessary?" Captain Hareet asked.

"All information is necessary," the minister said. "In this case, it might be vital. You will be posing as man and wife under the most careful scrutiny of every foreign national who arrives in their country at this moment. They will expect us to send spies, try to learn what their plans are. Women who are not married tend to act like coy maidens at the wrong moment. They forget. To act like she sleeps regularly with a man, a woman must be sleeping regularly with the man. Men who are not married don't know how to act with a wife at all."

"Yes, sir," Hareet said, and smiled again at the young woman. "I think Greta and I will be able to act the part well enough to pass any inspection."

"Do we parachute?" Greta asked.

"The sky is too clear. They will be alert. You will fly to Rome, and there you will board a normal commercial carrier. You will be Mr. and Mrs. Rogers of Santa Barbara. Harry and Susan, but he calls her Susy. Your papers are in order. The real Mr. and Mrs. Rogers are in Europe on such a trip with a different order of itinerary caused by a sudden change in plans we managed to arrange, and are being watched by our agents. You look enough like them to pass a cursory inspection."

The minister turned again to the large map on the wall. "I wish we could allow you some time to prepare. We can't. You are the only suitable team we have that can act the part on such short notice. I cannot even tell you how to proceed. Only that we must have the data within three days."

The minister turned once more to look at Hareet and Greta with his hard gray eyes. "In three days, they will attack us."

John Lescroart is a bestselling writer of legal thrillers. M. J. Rose is an international bestselling writer of thrillers about a sex therapist and her patients. Intersecting those two variations seemed like a difficult challenge, but that's exactly what The Portal does. Via e-mail from one coast to another, Lescroart and Rose explored the psyche and actions of Lucy Delrey, a young, disturbed woman who, at different points displayed facets that surprised both authors. For Rose, Lucy's therapy is the portal itself: a door that opens into a darkened room, which is all Dr. Morgan Snow (from Rose's thriller The Halo Effect) can see. Consequently, the therapist's advice, which Lucy takes to heart and which propels the story forward, is based on elusive shadows. For Les-croart, the story represented an opportunity to revisit the legal world from which he drew his bestselling thriller Guilt. Lucy's trip to exorcize her demons takes her straight to San Francisco (Lescroart's main stomping grounds), where sophisticated professionals eat in fine restaurants, stay in fine hotels and mingle within a society that, for all its surface appeal, hides many a dark secret.

I think there is something wrong with me, emotionally." I nodded. She'd said this before. In almost every session. Lucy Delrey had been in therapy with me for two months. Every Tuesday evening at 6:00 p.m. she arrived at my office on Manhattan's Upper East Side, sat opposite me, and we chipped away at her defenses.

"Why do you feel there's something wrong?" I asked her.

"I just don't feel anything, Dr. Snow. Not even in the most extreme circumstances."

"What are the most extreme circumstances?" The conversation we were having was almost identical to the conversation we'd had last week, and every week before that. We always got to this point when Lucy would shut down, sit silently for a few minutes, and then change the subject and talk about how as a child she'd wanted to be an artist and about the man who had inspired her.

Tonight she answered me, for the first time.

"When I destroy someone. Even then, Dr. Snow. I don't feel anything."

She paused. Looked at me. Waited. Tried to read my face. But I was sure I hadn't shown any shock or surprise. I was used to confessions. Even overly dramatic ones, like this.

I persevered. "What do you mean, destroy someone?"

In the few seconds it took until she answered, I anticipated she meant that she was speaking of destruction metaphorically. I waited, curious.

"Destroy. You know. Assassinate." Her voice started out as a whisper and became softer with each additional word. "Annihilate." And softer still so that the last word, "Kill," was barely audible.

There was no change of expression while she spoke, but as soon as she finished, a look of exhaustion settled on her face. As if just saying the words had been tiring.

It was this expression that made me wonder for a brief second if it was actually possible that she was-no. In all the time she had been in therapy, nothing she had ever said suggested she was capable of killing anyone. She was using these words as a metaphor for the psychological destruction of people she loved.

"I should feel something. I should be upset." Her voice was back to its usual timbre.

This was the longest Lucy had ever gone without mentioning Frank Millay-the artist she had known when she was a child- who had painted watercolors on the boardwalk in Brooklyn Heights.

Some sessions she described the paintings: how they captured the essence of the river and the cityscape, how they moved her and made her want to learn how to use the brush and the pigments to create washes that would mean something. Other nights she told me about the painter himself and how it had taken her, a girl of seven, months to get him to talk to her and then finally to show her how to use the brush on the thick paper that had a texture created to capture the merest hint of color.

During all those sessions I had become aware of my patient's attention to detail. Her obsession with color. Her memory that retained every nuance of those days.

But even after all those months I did not know why Lucy had come to me.

Oh, I knew she was troubled by what she perceived about her lack of emotion. But we never got further than the fact of it. The only real emotion she ever exhibited was when she spoke about the painter and the paintings and her impression of them.

Now, finally, she had broken the repetition of her childhood memories with a revelation that caught me off guard.

"What do you think about when you are-while you are destroying someone?"

"Just that it's a job. I'm concentrating on the steps. On the work."

I still didn't believe that she was serious. Nothing in her character suggested it. I had worked with men and women in prison. I'd listened to descriptions of cold-blooded murders and crimes of passion. I'd watched patients' faces contort with anguish as they described breaking out of a fugue state and finding a knife or a gun in their hand or their fingers around someone's throat, the skin a milky blue-white streaked with finger burns.

"I'm sorry, Lucy. I'm not sure I understand. 'It's a job'? Do you mean that literally? I thought you were a photographer."

"I am. But in addition…people hire me…" Lucy's words trailed off.

I nodded, encouraging her to go on.

"It's not something I talk about in polite society. I'm not used to talking about it. But I think you need to know so that you understand me better. So that you can help me figure out why I don't even care about how I fuck up people's lives. Destroy them."

I put my right foot out in front of me instinctively.

To press down on the panic button.

But there was no such button in my office-it was in the small room where I used to conduct therapy sessions at the prison. Lucy was so convincing that she actually was a killer that I'd responded the way I would with a criminal in prison and extended my foot to call for help. This prickling realization-that Lucy might indeed be a killer and not just speaking in metaphor-chilled me.

But I didn't have the luxury of focusing on how I was feeling. I had to say something. To get Lucy to keep talking. To get more information from her. To figure out what I was going to do because the one time a therapist can break a client's confidentiality is if a life is in imminent danger.

The one time.

"I don't believe that you don't have feelings about what you do," I offered. "Usually when we don't feel it's because we are blocking our emotions."

"Why would I do that? It's how I make my living. I'm not ashamed of it. I kill them with their own passions."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you know that if you offer a man sex he won't pay a whole lot of attention to who you are? The same man who would run a Dun & Bradstreet before he'd take your business call will take a woman to bed without even knowing her last name. It's that lust that I count on. That hard-cock need that makes what I do so easy. Too easy really. I don't think that a man should be that easy to murder. He should fight. He should be scared. He should know his life is in danger-not just be lying there bare-assed and spread-eagled with a blonde giving him head. They don't even know…" Lucy stopped here to take a sip from the coffee cup she'd brought in with her.

My own hand was shaking slightly. I hoped Lucy didn't notice.

Yes, I'd heard confessions like this before, but always before in the prison, with guards watching. Not here in my office.

"Does it give you pleasure?"

She nodded. "If I know enough about the man. And if he's enough of a scum. Yes. You could say I'm some sort of avenging angel. I only kill men who deserve it. Who have done the unforgivable. Who need to be punished."

I was watching for any sign of psychosis, still trying to tell if this was fantasy or reality. But her pupils were not dilated. Her breathing was regular. There was no sweat on her upper lip or forehead. No sheen to her skin. Her fingers did not twitch in her lap. Her feet did not tap. She spoke in the same even voice I'd heard for a long time. She seemed in full control and connected, very much in the present moment.

"The painter," she said. I nodded. "When I was a kid, he made me realize that anything could be made into something else. He'd look at that water that I just saw as some stretch of muddy blue and he'd find a hundred colors in it. Some of them brilliant."

"Did the painter die?"

"I don't know. He moved away. He didn't tell me. One day, he was just gone. I went looking for him. But no one knew what happened. I look in galleries when I can. He'd be about fifty now. Fifty-year-old men are easier to fool than thirty-year-old men. The younger men aren't always sure. They succumb but they can be a little suspicious at first. Like, why is she coming on to me? To me? But the older guys are so damn flattered you can see their eyes getting erections. They are too damn easy."

I nodded. "Maybe the painter died. Maybe he didn't move away."

She didn't say anything. But suddenly her eyes filled with tears. One rolled down her cheek and she reached out to brush it away. Her surprise at her tears was clear.

"I never thought about him dying."

"Why not? Why did you assume he moved without saying goodbye?"

She shook her head as if she were getting rid of the question I'd raised. And then she changed the subject. "I should be upset about what I do. I know I should. But it's like these guys deserve it. I mean most of them are doing something to someone. They are abusing someone somehow. It's not like they are all nice guys. But I give all of them a chance. Before I take them back to the room, I give them a chance to turn me down. I ask them if they are married or if they have a girlfriend. And then ask them if they really want to do this. If they really want to hurt the women they are with."

"Some of them must say no."

"Not very many. Maybe two."

I wanted to ask her out of how many. But I didn't want to stop her.

"One man stroked my skin. His fingertips were as soft as a woman's. He had blue eyes. I remember his eyes. Because of those damn fingers that ran up and down my arm making me shiver. Usually, I don't feel anything. That's what I meant. Before. I don't feel anything when they touch me. Or when I pull the trigger."

"You use a gun?"

I hadn't meant to ask that bluntly-as if I doubted her. It was unprofessional. I'd wanted to ask her how she killed them, not blurt out the worse-case scenario I could imagine.

She looked at me as if I were the one who was crazy and needed help. "A gun?"

"When you kill them?"

"Dr. Snow, I set them up. I pump them up. I am a hired assassin. I expose them and ruin them. My whole apartment is a camera. I destroy them by taking pictures of them and then turning them over to cops or detectives or the tabloids. Character assassin." She smiled.

And for a few seconds there was no question in my mind that a man would go with her and not think twice.

David Liss's first novel, A Conspiracy of Paper began with what may have been an unlikely inspiration for a thriller: his ongoing doctoral work on the 18^th century British novel and its relationship to emerging modes of finance. Liss succeeded by showing how the rise of paper currency was surrounded by an air of mystery, danger, urgency and cultural paranoia, but he also succeeded because of his intrepid protagonist, Benjamin Weaver, a daring and reckless thief-taker-roughly a combination of modern-day private eye, police-officer-for-hire and hired muscle. Weaver's fearlessness on the lawless streets of 18^th century London, and his willingness to meet danger head-on, won the character many fans, and he returned in A Spectacle of Corruption and will be back again in The Devil's Company.

Liss has stated in interviews that he tremendously enjoys writing about Weaver and the violent and colorful world he inhabits, but he feels the need to divide his time between that character and his stand-alone thrillers, The Coffee Trader and The Ethical Assassin. Unfortunately, between writing more tales of Weaver and the time required to explore other interests, Liss has had no time to pursue a project that has interested him since completing Conspiracy-a story set in the same world inhabited by Weaver but focusing on other characters-with Weaver occupying the role of secondary figure. Until now, that is.

The Double Dealer has at its center an aging highwayman who wants to tell one last story before he dies, the story of an encounter years ago with the young Benjamin Weaver, once a highwayman himself. The fun in a project like this, according to Liss, is to rethink some of the most basic ideas of a recurring character in order to see him anew. Liss enjoys writing about flawed protagonists and sympathetic villains because in real life no one is perfect or perfectly bad, and everyone is the hero of his or her own story.

The Double Dealer has given Liss the chance to present his ongoing hero as the villain of someone else's story.

I'm old and like to die soon, and no one will care when I do, and that's the truth. But I've a story to tell before I go, and I've paid this here gaunt scholar fellow with a face of a rotten apple to write it down. I aim to make him read it back, too, as I don't trust him and I'll not pay a penny until I like what I hear.

It ain't often I like what I hear. Them newspapers are full three, four, maybe five times a year of the great deeds of that worthless Jew, Benjamin Weaver-that great man, what done this favor for the ministry, or that for the mighty Duke or Arse-Wipe or good Squire Milksop. Old as he is, he's still at it. They forget, they do, but old Fisher don't forget. I recollect it all, as I crossed with him when we was both young and he was no better than me-maybe worse, for his being a Jew withal.

It ain't no secret, but not oft spoke of neither, that time was this hero, a "thief-taker," claims to make streets safe for the likes of what calls themselves ordinary man. No better than one of my number, a prig and one of the highway, and he'd have been at ease with the shitten likes of any blackguard cutpurse.

The world remembers that he was once a pugilist, and lived by his fists. They know him now as some kind of do-gooder, but there was a time between that, when his fighting days was done, and he ain't yet figured out this thief-taking lay. I know all about it, and I aim to make it public.

So, I begin with a piss-rainy autumn day, maybe 1717 or '18- maybe '19 or '20. Can't say as I quite recall, being as I said old and having blood come out both me lungs and me arse. But that ain't your concern. Yours is that when I was young I come 'pon a handsomely dressed spark finishing his business with a mighty fine-looking equipage-lonely all of them, on a nice, ripe deserted stretch of highway. He had in his hands a sack full of coins and jewels and mighty pretty things, and then said his farewells to a pair of ugly bitches, past thirty, and so good for nothing. He charmed them, though, as he called himself Gentleman Ben, and they blushed and bat their eyelashes like he were a spark at a dance and not the man what bound up their coachman and took their precious dainties. His partner, a fellow called Thomas Lane, were some twenty feet down the road, keeping his eye sharp for trouble.

These two were like brothers, never thinking to do a lay, one without the other. They even looked alike, with their dark hair, tall stature and wide backs, both. And that's the thing, ain't it? You don't want to mess with these sorts of prigs, these coves what are never one without the other, these sparks what come to be like blood, for you do wrong by the one, you must surely face the other.

So it was that I rode close to Thomas Lane (though I didn't hear his name 'til later). The other one, what I learned was Weaver, was at the equipage, making pretty talk to the ladies. The sun, peeking through them clouds, were before me, and I couldn't see Lane's face all clear, but I could see it crumpled well enough and I knew he'd had enough and more of Weaver's fripperies with these hags. He were looking back 'pon Weaver and not forward to me, so that he never heard me nor saw me neither, and I rode real quiet, as I trained my horse to do, and snuck up to him all silent like and pummeled him hard in his head. He fell over but not down, and so I struck him in the head again, and once again in that very same pate to make certain he stayed quiet, and this plan worked well enough, for this last blow, I later heard, quite killed him, but I didn't think so then. All I knowed was that he made not a sound more, and that contented me.

I had no plan to kill him. He weren't no friend of mine, but he was a brother prig, and I meant no more but his silence. Still, once it were done, there could be no helping it. No tears will squeeze the breath back into him, will it?

Now, coming from the other way were my friend and partner in these affairs, a spark called Ruddy Dick. There were some three or four fellows I regularly engaged with for my adventures, but none were more trusted by me than old Dick, an aged fellow, as I thought then, though some twenty years my junior to where I am now. So, I catch old Dick's eye, and we know at once the lay, for we were longtime friends, like I said.

This Weaver might have not been keeping his wits about him, but those what he robbed were, and they saw the freaks I played 'pon Thomas Lane. They pointed and cried out, as though these two highwaymen were friends and I the enemy. Never once did they presume I come to save them, but that's the curse of this here face, even more terrible when I was young, if you'll credit that.

With the hags crying out and then taking shelter in their coach, I turn to this gentleman bandit, and I shout to him. I say, "Ho, my spark, I'm afeard I've quite bludgeoned your fellow, and I'm afeard you're next."

Weaver-though, as I says, I knew not yet his name-turns to me and stares not with surprise or horror or sadness, but with a rage burning in those dark eyes, clear enough through the misty rain. In the time it takes between you cut yourself and the blood starts its flowing, he understood all. He observed the scene, observed what I intended, and I knew then that I'd made an enemy.

That were the bad news, as they say. The good news were that I didn't expect he'd live long, not with Ruddy Dick coming down 'pon him hard. He'd spurred his horse to a good gallop and drew his blade, ready to take off the distracted Jew's head as though it were the foreskin 'pon a privy portion.

Now, there's Weaver, staring at me with those hateful eyes, and there's me, holding his gaze, keeping him distracted while Dick rides hard. It's but a tick of the clock, or less even, before this angry fellow is a headless angry fellow, but all at once, like he's got eyes peeking through them locks behind him, he turns. He drops his sack of goodies, and in an instant his blade is out and swinging, and it's at Dick before Dick's blade is on him. Nothing quite so colorful as a beheading, but the blade swings and opens Dick's throat, and the blood's all ruddy fountainish. That was it, then. The death of Dick.

Right tragic it was, a good friend such as he, who I shared my victuals and coin and whores with. Still, life must march forward, and Weaver weren't the only one who could see all clear and easy in the blink of a rat's eye. I spurred my horse, and make like I'm like to take a swipe at Weaver, all revenge-ish, but instead I reach down, grab the sack of plunder as was dropped, and I speed away, leaving behind me a pair of corpses with their puddles of blood.

It was but a matter of weeks before I learned that the one I pummeled never lived after. The other one, the cove yet alive, I now heard were called Benjamin Weaver, and that he had vowed to be revenged for what I done. So a month or two I stays on my guard, but nothing transpired. I heard no discussion of Weaver nor of his exploits, and I began to wonder if he might be dead or gone into hiding. That, I told myself, were the end of it. But it weren't the end, and though I talked a mouthful and been through two pints, it ain't but the beginning of this tale.

As a deputy U.S. marshal tasked with transporting inmates and hunting down fugitives, Gregg Hurwitz's protagonist, Tim Rackley, finds himself in and around prisons on a daily basis. The Kill Clause, Rackley's first thriller, begins with Rackley learning about his seven-year-old daughter's murder. From there, he's drawn into a shadowy commission of men seeking justice outside the law. The Program brought Rack-ley inside a deadly mind control cult, when he was tasked with retrieving the missing daughter of a powerful Hollywood producer. For research, Hurwitz went undercover into mind control cults and submitted himself to cult testing.

Troubleshooter, the next Rackley thriller, opens with the leader of an outlaw biker gang pulling off a daring freeway escape while being driven from sentencing to prison. Clearly, the Rackley series grapples with issues of vigilantism-justice versus the law-each book offering Rackley's ever-evolving perspective. In the course of researching each of the Tim Rackley books, Hurwitz himself spent time behind bars, getting to know the men and women who keep the prisons running.

Dirty Weather was inspired by them.

He was handsome in a dirty sort of way, lank hair shoved back over his ears, muscles firm beneath a white button-up shirt he wore untucked with the sleeves cuffed past the forearms. He'd slipped into Frankie's Furlough quietly, a swirl of biting wind from the still-closing door conveying him to the far end of the bar. The rickety building stuck out from a snowdrift off the interstate as if hurled there. The interior smelled of sawdust, which layered the floor, soaking up spilled booze and the melted sludge of tracked-in earth.

Home to truckers, twelve-steppers who'd fallen off the staircase, and most often, correctional officers, the Furlough had been something of a roadside institution ever since Frankie had taken his pension from the big house and parlayed it into four walls, a roof of questionable efficacy and a red-felt pool table. He'd done well for himself, too, though it wasn't apparent from the looks of the place.

The surrounding landscape had been stripped bare by winter, trees thrusting like forked sticks out of gray rises of snow. Few signs of life persisted in the stretch of Michigan freeze: a liquor store across the frontage road, a long-closed diesel station, a sloped gravel turnoff for runaway semis. And then a stark ten-mile crawl north to the only employer of significance in the county, the Upper Ridgeway State Men's Correctional Facility, which rose from behind a stark shelf of white cedars like a secret no one had bothered to keep secret.

Laura finished twirling a pint glass on a towel, her attention drawn back to the stranger at the end of the bar. He'd walked with a slight limp, which interested her. Also, he kept his gaze on the lacquered birch veneer instead of on her breasts (her most attractive feature were she to judge by the eye traffic of Furlough's fine patrons) or her rounded but still-firm thirty-six-year-old ass. Her face wasn't bad either, this she knew, but it had collected age around the eyes and at the line of her jaw. And the skin of the neck. Nothing to be done there. His face, by contrast, was more youthful-she put him in his late twenties-but it was quite pale, almost unhealthily so, as if he were used to living in a warmer climate.

Between small, measured sips, he turned the bottle in his hands as if he'd never seen a beer before. Contemplativeness, in Frankie's Furlough, was something of a rarity. In contrast, Rick Jacobs was all swagger, shooting solids against Myron's stripes. Barrel chest, thermal undershirt, beard, weekend game-hunter- Rick was a carbon copy of a carbon copy. Ever since he'd joined up with the Asphalt Cruisers, Rick asked people to call him Spike. Despite his efforts, the nickname hadn't taken. He had a penchant for racist jokes and loud belching, and the tremors hit him if he got forty waking minutes from a bottle of Glenlivet. That's why he was here, even during a blizzard that kept the entire county shuttered in except for Laura, who would've burrowed through snow with her bare hands to get some fresh air after playing nurse, and Myron, who Rick had no doubt bullied into playing sidekick. Just good country people, Rick and Myron, quick with a grin and a left hook.

Rick paused, his ass in front of the fire that Laura persistently kept going. Her father had built the brick hearth with his own two hands, an act of masculine creation he reminded her of at least once a week, even though he'd rarely gotten around to using it when he was running the show. He didn't believe in burning resources; this was a hewn-featured man, powerful even in his decline, who still banged about the house wearing the Shetland wool sweater he'd bought on a trip to Montreal during the 1967 Expo.

The stranger caught her next glance and flared a finger from the bottle. She headed over, trailing a soft hand along the bar. "Another?"

"Nah, just a pack of Reds, please."

"No boozing and cruising," she said, sliding the cigarettes across the bar. "Smart choice. You'll wind up on the other side of the bars."

He leaned back, a faint grin etched on his face. "Is it that obvious?"

She leaned over the bar (giving him a chance for an eyeful of cleavage, which she was pleased he didn't capitalize on) and peered at the baton ring protruding from his belt. "Plus the Galls boots. Dead giveaway. I been working here a long time. And though you're cute"-this widened the smile-"I know the template. Newjack or transfer?"

His eyes, faded blue, took on a hint of playfulness. "How do you know I'm new here?"

"Because I haven't seen you. Hell, we are called the Furlough. Even the prisoners know about us. That's what we get for being on the thoroughfare." She tossed the stale popcorn into the trash and slotted the wooden bowl back into the cupboard. "So, I'll ask you again, hotshot-Newjack or transfer?"

"Newjack." He extended a callused hand. "Brian Dyer."

"Laura Hillman." She pointed at the neon sign hanging over the rust-stained mirror. They hadn't had it serviced in years, so it read, F nk e Furl gh. "Frank's daughter. Been around a few blocks a few times." She cocked her head, letting a tangle of hair cross her eyes. "Still embarrassed?"

"Why would you say that?"

"No blazer, no bad maroon tie, no gray slacks. You changed after shift in the lockers even though the draft in there can make your"-a delicate tip of her hand-"retract inside your body. It can catch you a lot of static in the world, being a correctional officer, so you'd rather leave the uniform behind the gates."

Again he smiled, and she felt something inside her warm. A part of her that hadn't felt comfort-or hope-in a long time. Though the fire was a good fifteen feet away, a drop of sweat hung at his hairline. She liked that he sensed the heat so keenly.

He bobbed his head. "What else? I mean, aside from the fact that you're clearly smarter than me. Is there a Mr. Laura?"

Rick strolled to the near side of the pool table, overchalking his cue. Myron had stumbled out, heading home to get his nightly tongue-lashing from Kathy over with, so Rick was burning his remaining quarters chasing trick shots. He'd started staying right up until last call ever since Laura, in the wake of her father's latest heart attack, had taken over weekends.

A loud click of the pool balls and Rick cheered himself heartily.

Laura leaned forward, lowering her voice. "I look bad in blue, so I married into the family tradition instead. Fresh out of high school. Mr. Laura had just graduated the Academy. And you know what they say are the first three things you get when you become a CO."

"A car, a baton and a divorce," Brian replied.

"We gave it the obligatory two years. Since then, I've been a lonely girl."

"Not so lonely," Rick offered from where he was leaning over the thirteen, which had evaded the corner pocket for three shots running.

"Thank you for that, Spike"

He grumbled something and got back to chalking.

"What's with the tattoo?" She rested a hand on the faded blue ink on Brian's forearm, and he jerked ever so slightly at her touch. His skin was warm and soft, and the feel of it against her palm was inexplicably thrilling.

Behind them, the pool cue clattered to the worn velvet, and Rick said, "Fuck this, then." A brief howl of wind as the door banged the chimes, hard, and then they were alone.

"The tattoo," Laura said, tracing the dip of the inked woman's waist with a thumb.

"I don't remember getting it."

"Sounds like a sailor story."

"Not quite." Brian looked away, his mouth firming, and she sensed sadness there, and anger. "It was during an eight-day drunk…"

Her voice was quiet and a touch hoarse with the premonition that she might regret her flippancy. "After what?"

"My wife. Three months pregnant. Drunk driver. High-school sweetheart, for what that's worth. We'd been together four years, were just starting to really fight good-you know, baby'll help things-but she was part of me." He tilted his beer bottle to his lips, but it was still on empty. "Another sob story. Just what you need in a place like this."

Her hand still rested on his arm and it felt awkward to withdraw it now. She liked the feel of their touching, the feel of him. The seam of their skin was slightly moist, their sweat intermingling. She struggled for words that wouldn't sound trite. She thought about fetuses, the crunch of car metal, Brian's faint limp. "How do you get back from that?"

"Am I back?" He laughed a real laugh, like he was enjoying himself. "It put me down for a good while and when I got up, I enrolled in the Academy. You can go either way after a thing like that. The line is-" he held up his hand, thumb and forefinger, measuring a quarter inch. "I thought a little order would help me pull it together and I was right. So order I've got. I spend my time in a place where guys keep Clubs locked on the steering wheels of their cars that they park in the shadow of a wall tower. Guy I work with-Conner?"

"Sure, I know Conner."

"He welded a hasp to his lunch box so he could keep a tiny lock on there. No shit."

"Sounds like Conner all right."

"It's being locked in paranoia. But you know what? I'd be lying to say I don't take comfort in the metal. All those right angles. And the bells, set your watch to them. I'll leave someday, I'm sure, head somewhere warm, and I bet I'll miss it all. It's like.armor, almost."

"And you needed armor."

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I did."

She found herself close to him, a foot maybe-he'd been speaking quietly and drawn her in, and there was an instant where she thought she'd just keep leaning until their lips met. His heaviness seemed to match the weight of her disappointments. A single child raised motherless in a frozen plain. She'd tried to get out, even to Detroit, but she'd chosen young and then her marriage had dissolved, leaving her mired like a shot bird. Twenty years old then and she'd never found it in herself to risk again.

She'd gone to Florida once-Disneyworld with Sue Ann-but as for spreading her wings, well, she'd always stayed in her childhood bedroom, except for during her brief marriage. And even then she'd made it not ten miles, just across the gully. A decade and a half ago, now. And so she'd spent her years since laughing with the truckers, shooting stick with the COs and taking the occasional roll in the sheets just to get some warmth inside her. Her indiscretions bought her snickers in church and criminating looks from her father, exaggerated into a kind of horror now by his palsied left cheek and the white film ringing his lips. It stung her deep and hard, the murmur that preceded and followed her, but she'd long resolved herself to getting what sustenance she could where she could, and to hell with the rest of them.

She'd been saving up though, a few years now, and maybe that money would get her out of Upper Ridgeway or at the very least out of her father's house. Or maybe-a notion almost too painfully hopeful to entertain-it would help her get a house with someone else someday. But her radar was off, as her father liked to say. She saw what she wanted to see in men and sometimes these days she didn't even see that.

Brian raised a hand to her cheek (impossibly, impossibly warm), his elbow braced on the bar so she could give his palm the full weight of her chin and then the door smashed open and a man with a gun charged them, screaming so loud flecks of saliva dotted the bar.

"The safe-I know there's a fucking safe get it open now."

Laura backed against the glass shelves, a bottle of Triple Sec bouncing twice on the floor and clattering to a quiet roll. Brian remained on his stool facing forward, enveloped in an intense calm that spoke of experience, his hands spread in view on the bar. His eyes stayed straight ahead; he seemed to be tracking the man's movement in the mirror behind her.

The gunman wore several long-sleeved T-shirts, one on top of the other. Snow and sweat had matted his wispy blond hair to his skull. He fumbled a credit-card-size block of what looked like beige Play-Doh from his pocket, his stare level on Laura.

"You'd better move, bitch." The gunman shoved Brian's shoulder with his gun. "And you, get up against the-"

Brian pivoted on the stool and drove his fist into the man's gut. The gunman doubled over and the gun barked once. Brian grunted and staggered forward.

The man shuffled backward toward the door, screeching, "Dammit, Goddammit. You stupid idiot," and then the bells shivered, the wind rushed, and he was gone.

Laura vaulted the bar. Gritting his teeth, Brian fought off his boot and hurled it into the fireplace. His sock, drenched with blood, made a peeling sound as he slid it off. This too went the way of the flames.

The bullet had pierced the outside of his right foot, two inches back from his little toe. The shock had just caught up to Laura, moistening her eyes. The comforting smell of the fire drifted in, further disorienting.

"You're okay." Disbelief tinged her voice, and not a little relief. "You're okay."

"It's fine. Passed through the side, here."

"I'll bandage it and we'll get you to the hospital. I have a first-aid kit."

"Lock the door first. And check the parking lot, make sure he's gone."

She did, bending the cheap venetians over the window. The interstate was an oblivious white strip. A wall of snow encircled the empty parking lot, white fading into the white trunks of the firs. A white Subaru was parked at the side of the frontage road, though she had to press her face flat to the glass to see it. The headlights shot twinning beams into the snowfall, but the car was apparently empty. "No one. But there's a car still there. Lights on."

"It's gotta be his. No one else out here. And he's not going far on foot."

"He could be hiding in it. Or in the trees." "Call 911."

She ran behind the bar and snatched up the phone. Dead. "He cut the line."

"Okay. We're isolated here. You have a gun?"

"No. You think he'll come back, this guy?"

"Looked like he had C4 with him. For blasting a safe."

"Jesus Christ," she broke in, "C4, like action-movie C4?"

"I spooked him, but maybe he settles himself out in that car, realizes that we're holed up and injured. Plus, we're riding the aftermath of a blizzard-not exactly the best time for a speedy police response even if he hadn't cut the phone line. I say we split."

"Not before I stop the bleeding." She was pulling bowls and plates from the cabinet. She found the first-aid kit and returned to him. He was sitting, arms braced over his knees, smiling at her in the orange glow. She felt his stare as she worked. He seemed oblivious to the pain. She didn't really know what she was doing, but she cinched a tourniquet midway up his foot and wound an Ace bandage over some sterile pads, applying pressure on the entry wound.

"That happen a lot around here?"

"A correctional officers' bar? You kidding me? A normal night, someone came in here, they'd get beaten within an inch of their lives."

She finished and patted his calf. She could see the fire's glow reflected in his eyes and she touched his face, gently, letting her fingers drift down over his lips.

His face darkened, his gaze shifting nervously to the window. "Let's get going."

"My Bronco's out back." She helped him up.

He leaned on the walls, making ginger progress. "What are you doing?"

Laura was on her knees, rolling back the shitty carpet by the jukebox. She worked the dial of the floor safe until the gears clanked. She withdrew three tight rolls of hundred-dollar bills and stuffed them in her pockets. "There's fifteen grand here. My life's savings. If that guy comes back, he'll have plenty of time to tear the place apart. If he doesn't already know where the safe is."

"Let's go, let's go."

She put an arm around his waist and kicked through the back door, waiting for the gunman to fly out of the white haze at them. But it was just the wide swath of alley, the soggy stack of Bud-weiser cartons under the overhang and her truck. The wind hit them hard, whipping flecks of snow into their faces. It tore at her collar, the cuffs of her jeans. She deposited Brian in the Bronco and waded around to the driver's seat, her eyes holding fearfully on the Subaru. The gunman's car remained maddeningly motionless, its headlights beaming forward like a dead man's gaze.

Brian was shuddering by the time she got the engine turned over. She'd left the heat blasting and the radio on-Don down at KRZ was spinning the Highwaymen, Kris Kristofferson as smooth as good scotch, save for the pulses of static from the weather. She blasted the heat. The Bronco bucked over drifts of snow past the Subaru, its shadowed interior drawing briefly into view through ice-misted windows, and then they were skating on the frontage road, heading for the interstate entrance. She studied the rearview, frightened. As if on cue, the radio went to fuzz, then warped into silence.

The windshield of the Subaru continued to stare after them, but the car didn't pull out. She watched it recede, her heart pounding.

Barely visible up ahead through the snow were two sets of flashing red lights. Laura eased up to the sawhorses, fighting down the window. Four deputies blocked the overpass.

Before she could say anything, Earl leaned in and shouted over the wind, "We just got word there's been a break at the prison. Miguel's dead-bastard caved his head in on the escape. That's all we know except to lock down the road."

"I just had a guy try to rob me. His car's still back at the Furlough. We think he's still around there." She brought a trembling hand to her face. "My God. Miguel. I just saw him over at the garage yesterday, getting a new radiator in his…" Her eyes welled. "Has someone told Leticia?"

"Thinning blond hair," Brian shouted past her. "Five-eight, five-nine, maybe. Skinny."

Earl's brows rose as his eyes shifted. "Who's this?"

"Brian Dyer. He's a CO up at the big house. He got shot protecting me. I gotta get him to the hospital."

"Okay. Go. Go. We'll take the Furlough." Earl squinted through the falling snow. The Subaru's headlights were barely visible. "That car up there?" He turned to the others. "Move it, let's move." He rapped a gloved fist on Laura's hood and she pulled past the roadblock, coaxing the Bronco back to speed.

They crossed the overpass, veering toward the south entrance, and started the long curve around to the interstate.

The radio crackled and Don's distorted voice came audible in waves. "-deadly escape from the prison…Miguel Herrera's body found stripped and frozen in the east yard."

Blocking the bottom of the on-ramp, just before the merge, was a felled tree. Brian shouted and Laura hit the brakes, sending the Bronco sideways. They coasted peacefully to a stop, an upthrust branch screeching up Brian's door. She let out her breath in a rush, and he laughed. Up ahead, on the interstate, was a furrow where some poor soul had trudged across from the frontage road, probably a half-frozen construction worker seeing to the sewage drains beneath the overpass. "I'll steer us around," she said.

Brian leaned forward and punched the cigarette lighter. His other arm was up around her headrest and he dropped it to the back of her neck. His hand was warm, so warm-he'd been holding it over the dashboard vent. The backs of his knuckles drifted down, grazing her cheek, her chin. She felt her neck muscles unclench, her body softening to his touch.

The radio reception came back in, if barely. "-security tapes show.used a starter pistol in their escape.one of the inmates shot in the foot going over the."

Laura's eyes widened. Her gaze jerked to the base of the tree- ax marks, not splinters. A mosaic of images pressed in on her. Miguel's wife's Subaru. The Furlough's empty parking lot even after Brian had arrived. His limp as he'd entered. The belt with the baton ring, poking out from the bottom of his state-issue button-up shirt. His face, already pale from the injury. The sweat on his brow-pain suppressed. And his stolen boot, thrown in the fire after the ruse so she wouldn't see that it had no bullet hole.

Brian's hand continued to play across her face. Trembling, she lifted her gaze but the stare looking back was unrecognizable. The snow beat against the window behind him, the branch scraping against the door. And then she saw the pale hand reach up over the tree trunk outside like something from a horror movie.

Brian's hand tightened and he drove a fist down across her chin. Her head smacked the window, her head lolled, and she slumped against the door. Digging in her pockets, he removed the rolls of cash. Then he reached past her ample breasts, tugged at the door handle, and shoved her with his good foot out into the snow.

Teddy slid down off the tree trunk, stamping his feet and rubbing his arms. Bits of ice stuck to his thin wisps of blond hair and his lashes, which framed bloodshot eyes. Brian fished the pack of Marlboros from his pocket, tapped out a cigarette and extended it between two fingers across the console. Teddy stepped over Laura's limp body and climbed in, his breath clouding against the wheel as he slammed the door against the cold. He took the proffered cigarette and set it between quivering lips. He removed the beige rectangle from his pocket-a carefully shaped block of used chewing gum-and tossed it into the back seat. Then he cranked the heat even higher, shivering violently and pressing his white fingers against the vents.

The cigarette lighter popped out and Teddy pulled it from the dash and tilted his head, inhaling the warmth.

Brian made a gun with his hand and pointed south. "To the sunshine."

Teddy maneuvered the Bronco through the soft snow of the shoulder, forging a path around the tree. As they pulled out onto the interstate, sheets of snow began to layer Laura into oblivion.

Technology and its ills, together with Native American mysticism, contrasts two worlds often at war-science versus back-to-nature values. In his first thriller, Necessary Evil, David Dun spun an action-driven tale of wilderness survival that highlighted this war of the worlds, pitting Kier Win-tripp against a ruthless corporate personality using human cloning to achieve medical cures.

Kier Wintripp is part of the Tilok tribe. Most of Dun's novels have involved characters from that tribe, which, although fictional, is in many respects based on various factual accounts of Native American life, lore, myth, history and religion. One aspect of Tilok culture is the Talth, a medicine person, part psychologist, part political leader, part judge, an expert on forest-survival arts. The pinnacle of the Talth is propounded by Spirit Walkers. These men come along only once a century and are recognized by their profound intuition concerning the affairs of men and nature. Kier was Dun's first, and perhaps most striking, Tilok character. A superb woodsman and tracker, a guide to youth, a teacher of the forest arts, he's also a doctor of veterinary medicine. Science being the ultimate rationalism, in Dun's novels Kier has many times sought, often unsuccessfully, to find peace in reason.

This is the story of how he became a Spirit Walker.

The old people said it was the spirit of a man unloved as a child, roaming the deepest forests of the mountains, but Kier Wintripp didn't believe in spirits that did the work of psychopaths.

He stood beneath the big conifers in front of his cabin picking huckleberries as Matty arrived with Jack Mix. A very curious combination. She an old woman, and he a former FBI agent. Matty approached and Kier sensed the tension in her frail body as she gripped his wrists with a grandmother's love. Mix kept back a respectable few paces.

"Jake, my grandson, has gone off into the mountains, to the caverns, with Carmen," Matty said. "They left three days ago before daylight and were returning late the same day." She stared at her feet. "And there's another thing."

He waited for her to explain.

"Jake was going to the cliffs, at the top of the caverns." "Below Universe Rock? The sacred place?" "It's wrong. I know."

"And they were to return the same day?"

She nodded. "The next day was my birthday. Jake would never miss his grandmother's birthday." He knew that was true.

"You will go?" Matty said, desperation in her voice. "Everyone knows you're descended from the last Spirit Walker. It's in you. You can find them."

His grandfather had indeed been a Spirit Walker, one of the tribe's mystics, revered men who came along once in a hundred years. They guided the Talth, advised the tribe, communed with spirits and discerned the hearts of men. Kier intimately knew the forest and taught the young its secrets. He was an ordinary man, half Anglo, half Tilok, but also a veterinarian trained in science, so part of him required the comfort of reason.

"You'll go get them," Matty said again, her voice breaking. "Please."

"I'll go," Kier assured her. "Spirit Walker or not."

"It's where the ghosts are. Raccoon says he saw a ghost. Robes white as bleached sheets. Jake and Carmen thought maybe Raccoon would be there with the ghosts. That's why they went."

Kier had heard the rumors of ghosts and murder. Fantastical stories that grew under their own weight.

Mix seemed to be waiting for Matty to leave, but she didn't. So they walked up on the porch and Kier invited them both to sit. Kier was curious about Mix. He seemed to be hanging around a lot lately. Under the eave, Mix removed his straw hat, revealing cropped brown hair that matched a neat mustache. Mix had made a fine transition from law officer to owner of a local feed store and wildlife photographer, even if he had never quite fit socially with the stranger-shy locals. Like Kier's wife, Jessie, also an ex-FBI agent, Mix had gladly given up the big city for the backcountry.

"Some of my friends from the FBI called," Mix said. "I recommended that they ask for your help. You're the best forensic tracker around."

He caught Mix's real message. "The FBI isn't looking for Jake and Carmen. Or ghosts."

"You're right," Mix replied. "They want to talk to Raccoon. Just yesterday they spoke with me. The couple over in Lassen County a year ago, they never found the girl, and the boy was a cooked pile of meat. That boy's father was a state senator. Then we had a couple from Humboldt just disappear off the face of the earth. The press is starting to use the words serial killer"

"That's got nothing to do with Raccoon."

"Maybe. Maybe not. What can you tell me about him?"

"We call him Kawa We Ma. A gentle man inside a big body." He pictured Raccoon as he'd last seen him, wearing a leather flight jacket over deer hide. The man had been born Josiah Morgan, a part-Tilok orphan adopted by the tribe. The nickname came from the port-wine stain on his face that gave him the look of a raccoon's mask.

"The tracks the sheriff found, and some other things, were suspicious," Mix said. "Raccoon disappears for days."

"You disappear for days in the woods, too, with your photography."

"I come back out. Talk to people. Run a store."

"Raccoon talks to the forest," Kier said. "People don't understand him, so they fear him. You and I have no idea what it would be like to see a miracle in every blooming flower. Raccoon is a man distracted by miracles. He's incapable of hurting anyone."

"If he isn't doing anything, then why not track him for them?" Mix asked.

"Because I don't want to."

Matty faced him. "Raccoon told Carmen that above the caverns, in the cliffs, there's a cabin with a ghost. Right above Man Jumps."

Carmen was Raccoon's daughter, whom Kier knew the man worshipped. So he believed the information.

Mix produced a bag of shelled pistachios and offered some. Kier scooped a few, as did Matty. "A cabin would show up on aerial photos," Mix said.

Kier shook his head. "It wouldn't be visible in a cave or hollow. And since it is sacred, no one goes there. Not even rock climbers."

"Who would you say Raccoon really cares about?" Mix asked.

Kier smiled. "That's a perceptive question for an ex-bureaucrat who sounds like he's returning to his old ways. My grandfather used to say the difference between a good and an evil man is what he loves. I'm not sure what Raccoon loves, other than Carmen. But, like I said, Raccoon is not a killer."

There were more questions, but Kier found that in answering he was repeating himself in a manner he disliked. Finally he said to Mix, "I thought you gave the FBI a flunking grade. Said they didn't protect the country the way they should. 9/11. The anthrax killer, and all that."

"I've got my beefs with them, but when it comes to a psychopath, I figure everyone has to pitch in."

Kier nodded, as if he understood.

These days, to her family's great relief, Denise Hamilton stays home in Los Angeles and writes the Eve Diamond crime novels. But in the bad old days before she turned to fiction, Hamilton was a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and roamed the globe, filing dispatches from Asia, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the former USSR.

In 1993, Hamilton was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to teach journalism in Macedonia. The Bosnian war was in full swing, and she went with the full knowledge that if the fighting spread to her part of the Balkans, she'd go overnight from college professor to war correspondent. But Macedonia never blew up and Hamilton widely toured the South Balkans and fell in love with the small, quirky nation of Albania, which at that time was just emerging from fifty years of communist isolation. As Hamilton writes in At the Drop of a Hat, there were few ways in and out of Albania but she managed to hitchhike into Tirana with some Albanian journalists she met at a conference on beautiful Lake Ohrid, at the Macedonia-Albania border.

Hamilton hadn't been planning such a trip and had only two hundred dollars and one change of clothes in her backpack. But she knew a good offer when she heard it, and being an adventurous sort, arrived in downtown Tirana in the late afternoon and immediately began calling U.S. Fulbright scholars in Albania, hoping to find somebody with a spare couch where she could crash. Luckily, she reached another Fulbrighter before dark and he took her to eat at what was then Tirana's only French restaurant, where they met the proprietor, a handsome and cultured Albanian man.

The restaurateur eventually offered Hamilton a ride back in his Mercedes to Skopje, where he often traveled for business. Due to scheduling conflicts she never took him up on his offer, and it wasn't until much later that she learned the full story of this man's life. In At the Drop of a Hat, Hamilton uses that knowledge and takes readers on a thrill ride of Balkan intrigue, providing along the way a taste for the sights, smells, textures and landscape that few Westerners have seen.

A tale from one who lived it.

Jane looked out the passenger window and told herself that everything was fine. Bashkim was driving, the Mercedes hurtling along the Albanian highway at a hundred kilometers an hour. The air inside the car felt tight and crackly. Outside, greenhouses stood in untilled fields, their shattered windows gaping empty. A black-clad woman followed a herd of goats up a rock-strewn hillside, spinning wool on a hand spindle. Anything could happen out here, Jane thought, and no one would ever know. The wind would shred her clothes and rain would bleach her bones and when spring came, the goats would crop the earth around her.

This has to stop, Jane scolded herself. She was a sensible girl, not one of those high-strung ones that fell apart at the drop of a hat. She just needed to rekindle the excitement she had felt last night.

She and Paul had been in their favorite Tirana restaurant, arguing because he refused to tap his diplomatic contacts to get her a ride across the border to the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. A conference on Balkan literature was taking place in the capital and she really wanted to attend.

"What's the big deal?" Jane had protested. "Your embassy courier does the Tirana-Skopje run twice a week."

But Paul had suddenly grown engrossed in photos of the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the French Alps that decorated the walls. Over the sound system, Edith Piaf sobbed about love and betrayal. Omelettes and salades nicoises sailed out of the kitchen. This had been their sanctuary, a little piece of Paris that shut out the chaos outside that was Albania. But now Albania had followed them inside.

"I can't put a civilian on that route, it's strictly for consular business," Paul said at last.

Since when am I just a civilian? she fumed, recalling other, more fevered words he had whispered in the three weeks they'd been together. He was a low-level attache at the U.S. embassy and she was a Fulbright scholar. They'd met at an embassy reception her first week in Tirana, bonded over too much Albanian mer-lot and hadn't been apart since, though in her weaker moments she wondered if it was just an expat thing.

"What do you want me to do, hitchhike? There aren't a lot of options going east."

There weren't a lot of options because the delusional Commie who had ruled Albania for almost fifty years had torn up the rail lines and sealed the border out of fear that the Yugoslavs, America and NATO planned to attack his backward and impoverished nation. Years after Enver Hoxha's death, it was still a logistical nightmare to get in and out. No trains or regional buses. The only planes went to Western Europe, then you had to double back. Taxis were cheaper, but she was a student and didn't have a hundred and fifty dollars to spare.

"Excuse me," said a low, melodic voice. "I don't mean to eavesdrop, but your voices…perhaps I can be of help."

The proprietor, Bashkim, stood before them, sleek in an Italian suit, hands clasped deferentially. He had toiled for years in Parisian restaurants, then come home to show the natives the glories of French cuisine. Except that Albanians, at their salaries, couldn't afford even one frite, though the brasserie had caught on immediately with the expense-account NGO and diplomatic crowd.

Paul fixed the restaurateur with a pensive gaze. "Really?" he said, a strange light flaring, then banking behind his eyes.

Bashkim gave a modest smile and bowed in Jane's direction. "I must go to Skopje on business tomorrow," he said. "I would be honored if you would accompany me. There is plenty of room."

"I'm not so sure that's a good idea," Paul said slowly.

But Jane had seen the shiny blue Mercedes out back and was already imagining the smooth ride, the lively discussion as first the countryside, then the desolate mountain passes, soared by. Bashkim had exquisite manners, spoke five languages, understood civil society. His wife, a beautiful Albanian with green eyes, kept the restaurant books while their little girl, immaculate in frilly dresses, played with dolls in the back. Jane could tell they were in love. Unlike many of the men who stared with hungry, medieval eyes, Bashkim never gave her a second glance. She'd seen how the expat community embraced him. She'd be safe. Plus, it would end the dreary row, her nagging suspicion that Paul didn't care enough to pull this embassy string for her.

Feeling a sudden need to assert herself, Jane said. "I am sure. I'm going."

Paul threw up his hands in mock horror, winked at Bashkim. "These Western women, they have minds of their own."

She had kicked him under the table, but later that night, they'd fallen into bed with their usual frenzy, all the sweeter for her impending absence. Afterward, Jane was touched that he shoved his cell phone into her backpack and insisted she keep it on until reaching Skopje, at which point she was to call and announce her safe arrival.

And so it was that Jane had set off from Paul's apartment this morning. The streets smelled of wet earth and sewers. Deformed Gypsy children writhed on cardboard, begging from passersby. Housewives leaned over balconies, beating carpets with red-faced fury. Four stories up, a cow mooed indignantly. The sight of livestock in apartments had startled her initially, but Jane soon learned you couldn't leave a cow out overnight in Tirana any more than you could a car.

Bashkim was tossing a suitcase into the back seat when she arrived. The Mercedes seemed low to the ground, like it was carrying a heavy load, but Jane thought that unlikely. Albania exported little but its own people.

Standing in the clear Adriatic light, she sensed Bashkim checking out her hiking boots and Levi's, the fleece-lined vest she'd thrown over a red ribbed turtleneck, and felt something shift. A flicker of apprehension went through her. Had she misjudged him? Then, he broke into a familiar smile and her misgivings evaporated.

"You ready?"

She climbed in. As the apartment blocks, then the dismal shanties on Tirana's outskirts gave way to farmland, they chatted about Albanian literature and culture. Then talk turned to the present day.

"It's wonderful, what you're building here. There's so much opportunity."

"There was more opportunity in France," Bashkim said. "But I couldn't get residency."

"But the West is so sterile. Everyone's obsessed with money, getting ahead. There's no sense of family, of what's really important."

"You think people here aren't obsessed with money?" he said, jabbing the gas. After that they sat in silence. The Mercedes jostled with donkey carts and tractors, passing so close that Jane could have plucked wisps of straw from a farmer's hair. An olive-green truck of Soviet vintage emblazoned with the letters STALIN passed them, stuffed with young Albanian men who hooted and hollered. But other vehicles fell into line behind them, content to let the Mercedes lead.

Bashkim punched in a CD and the strains of Mozart wafted through the car. The pleasant odor of his cologne hung in the air.

"I'm really lucky you were going to Skopje this week," Jane said, trying to recapture their earlier ease. "How often do you make the trip?"

A smile curled around the edge of his mouth. "Whenever business requires it."

She studied him. He was blond, with blue eyes. This, too, had surprised her. He could have been a surfer from her college back home, if not for his pallid skin and something ineluctable in his profile that, framed against the raw landscape and crumbling stone buildings, she suddenly saw as quintessentially Balkan.

"Do you go to Skopje for restaurant supplies?" she asked.

There was a pause, an intake of breath. Then, "You are very curious."

Jane shrugged. "Just wondering."

"Sometimes it's best not to wonder too much." He let the words hang in the air and she felt it building again, an odd pressure in her head, the tingling of individual hairs on her nape. For a long time, she studied the scrubby landscape, bereft even of litter.

"Look," he said after a time, pointing to a fortress atop a hill, and she knew he was trying to make nice. "Skanderbeg's castle. Our national hero. He was a janissary, a viceroy in the sultan's army. But he rebelled in 1569 and led an uprising of the Albanian people against the Ottomans. He was never captured."

At the turnoff, a crowd of ragged boys appeared, bunching their hands in front of open mouths.

"They're hungry," Jane cried, reaching into her backpack for dried fruit, nuts.

Bashkim pressed harder on the accelerator.

"They have become accustomed to begging," he said tersely. "The foreign-aid workers throw out sweets and they scrabble after them like dogs."

The lack of sympathy struck Jane as harsh. When Bashkim got off the highway in Elbassan, a town dominated by a hulking factory that belched out black smoke, delicate tendrils of unease bloomed inside her.

"Why are we stopping?"

Bashkim's voice was light, nonchalant.

"To drop some medicine off with a friend." He grew apologetic. "It's for his sick mother."

He braked for a herd of sheep and something slid from under her seat, hitting her heel. She looked down and saw the barrel of a machine gun. Bashkim saw it, too. He lunged between her legs, grabbed it. His arm slid against her inner thigh. Then he shoved the gun firmly under his own seat.

"Sorry about that," he said, his voice thick.

Jane gripped the leather edge of the Mercedes seat, her palms slick with moisture. She wanted to scream. Had she only imagined that his arm had lingered? And what if the gun had gone off?

When he tapped her, she jumped.

"It's to protect us," he said. "Just in case."

She tried to still the thudding of her heart against her rib cage, convince herself it made sense. This was still a land of brigands. As for the other, it was just a clumsy accident.

Bashkim wheeled the car into a driveway and the gate to a compound swung open. Jane's unease spiked higher. Why hadn't he told her earlier about the stop? What if it was all a ruse? A trap? The car moved forward. She thought about turning the door handle and hopping out. But then what? The streets were filled with tough-looking, idle young men. And she'd be stranded with little money and no way back. She'd heard whispers about what happened to women found alone after dark, especially outside the capital. The gate clanged behind them and three men with hawk faces materialized. This was where it would happen, she thought.

"I'll wait in the car," she said.

"You should use the facilities," Bashkim said firmly. "There will be no other opportunity."

Then a door to the house burst open and a plump lady waddled out. When Bashkim pulled out a container of pills and handed them to the woman, Jane could have cried with relief.

The woman came around to Jane's door, grabbed her arm and tugged her toward the house. Oniony gusts of sweat, overlaid with a yeasty smell, came from her. When Jane glanced back, the men were clustered around the car trunk.

Inside, Jane was plied with tea, orangeade, cookies and raki, a potent and raw grape brandy. When they walked back out half an hour later, she noticed that the car sat higher. The men were examining a stack of boxes, and she thought she saw the glint of sun on metal. Then Bashkim stepped in front of her, blocking the view, and they left. Her mind afloat from drinking raki on an empty stomach, Jane leaned back in her seat. She told herself to stay vigilant, but instead dozed off, waking an hour later with a sour taste in her mouth, acid in her stomach.

They were in the mountains now, the tall, fierce peaks that dominate Albania, leaving only a sliver of arable land. It was afternoon. Just ahead, a bridge spanned a deep chasm. As they shot onto it, Jane looked and saw white water rushing down. She remembered Paul saying that the bridge was near the border. Then for a while the road would skirt Lake Ohrid, a deep body of still water that formed a natural border between Macedonia and Albania. Coming off the bridge, Bashkim executed a sickening curve around a precipice without a guardrail. Hundreds of yards below, Jane saw the rusting skeletons of cars that had misjudged the turn. Jets of saliva shot into her mouth and she thought she might be sick.

They were on a straightaway when Jane saw an accident ahead and a man waving a white shirt tied to a pole. Bashkim swore and slowed. As they drew closer, Jane saw it wasn't an accident but two Albanian army trucks, blocking the road. A pimply-faced soldier with a rifle waved them over to the side. Bashkim stared ahead with a fixed intensity. The car surged forward, and Jane thought he meant to gun the accelerator and try to blast through.

At the last possible second, he hit the brake. The cars behind him careened into a ditch, bumping along on a cloud of dust and then accelerating past the roadblock. Jane wondered if the authorities might give chase, but they seemed supremely uninterested.

A soldier walked up to Bashkim, rifle pointed at his head, barking orders in Albanian. Jane saw the restaurateur's knee tremble but his voice stayed calm. She heard the words Amerikane and Skopje. More soldiers came, ordered them out of the car. Jane felt unreal, stiff and jerky with fear. She'd heard about Albanian bandits who set up roadblocks and robbed Westerners of cars, clothes and even shoes, leaving them stranded in their underwear. In years past, tractor-trailer trucks had convoyed to the Yugoslav border without stopping. Jane thought about offering the soldiers money.

She pulled out the cell phone, thinking she'd call Paul at the U.S. embassy in Tirana. "Help," she'd say. "We've been stopped at a roadblock by Albanian soldiers and I think we're in trouble. Now aren't you sorry you didn't let me ride with the courier?"

The soldiers shoved Bashkim and screamed questions at him, ignoring her. Jane took several steps away. Nobody noticed. She drifted around one truck, moved along the tarp to the other, then froze in disbelief.

In the cab, hunched over a laptop, sat Paul. Another embassy guy with a crew cut that she remembered from a Tirana dinner party leaned against the door, peering intently at Paul's screen, a cell phone pressed to his ear. Jane checked her first impulse to dash over and throw herself, sobbing, into Paul's arms. Instead, she ran through all the possible reasons her lover might be sitting in this desolate mountain pass with a passel of Albanian soldiers, and why he hadn't told her he was coming or offered her a ride himself. The answers she came up with made her shrink back into the shade of the tarp. But it was too late.

Sensing her presence, Paul looked up. "Jane," he said. "Oh my God. What are you doing here?"

Like it was a big surprise. She thought back on the argument at the restaurant. Paul announcing in a loud voice that he couldn't allow the embassy courier to drive her to Macedonia.

His look of near gloating-she now realized-when Bashkim had offered a ride.

"You planned this," Jane said. "You set him up."

"That's ridiculous," Paul said, but his voice was as hollow as his eyes.

He glanced over her shoulder, and grim satisfaction spread across his face. She turned and saw the soldiers unloading boxes from the trunk of Bashkim's car. They had found the machine gun, too. Over to the side of the road, Bashkim lay spread-eagle on the ground. One of the soldiers kicked him as he passed and the prone man gave a strangled cry.

"Stop it, you bastard, we need him for questioning," the crew-cut man called.

Paul cursed and jumped out of the cab. He walked toward the soldier and in the moments that followed, Jane saw a different man than the one she had known. His bearing, even the tenor of his voice, changed. He was self-assured, in charge, bristling with power. The soldier cowered as Paul dressed him down in perfect-sounding Albanian.

Jane listened, astounded. Paul had told her he was hopeless with languages. Now this stranger walked back to her and said, "I'm sorry, Jane. But you were never in danger. We were tracking you with the global positioning device." He nodded smartly at the cell phone, which she still clutched impotently in her hand. "Led us right to the safe house."

Realization bore down like an oncoming train that would smash her into a thousand pieces. She had been the decoy. A nicely turned-out Western woman. Each side had used her. Something did break in her then. But to her surprise, when she examined the sharp and deadly pieces, she found that they had their own terrifying beauty and usefulness.

"What did Bashkim do?" she asked, willing her voice not to tremble.

"Our pal over there is one of the biggest smugglers in Tirana. Remember when the country rioted and looted the armories?

He's been trading machine guns to al-Qaeda for Afghani heroin. We've been watching him for months."

"We? Since when does the embassy track smugglers?"

"The embassy works hand in hand with Interpol."

"You're not some lowly attache, are you, Paul?"

He ran his hands through his hair and looked away. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to.

She felt that sanity was a thin membrane, stretching ever tighter. If she moved even a fraction, it would snap and she'd slip under. Yet she had to know one thing.

"Did you plan this? I mean, from the beginning? Because I thought.it felt."

She shook her head, blinking back tears. She had been played for a fool.

A shadow crossed Paul's face.

He licked his lips. "I never meant." he began.

He didn't get a chance to finish.

Two cars came roaring down the highway from the east, machine guns blazing. As she threw herself to the ground, Jane thought she recognized the vehicles that had peeled past the roadblock. Had they also been in the convoy that had trailed them from Tirana? Gunfire erupting around her, Jane clutched her head and crawled on her belly toward the nearest truck, expecting at any second to be hit and feel no more. Reaching the undercarriage, she rolled beneath it and listened to the shouts, the guns, then the groans of dying men. She prayed no bullets would pierce the gas tank.

After what seemed like hours, the shooting stopped. For a long time, there was silence. In the distance, a bird screamed, the exultant cry of a carrion feeder that spies dinner. Then she heard footsteps. She cowered and curled herself into a ball, wishing she might disappear. A shadow fell on the highway, and she saw a polished leather shoe.

"Come out," said an Albanian-accented voice in English. Bashkim.

She didn't answer.

"If you don't come out, I'll shoot you."

Still she stayed silent, wondering if he was bluffing. She heard the crack of his knees as he squatted. A hand with a gun appeared, angling to and fro, then settling its muzzle blessedly far from where she lay. Jane held her breath as he pulled the trigger. One of the truck's tires exploded with a loud pop and began to deflate. She gave an involuntary scream.

"I knew it." His voice was triumphant. "Last chance, Jane. Next time I aim for your voice."

"Okay," she said. "Don't shoot."

She crawled out and they stared at one another.

"Please," she said. "I didn't know it was a setup."

Bashkim's lips pursed. He looked at where Paul's body lay, eyes staring glassily at the sky. Near his head was a pool of blood. All around her were other crumpled bodies. One of the cars that had shot at them lay on its side, smashed and burning. She looked for the other.

"It went over the edge," Bashkim said. "They couldn't have survived."

"Wh-who were they?" Bashkim grimaced.

"My bodyguards. Don't you know it's dangerous to travel in

Albania?"

"Jesus," she said, seized with an uncontrollable bout of shivering.

Bashkim stared at her, and Jane thought he might be trying to decide whether to kill her now or later. They both knew she'd seen too much to live.

"He betrayed me, too, you know," Jane said.

He examined her indifferently. "So I heard."

He walked to where her cell phone had fallen and smashed it with his heel, grinding it into the asphalt like a cockroach.

"Don't kill me," Jane said. "I'll help you. I've got an American passport, money."

"Yes," Bashkim nodded. "With your passport, we'll breeze through."

He prodded her with the gun, back to the Mercedes. All the tires had been shot out, and smoke was rising from under the hood. She wondered if it might catch fire while they stood there. The trunk stood open, white powder seeping out of bullet-riddled boxes.

More boxes were scattered along the road, next to Bashkim's machine gun, which had been reduced to twisted metal. Bashkim told her to empty her backpack and hand over her passport and wallet, which he put in his pocket. Then he made her tear open the boxes and fill her backpack with the sacks of white powder. Pulling an old rucksack from his trunk, he ordered her to fill that, too. Then, he loaded her up like a pack mule and marched her off the highway, into the rocky countryside to a dirt trail pounded hard by animals.

"The border's about ten miles away. We'll have to stay off the road."

They set off, moving like ghosts through the denuded landscape.

"Let's stop here and rest a moment," he said when they reached a rock outcropping. His tone deliberate and unsettling. Bashkim eased himself down. He stared at her and she looked away, thinking about escape and when she might make a break for it. She needed cover. Bashkim stood up, laid the gun on a rock. He walked toward her as she scrambled to her feet. Suddenly he flung himself at her, knocking her to the ground. Jane tried to wriggle free but he was strong and his weight pinned her. She saw the look in his eyes. Perhaps the day's events had awakened something atavistic in him. Perhaps it had always been there. But she knew she was of no consequence to him anymore. He was going to kill her once they crossed, so it didn't matter what else he did in the meantime.

"Get off me," she panted.

He shoved a hand down her pants and tugged.

"Fucking get off."

"Fucking. Yes, that's what all you American girls like. I knew it the first time I saw you."

"You're wrong. Get off."

She tried to brace one hand against the dirt so she could twist aside and knee him. Instead, her fingers glanced off a large rock. She groped for it. It grazed the edges of her fingertips, just out of reach. Bashkim unzipped his fly.

Jane squirmed backward and flexed her fingers toward the rock. Her fingers nudged it, slid along the rough, granular edges, searching for where it might taper, afford a grip. There. Her hand closed tightly.

Bashkim tore at her underwear and rose up, wedging her legs open with his knee. A bloodlust burned in her. She'd get only one chance. The rock was in the air. Jane shoved her knee into his groin and screamed as she brought the rock down hard against the base of his skull.

He gasped, then was still. She rolled the inert body off of her, scrabbled up. Bashkim was unconscious. Bleeding. She looked at him and felt only a mounting need to zip up her jeans and flee.

She still held the rock, now slick with blood. Forcing her fingers to relinquish it took awhile. Jane panted shallowly, and the enormity of everything that had happened overwhelmed her. Leaning over a thornbush, she retched, cursing her weakness. She had to get to the border before night fell, stranding her. Already, the temperature was dropping. She knew the road below led to the frontier, but she had to stay out of sight. Prodding Bashkim's body with her hiking boot, she pulled out her passport, her money and his wallet. She also took a small black notebook with notations in Albanian and Arabic. Lastly she got the gun. She had never touched one before, but she knew they had safeties. She clicked it on and off a few times to familiarize herself with how it worked, then shoved the gun into her waistband. The cold metal felt reassuring against her skin. For two hours she marched uphill, crouching behind rocks whenever she heard a car. She didn't dare stop, terrified that her legs might lock up for good.

In the long gaps between vehicles, Jane kept her mind rigidly focused on the moment she'd hand the guard her passport and slip across to safety. She didn't see the olive-green truck that said STALIN until she was right above it, in full view of the road. The truck was parked and the young men from earlier were arrayed around, eating. Jane froze, then instinct kicked in and she darted off. With any luck they wouldn't follow. Instead, she heard excited voices, then the truck wheezing into reverse as it began backing up to a spot where it could turn off the highway and come after her.

Jane ran, adrenaline powering a burst of speed, her breath coming in great gulps of despair. She'd never outrace them. But she couldn't let them catch her. She'd seen the sporting look in their eyes, knew how the game would end. She had to hide before they came into view and hope they'd barrel past, consumed by the chase. She folded herself behind an insubstantial rock, praying the afternoon shadows would conceal her, and watched the truck bounce by just twenty feet away, ribald laughter erupting from within. Slipping from bush to rock, she followed them, until the truck turned and headed back to the road, figuring she had doubled back and they'd catch up with her before passport control. That meant she'd have to go cross-country. She was so weary but she forced herself to keep going. Another half mile and she reached the saddle between two summits. Below her stretched the water, dark and gloomy. Lake Ohrid. On the other side of the lake was Macedonia, and freedom.

She scanned the shore, looking for a boat, anything to carry her across. It was too far to swim. In the blue dusk, she made out a solitary figure mending a net. She heard the roar of the truck, the shouts of the Albanian men, and knew they had spotted her once more. But they'd have to follow the road's hairpin curves down to the lake, whereas she could plunge straight down the mountain. The lake stretched for miles, most of it unguarded. It was her only hope. She ran, dislodging avalanches of pebbles and dirt, sliding on her ass and once somersaulting head over heels to plow the ground with outstretched arms before righting herself and continuing her descent.

She could see the figure on the shore now. It was an old man. She felt the steel against her skin and knew she'd kill him if she had to. He watched her. As she drew closer, she saw a head of white hair, blackened teeth, a map of brown wrinkles. His face betrayed no surprise, as if deranged Western women tumbled down the mountain every day.

"Please," she said, sliding to a halt before him, scraped and bleeding. "You must take me across." She gestured to the other side of the lake. "I can pay. Valuta." She pulled out Bashkim's wallet, thrust greenbacks and euros and Albanian dinars at him.

"For you."

To her surprise, the fisherman shoved the money back at her. She panicked, screaming at him in fragments of four languages. Ignoring her, he shuffled to a bush and pulled out a rowboat that lay hidden underneath. An ancient, frayed rope lay curled inside. He began dragging it to the lake and she ran to help him, thanking him in every language she knew.

"But we must hurry," she said, looking over her shoulder to pantomime running and pursuers.

"Ska problema," the old man said. "No problem."

"Besa?" she asked. The besa was a solemn promise, or oath, handed down from feudal times. Albanians would die before violating a besa. But did the old ways still hold?

The Albanian side of the great lake was moving into twilight. The few houses clinging to the slopes had never known electricity. Across the water, the Yugoslav coastline sparkled in warm, inviting twinkles of red and yellow.

She helped him push off and scrambled in.

They were about a hundred yards out when the truck came bouncing across the side of the mountain, the men angry as a swarm of bees. Several had already loosened their clothing. They ran to the water's edge and waded in, firing. She and the old man ducked, bullets sizzling past, skimming the water. The old man grunted and kept rowing, the ropy muscles of his arms straining against his skin.

Jane had the gun ready, just in case, but the fisherman seemed oblivious to her, lulled by the repetitive strokes, the plash of the oars in water. The cries and shouts grew distant, then ceased altogether. The wind kicked up and she shivered. They were suspended in nothingness, floating between worlds. Then the lights began to draw nearer. She watched in greedy hunger as the resort hotels and vacation homes appeared in the twilit murk. Then she heard a scritch as the rowboat hit the pebbly bottom.

"Bravo Yugoslavia," the fisherman said. Again she tried to press money on him but he waved it away, then placed his hand over his heart. The besa fulfilled.

The old man helped her clamber into the icy, thigh-deep water. She waved goodbye and stepped onto the shingle, legs like jelly, and watched the rowboat already easing back into the inky depths. Then she hiked up to the nearest hotel, got herself a room and ordered cvapcici and rice from room service.

The knock, when it came, startled her.

"Who is it?" she called.

When a Slavic voice answered, she cracked the door and saw a waiter with a tray. She opened the door wider for the food and out stepped two men in windbreakers. Before Jane could slam the door shut, one of them had his foot inside. The other passed the waiter a bill. "Thanks. You can go now," the man said in American English.

They came inside and closed the door.

"You did very well, Jane," the first man said. "We were watching from this side, in case anyone made it across. You understand, of course, why we couldn't risk an incident in international waters."

"Who are you? How do you know my name?"

"It's safe to stop running now. Paul was online with us, right before the connection went dead. Why don't you tell us the whole story."

He turned to his companion. "Nick, please relieve Jane of her burden. It must have been so heavy. Where is it, Jane?"

But she had left the bags of white powder behind on a desolate Albanian mountainside, next to what she feared was a corpse. How could they be so stupid to think she'd cross an international border with millions of dollars' of heroin stuffed into a backpack?

Jane fingered the gun at her side and considered her options. She was a sensible girl. Not one of those high-strung ones that fell apart at the drop of a hat.

"There's a lot you don't know," she said evenly. "And I'm the only one who can fill you in. But first I need a square meal and a shower. Then we can cross back over and I'll show you where the drugs are. There's also a notebook that may interest you. Once we take care of business, I'd like one of you gentlemen to drive me to Skopje. There's a conference I really don't want to miss. But I'll be graduating soon. And I can't see myself teaching Balkan literature in some U.S. backwater the rest of my life. So I think we should talk about a job. I understand you have an opening in Tirana."

When Eric Van Lustbader was asked by the estate of the late Robert Ludlum to continue Ludlum's series of thrillers featuring Jason Bourne, he told them he wanted free rein to take the character in new directions. At the time, Lustbader was grappling with the loss of his father. So, understandably, the basis of The Bourne Legacy revolved around the thorny relationship between Bourne and the son he'd for many years assumed to be dead.

Similarly, in Lustbader's latest novel, The Bravo Testament, a father-son relationship fuels the high-powered action and emotional responses of the main characters. This familial emotional resonance will be familiar to Lustbader's fans, as it stretches all the way back to his first thriller, The Ninja.

The Other Side of the Mirror deepens and broadens this theme, but in other ways it's a departure for Lustbader. He wrote the story after one day rediscovering The Outsider, by philosopher/novelist Colin Wilson, in his library. The Outsider had been a seminal book, one Lustbader had devoured during his college days. Reading it again he found new meaning in his own work, which is reflected in The Other Side of the Mirror, a story about a spy-an outsider, if ever there was one- and the terrible toll secrecy and lies take on him. Lustbader, who thinks of himself as an outsider, seems drawn to his sense of apartness. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to be outside society, or if that's precisely how you feel, this story is for you.

He awakens into darkness, the darkness at the dead of night- but it is also the dread darkness of the soul that has plagued him for thirteen weeks, thirteen months, it's impossible now to say.

What he can say for certain is that he has been on the run for thirteen weeks, but his assignment had begun thirteen months ago. He joined the Agency, propelled not so much by patriotism or an overweening itch to rub shoulders with danger-the two main motivations of his compatriots-but by the death of his wife. Immediately upon her death he had felt an overwhelming urge to hurl himself into the dark and, at times, seedy labyrinth in which she had dwelled for a decade before he had discovered that she did not go off to work in the manner of other people.

And now, here he is, twenty-three years after they had taken their vows, sitting in the dark, waiting for death to come.

Christopher Rice's first novel, the Gothic thriller A Density of Souls, was published when he was just twenty-two years old. Being the son of vampire novelist Anne Rice, his novel was met with a great deal of media attention and more than a fair amount of skepticism. But it was The Snow Garden, Rice's second New York Times bestseller, that cemented his reputation as a writer capable of bringing stories with fully realized gay characters to a wider commercial audience.

While his latest novel, Light Before Day, explores the seamy underbelly of Los Angeles's gay ghetto, Rice's consistent focus over the course of three books has been on the complex relationships that develop between straight and gay characters drawn together by a shared trauma. The Snow Garden focused on the murderous deceits that threaten a close friendship between a straight woman and a gay man. Light Before Day centered on the parental relationship that developed between a bestselling mystery novelist and his gay assistant. This same theme can be found here in Man Catch, where a young woman's sudden discovery of a loved one's closeted homosexuality brings a rain of violence down onto a tightly knit family unit.

Man Catch was a challenge for Rice. Unaccustomed to writing short fiction and often praised by his readers for detailed setting and atmosphere, he studied the efforts of Richard Matheson and David Morrell in an effort to tell the most fully realized story in the fewest words. At first, letting go of some of the texture and color Rice loves to include in his work was a frightening challenge. But ultimately, he says, it proved a deeply gratifying exercise.

From her table by the window inside the bustling Starbucks, Kate could see clear across the crowded parking lot and the traffic-snarled interstate to where the setting sun turned the San Bernardino Mountains into looming ghosts on the near horizon. After giving her his laptop computer, Rick had disappeared into the shopping mall next door; she assumed he was ensconced in the racks at Border's, perusing books on fishing or hunting, or one of the other strangely adult hobbies he had picked up from his father following high-school graduation.

This was going to be their first trip alone together, three days at a cabin near Lake Arrowhead, three days without parents checking to make sure they were sleeping in separate beds. In less than a month they would be at different colleges; every hour they spent together was too precious to be wasted in traffic.

Even though her boyfriend had insisted otherwise, Kate was confident they could find an alternate route to the cabin. As soon as she typed in the first two letters of Mapquest, the browser on Rick's computer automatically completed the address with the closest match from its list of recently visited sites.

www.ManCatch.com.

Convinced it was a Web site that taught lazy jocks like Rick how to manage their finances, Kate clicked on the entry. The screen filled with an image of a muscular half-naked Latino man reclining on a white bedspread, one hand draped over the bulge in his white briefs. According to the flashing pink banner above the man's head, ManCatch was the #1 site for man-on-man action in the country. She almost laughed out loud. Surely, Rick had visited the site by mistake.

Then she saw that the computer had been set to remember user names and passwords, not a surprise considering Rick had made it through four years of high school without memorizing a single locker combination. The user name in the entry blank was SoaksGuy. S Oaks had to mean Sherman Oaks, the San Fernando Valley suburb where they had both grown up. The browser's history list told her that Rick had visited ManCatch the night before, at 1:30 a.m., when she had believed him to be asleep beside her.

At her house. In her bed.

Her breaths short and ragged, Kate clicked the LogIn button before she could convince herself not to. Suddenly, she was scrolling through profiles for ManCatch members in which each man spelled out his sexual tastes in a coded language that combined hip-hop affectations with the shorthand her girlfriends used to pass notes in class. (Lookinfor hung dudes! U Can Play? Step 2 da front! HIV-here, U B2.) Most profiles were accompanied by a photo. The first few were harmless enough, mostly shots of bare muscular chests, the heads cropped out, making the subject look like a Greek statue in lousy lighting. Then came several preposterously large erections.

A chair scraped the floor behind her. A silently furious mother was dragging her toddler-age son toward the exit. When the woman looked back and saw that it was a seemingly normal teenage girl who had just exposed her child to such filth, she looked both wounded and baffled, as if her tiny son had just flipped her the bird.

Humiliated, Kate scrolled up until the most offensive photographs were out of frame. She tried to make some kind of sense of what she was seeing. According to the history list, Rick had only made one visit to this site in the past three weeks. But the username and password suggested he planned on becoming a regular. Why then had he let her borrow his computer without a second's pause? Maybe he was a regular and had deleted all evidence of his other visits-except for one.

Nothing fires the imagination like betrayal, she realized. In digital clarity, she saw Rick, in only his paisley boxers, backing silently out of the half-open door to her room, holding his laptop in both hands as if it were the Holy Grail.

Her eyes locked on something she had missed. On the left-hand side of the screen, there was a long menu bar. It was clear Rick might be a regular; now she could find out if he had made any friends. When she clicked on the Buddy List button, only one name came up: FunForRtNow. Next to the name was a photograph of a short muscular brown-haired guy lying facedown on his bed. She thought he was naked at first, then she saw the red waistband of a jockstrap tucked beneath the exposed cheeks of his ass.

When Alex Kava wrote her first novel, A Perfect Evil, she had no intention of making it the beginning of a new series. In fact, the character, FBI profiler Special Agent Maggie O'Dell doesn't enter the story until the seventh chapter. Instead of a series, Kava had simply based her story on two separate crimes that had occurred in Nebraska during the 1980s. One of the crimes, a serial killer who preyed on little boys, happened in the community where Kava was then working as a copy editor and paste-up artist for a small-town newspaper.

Years later, when Kava decided to write a novel, it was the same summer John Joubert-who thirteen years earlier had confessed to and was convicted for killing three little boys- was executed. The other crime, another little boy who was murdered in nearby Omaha several years after Joubert's capture, remains unsolved to this day. These two real-life crimes inspired Kava. However, because of A Perfect Evil and Maggie O'Dell's international success, Kava was compelled to develop a series. The results are four more novels featuring Special Agent Maggie O'Dell: Split Second, The Soul Catcher, At the Stroke of Madness and A Necessary Evil. Her one standalone thriller, One False Move, is also loosely based on a real crime.

Kava believes that truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction, which seems to be reiterated every time she begins research for a novel. One aspect of the Maggie O'Dell series that readers often comment on is the relationship between Maggie and her mother. It can best be described as challenging and confrontational, and definitely a far cry from what we perceive as a typical mother-daughter relationship. And yet, just like in real life there remains a bond, though sometimes unex-plainable and often irrational. Here, in Goodnight, Sweet Mother, Kava takes Maggie and her mother on a road trip to illustrate that relationships, as well as perceptions, aren't always what they appear to be.

Maggie O'Dell knew this road trip with her mother was a mistake long before she heard the sickening scrape of metal grinding against metal, before she smelled the burning rubber of skidding tires.

Hours earlier she had declared it a mistake even as she slid into a cracked red vinyl booth in a place called Freddie's Dine- actually Diner if you counted the faded area where an "r" had once been. The diner wasn't a part of the mistake. It didn't bother her eating in places that couldn't afford to replace an "r." After all, she had gobbled cheeseburgers in autopsy suites and had enjoyed deli sandwiches in an abandoned rock quarry while surrounded by barrels stuffed with dead bodies. No, the little diner could actually be called quaint.

Maggie had stared at a piece of apple pie a la mode the waitress had plopped down in front of her before splashing more coffee into her and her mom's cups. The pie had looked perfectly fine and even smelled freshly baked, served warm so that the ice cream had begun to melt and trickle off the edges. The pie hadn't been the mistake either, although without much effort Maggie had too easily envisioned blood instead of ice cream dripping down onto the white bone china plate. She had to take a sip of water, close her eyes and steady herself before opening her eyes again to ice cream instead of blood.

No, the real mistake had been that Maggie didn't order the pie. Her mother had. Forcing Maggie, once again, to wonder if Kathleen O'Dell was simply insensitive or if she honestly did not remember the incident that could trigger her daughter's sudden uncontrollable nausea. How could she not remember one of the few times Maggie had shared something from her life as an FBI profiler? Of course, that incident had been several years ago and back then her mother had been drinking Jack Daniel's in tumblers instead of shot glasses, goading Maggie into arresting her if she didn't like it. Maggie remembered all too vividly what she had told her mother. She told her she didn't waste time arresting suicidal alcoholics. She should have stopped there, but didn't. Instead, she ended up pulling out and tossing onto her mother's glass-top coffee table Poloraids from the crime scene she had just left.

"This is what I do for a living," she had told her mother, as if the woman needed a shocking reminder. And Maggie remembered purposely dropping the last, most brilliant one on top of the pile, the photo a close-up of a container left on the victim's kitchen counter. Maggie would never forget that plastic take-out container, nor its contents-a perfect piece of apple pie with the victim's bloody spleen neatly arranged on top.

That her mother had chosen to forget or block it out shouldn't surprise Maggie. The one survival tactic the woman possessed was her strong sense of denial, her ability to pretend certain incidents had simply not happened. How else could she explain letting her twelve-year-old daughter fend for herself while she stumbled home drunk each night, bringing along the stranger who had supplied her for that particular night? It wasn't until one of Kathleen O'Dell's gentleman friends suggested a threesome with mother, daughter and himself that it occurred to her mother to get a hotel room. Maggie had had to learn at an early age to take care of herself. She had grown up alone, and only now, years after her divorce, did she realize she associated being alone with being safe.

But her mother had come a long way since then, or so Maggie had believed. That was before this road trip, before she had ordered the piece of apple pie. Perhaps Maggie should see it for what it was-the perfect microcosm of their relationship, a relationship that should never include road trips or the mere opportunity for sharing a piece of pie at a quaint little diner.

She had watched as her mother sipped coffee in between swiping up bites of her own pie. As an FBI criminal profiler, Maggie O'Dell tracked killers for a living, and yet a simple outing with her mother could conjure up images of a serial killer's leftover surprises tucked away in take-out containers. Just another day at the office. She supposed she wasn't as good as her mother at denial, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

Suddenly Kathleen O'Dell had pointed her fork at something over Maggie's shoulder, unable to speak because, of course, it was impolite to talk with a full mouth-never mind that during her brief and rare lapses into motherhood she constantly preached it was also impolite to point. Maggie didn't budge, ignoring her, which was also silly if she thought it would in any way punish her mother for her earlier insensitivity. Besides it had only resulted in a more significant poke at the air from her mother's fork.

"That guy's a total ass," she was finally able to whisper.

Maggie hadn't been able to resist. She stole a glance, needing to see the total ass she was about to defend.

He had seemed too ordinary to need Maggie's defense. Ever the profiler, she had found herself immediately assessing him. She saw a tall middle-aged man with a receding hairline, weak chin and wire-rimmed glasses. He wore a white oxford shirt, a size too large and sagging, even though he had tried to tuck it neatly into the waistband of wrinkled trousers-trousers that were belted below the beginning paunch of a man who spent too much time behind a desk.

He had slid into one of the corner booths and grabbed one of the laminated menus from behind the table's condiments holder. Immediately, he unfolded the menu and hunched over it, searching for his selection while he pulled silverware from the bundled napkin. Again, all very ordinary-an ordinary guy taking a break from work to get a bite to eat. But then Maggie had seen the old woman, shuffling to the table, holding on to the backs of the other booths along the way, her cane not enough to steady her. That's when Maggie realized her mother's pronouncement had little to do with the man's appearance and everything to do with the fact that he had left this poor woman to shuffle and fumble her way to their table. He hadn't even looked up at her as she struggled to lower herself between the table and the bench, dropping her small, fragile frame onto the seat and then scooting inch by inch across the vinyl while her cane thump-thumped its way in behind her.

Maggie had turned away, not wanting to watch any longer. She hated to agree with her mother. She hated even more the "tsk, tsk" sound her mother had made, loud enough for others at the diner to hear, perhaps even the total ass. Funny how things worked.

Maggie would give anything to hear that "tsk, tsk" from her mother now rather than the high-pitched scream she belted out from the passenger's seat. But, had she not been distracted by her mother's scream she may have noticed the blur of black steel sliding alongside her car much sooner. Certainly she would have noticed before the monster pickup rammed into her Toyota Corolla a second time, shoving her off the side of the road, all the while ripping and tearing metal.

Was that her front bumper dragging from the pickup's grille, looking as though the hulking truck had taken a bite out of her poor car? What the hell was this guy doing?

"I can't believe you didn't see him!" her mother scolded, the previous screams leaving her usual raspy voice high-pitched and almost comical. "Where the hell did he come from?" she added, already contradicting her first comment. She strained against her seat belt, reaching and grabbing for the Skittles candies she had been eating, now scattered across the seat and plopping to the floor mat like precious rainbow beads from a broken necklace.

"I didn't see him," Maggie confessed, gaining control of her car and bringing it to a stop on the dirt shoulder of the two-lane highway. God! Her hands were shaking. She gripped the steering wheel harder to make them stop. When that didn't work she dropped them into her lap. She felt sweat trickle down her back. How could she not have seen him?

The pickup had pulled off the road more than three car lengths ahead, the taillights winking at them through a cloud of dust. Between the two vehicles lay the Toyota's mangled front bumper, twisted and discarded like roadside debris.

"Don't go telling him that," her mother whispered.

"Excuse me?"

"Don't go admitting to him that you didn't see him. You don't want your car insurance skyrocketing." "Are you suggesting I lie?" "I'm suggesting you keep your mouth shut." "I'm a federal law officer."

"No, you said you left your badge and gun at home. Today you're a plain ol' citizen, minding your own business." Kathleen O'Dell popped several of the Skittles into her mouth, and Maggie couldn't help thinking how much the bright-colored candy reminded her of the nerve pills her mother used to take, oftentimes washing them down with vodka or scotch. How could she eat at a time like this, especially when it had only been less than an hour since they had left the diner? But Maggie knew she should be grateful for the recent exchange of addictions.

"I haven't been in a car accident since college," Maggie said,rif-fling through her wallet for proof of insurance and driver's license.

"Whatever you do don't ask for the cops to be called," she whispered again, leaning toward Maggie as though they were coconspirators.

She and her mother had never been on the same side of any issue. Suddenly a black pickup rams into the side of their car and they're instant friends. Okay, maybe not friends. Coconspirators did seem more appropriate.

"He sideswiped me." Maggie defended herself anyway, despite her mother being on her side.

"Doesn't matter. Calling the cops only makes it worse."

Maggie glanced at her mother, who was still popping the candies like they were antacids. People often remarked on their resemblance to each other-the auburn hair, fair complexion and dark brown eyes. And yet, much of the time they spent together Maggie felt like a stranger to this woman who couldn't even remember that her daughter hated apple pie.

"I am the cops," Maggie said, frustrated that she needed to remind her mother.

"No, you're not, sweetie. FBI's not the same thing. Oh, Jesus. It's him. That ass from the diner."

He had gotten out of the pickup but was surveying the damage on his own vehicle.

"Just go," her mother said, grabbing Maggie's arm and giving it a shove to start the car.

"Leave the scene of an accident?"

"It was his fault anyway. He's not going to report you."

"Too late," Maggie said, catching in her rearview mirror the flashing lights of a state trooper pulling off the road and coming up behind her. Her mother noticed the glance and twisted around in her seat.

"Oh fuck!"

"Mom!" For all her faults, Kathleen O'Dell rarely swore. "This has not been a good trip."

Maggie stared at her, dumbfounded that her mother thought the trip had been as miserable an outing for her as it had been for Maggie.

"Promise me you won't play hero." Kathleen O'Dell grabbed Maggie's arm again. "Don't go telling them you're a federal officer."

"It'll actually be easier," Maggie told her. "There's a bond between law enforcement officers."

To this her mother let out a hysterical laugh. "Oh, sweetie, if you really think a state trooper will appreciate advice or help from the feds, and a woman at that…"

God, she hated to agree with her mother for a second time in the same day. But she was right. Maggie had experienced it almost every time she went into a rural community: small-town cops defensive and intimidated by her. Sometimes state troopers fit into that category, too.

She opened her car door and felt her mother still tugging at her arm.

"Promise me," Kathleen O'Dell said in a tone that reminded Maggie of when she was a little girl and her mother would insist Maggie promise not to divulge one of a variety of her indiscretions.

"You don't have to worry," Maggie said, pulling her arm away.

"My, my, what a mess," the state trooper called out, his hands on his belt buckle as he approached Maggie's car, then continued to the front bumper where he came to a stop. He looked from one vehicle to another, then back, shaking his head, his mirrored sunglasses giving Maggie a view of the wreckage he saw.

He was young. Even without seeing his eyes she could tell. A bit short, though she didn't think the Virginia State Police had a height requirement any longer, but he was in good shape and he knew it. Maggie realized his hands on his belt buckle wasn't in case he needed to get at his weapon quickly but rather to emphasize his flat stomach, probably perfect six-pack abs under the gray, neatly tucked shirt.

"Let me guess," he said, addressing Maggie even as he watched the owner of the pickup stomping around his vehicle. "You lost control. Maybe touching up your makeup?"

"Excuse me?" Maggie was sure she must have heard him wrong.

"Cell phone, maybe?" He grinned at her. "It's okay. I know you ladies love to talk and drive at the same time."

"This wasn't my fault." She wanted to get her badge from the glove compartment. She glanced back just in time to see her mother shoot her a cautionary look and she knew exactly what she was saying with her eyes, "See, it's always worse when the cops get involved."

"Sure, it wasn't your fault," he said, not even attempting to disguise his sarcasm.

"He was the one driving erratically." Maggie knew it sounded lame as soon as it left her mouth. The boy trooper had already accomplished what he had set out to do-he had succeeded in making her defensive.

"Hey, sir," he called out to the pickup owner who finally came over and joined them, standing over Maggie's mangled bumper, looking at it as if he had no idea how it had gotten there. "Sir, were you driving erratically?"

"Oh, for God's sake," Maggie said, then held her breath before she said anything more. She wanted to hit this cocky son of a bitch, and it had been a long time since she had wanted to hit somebody she didn't know.

"I was trying to pass, and she shoved right into me."

"That's a lie," Maggie's mother yelled over the top of the car. Both men stared at her, as though only now realizing she was there.

"Oh, good," the boy trooper said. "We have a witness."

"My mom's in the pickup," the guy said, pointing a thumb back behind him. They all turned to see a skinny, white leg sticking out from the passenger door. But that was as far as the old woman had gotten. Her cane hung on the inside door handle. Her foot, encased in what looked like a thin bedroom slipper, dangled about eight inches from the running board of the pickup.

"Well, I guess I'll have to just take a look and see what happened. See whose story's most accurate," he said with yet another grin.

Maggie couldn't help wondering where he had trained. No academy she knew of taught that smug, arrogant grin. Someone must have told him the look gave him an edge, disarmed his potential opponents; after all, it was tough to argue with someone who'd already made up his mind and was willing to humiliate you if you didn't agree. It was a tactic of a much older, mature lawman, one who could afford to be cocky because he knew more than he ever cared to know about human nature, one who could back up that attitude if challenged or threatened. This boy trooper, in Maggie's opinion, wasn't deserving of such a tactic.

As soon as she was close enough to see his badge and read his name tag, Maggie decided she knew a few tactics of her own. Three stripes to his patch meant he hadn't even made first sergeant.

"The skid marks should tell an accurate enough story, Sergeant Blake," Maggie said, getting his attention with a sharp look and no grin this time. It was one thing to know his name, quite another to address him by his rank. Most people didn't have a clue whether state troopers were officers or deputies, patrolmen or sergeants.

"Sure, sure. That's possible." He nodded. "I need to see both your driver's licenses before I check out skid marks." And he put his hand out.

Maggie resisted the urge to smile at what seemed a transparent attempt to gain control, to keep his edge. No problem. She already had her license ready and handed it to him. The pickup driver started digging in his shirt pocket then twisted and patted his back pants pockets, when suddenly there came a screech-something between a wail and a holler-from inside his vehicle. "Harold? Harrrold?"

They stopped and turned, but nothing more had emerged from the pickup, nothing besides the white leg still dangling. Then Maggie, her mother and Sergeant Blake all stared at Harold, watching as a crimson tide washed up his neck, coloring his entire face, his ears such a brilliant red Maggie wondered if they actually burned. But just as he had paid her no attention in the diner, Harold made no attempt to acknowledge the old woman now. Instead, he pulled out a thick, bulging wad of leather that was his wallet and began to rummage through it.

Maggie wasn't sure when her mother had wandered away. She hadn't been paying much attention to her. While Sergeant Blake took their driver's licenses and headed back to his patrol car, Harold had stomped up to the highway to see what evidence had been marked in rubber. After surveying the damage to his pickup once more, Harold shook his head, making that annoying "tsk, tsk" sound Maggie's mother had used earlier.

Maggie stayed in her own territory, wanting to tell Harold that he should be grateful. His damage was minimal compared to her ripped-off bumper and smashed driver's side. The gaping wound in her car's front end now had protruding pieces of metal shards like daggers. What a mess! There was no way she was taking the blame for any of this. So it had been several minutes before Maggie noticed her mother now standing in front of the opened passenger door of the pickup, her hands on her hips, tilting her head and nodding as if concentrating on what the old woman inside the vehicle had to say. Just then her mother looked back, caught Maggie's eyes and waved her over.

Maggie's first thought was that the poor woman was injured. Harold hadn't even bothered to check on her. Why hadn't she thought of it sooner? She rushed to the pickup, glancing over her shoulder, but both men were focused elsewhere.

The two women were whispering to each other. From what Maggie could see of the old woman, she didn't look as if she was in pain. However, there were several old bruises on her arms- old because they were already turning a greenish yellow. Her arthritic fingers tapped the seat with an uncontrollable tremor. She seemed even smaller and more fragile inside the cab of the pickup, curled into a hunched-over position.

"He does scare me sometimes," the woman said to Kathleen O'Dell, although her eyes were looking over at Maggie.

"It's not right," Maggie's mother told her, and then, as if only realizing Maggie was by her side, she said, "Rita says he hits her sometimes." She pointed to the woman's bruises, and Rita folded her thin arms over her chest as if to hide the evidence.

"The accident was his fault, Kathleen," Rita said. "He slammed right into your car. But you know I can't say that." She rubbed her shoulders as if they, too, were sore and bruised underneath her cotton blouse.

Maggie watched the two women, surprised that they spoke to each other as if they were old friends. Why was it that Kathleen O'Dell could so easily befriend a stranger but not have a clue about her own daughter?

"Rita says that sometimes he comes after her with a hammer at night," Maggie's mother whispered while she glanced around. Feeling safe, she continued, "He tells her she might not wake up in the morning."

"He's a wicked boy, my Harold," the old woman said, shaking her head, her fingers drumming out of control now.

"What's going on?" Harold yelled, hurrying back from surveying the skid marks.

"We're just chatting with your mom," Maggie told him. "That's not a problem, is it?"

"Not unless she's telling you lies," he said, a bit breathless. "She lies all the time."

Maggie thought it seemed a strange thing to say about one's mother, but Harold said it as casually as if it were part of an introduction, just another one of his mother's personality traits. He didn't, however, look as casual when he noticed Sergeant Blake approaching.

"Funny, she was just saying the same about you," Kathleen

O'Dell said. "That you're the liar."

Maggie wanted to catch her mother's attention long enough to shoot her a warning look. No such luck.

"What's going on?" This time it was Sergeant Blake's question.

"She says you beat her." Kathleen didn't back down from confronting Harold, probably feeling safe with Maggie standing between the two of them.

"Kathleen, you promised," Rita wailed at her, another panicked screech.

Maggie met her mother's eyes, again hoping to stop her, but she continued. "She said you've come after her with a hammer."

There was no grin on Sergeant Blake's face now, and Harold's had resumed a softer crimson color. This time Maggie knew it was anger, not embarrassment, and saw his hands at his sides, his fingers flexing and closing into fists.

"For God's sake," he muttered with an attempted laugh. "She says that about everybody. The old lady's crazy."

"Really?" Sergeant Blake asked and Maggie noticed that the young trooper's hands were on his belt again, but now only inches from his weapon.

"Two days ago she said the same thing about her mailman." Harold wiped at the sweat on his forehead. "For God's sake, she lies about everything."

Maggie looked back at Rita, who had pulled herself deeper inside the pickup. Now she had her cane in her shaking hands as if worried she might need a weapon of her own.

Maggie wasn't sure what happened next. It all seemed like a blur even to a trained law officer like herself. She had seen it happen before. Words were exchanged. Tempers flared and suddenly there was no taking back any of it.

She remembered Sergeant Blake telling Harold he'd need to go with him to the station to answer some questions. To which Harold said he had had enough of "this nonsense." Harold started to walk away, going around to the driver's side of the pickup as if to simply leave. Maybe a more experienced state trooper would have been more commanding with his voice or his presence, but Sergeant Blake felt it necessary to emphasize his request with a shove. Of course, Harold shoved back. Before Maggie could interfere, Harold lay on the ground, the back of his head cracked against the ripped metal of his own pickup. His wide eyes and that blank stare told Maggie O'Dell he was dead even before she bent over him to take his pulse.

In his debut novel, The End of Enemies, Grant Blackwood introduced his hero Briggs Tanner, who, after witnessing the murder of a stranger, finds himself embroiled in a plot that takes him from Japan, to a remote island in the Pacific, and finally to the bullet-ridden back alleys of Beirut. In The Wall of Night, as the world marches toward a catastrophic war, Tanner returns to China to solve a mystery that has haunted him for twelve years. In An Echo of War, Tanner's search for a missing family member turns into a race to secure a biological weapon born in a secret bunker during the dying days of the First World War.

Here, in Sacrificial Lion, Blackwood introduces Henry Caulder, a British spymaster who slips into cold war East Berlin on an impossible mission. In the balance hangs the fate of Europe, and perhaps the world. But Sacrificial Lion is not just a tale of espionage, it's also a legacy of sorts, for Henry Caulder is the grandfather of Blackwood's newest hero, Sam Caulder, who, fifty-five years after Henry's fateful mission, will find himself entangled in a manhunt that pits him against rogue spies, mafia kingpins, Washington's power elite and a billionaire intent on controlling America's future. Blackwood plans several Sam Caulder adventures.

For both Caulders, past and present, the fate of the world hangs in the balance.

But each man is up to the task.

Moscow, January 1953

F. Paul Wilson's urban mercenary Repairman Jack first appeared in his New York Times bestselling novel The Tomb. Here are some Jack facts:

The "Repairman" moniker was not his idea.

Jack is a denizen of Manhattan who dwells in the interstices of modern society. He has no official identity, no social security number, pays no taxes. When you lose faith in the system, or the system lets you down, you go to a guy who's outside the system. That's Jack. But he's not a do-gooder. He's a career criminal and works strictly fee-for-service.

Jack considers himself a small businessman and tries not to get emotionally involved, though he almost always gets emotionally involved. He has a violent streak that worries him at times. A firm believer in Murphy's Law, he thoroughly preplans his fix-its. But things rarely go as planned, and that makes him irritable.

He's low-tech-not a Luddite, but he believes technology is especially vulnerable to Murphy's Law. He believes that men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and government is from Uranus.

Wilson left Jack dying at the end of The Tomb, but resurrected him fourteen years later in Legacies. Since then he has written seven more Repairman Jack novels. Born and raised in New Jersey, Paul misspent his youth playing with matches and reading DC comics. He's the author of thirty-two novels and one hundred short stories ranging from horror to science fiction to contemporary thrillers, and virtually everything in between. He lives at the Jersey Shore, and when not haunting eBay for strange clocks and Daddy Warbucks memorabilia, he dreams up another Repairman Jack tale, like Interlude at Duane's.

Lemme tell you, Jack," Loretta said as they chugged along West Fifty-eighth, "these changes gots me in a baaaad mood. Real bad. My feets killin me, too. Nobody better hassle me afore I'm home and on the outside of a big ol glass of Jimmy."

Jack nodded, paying just enough attention to be polite. He was more interested in the passersby and was thinking how a day without your carry was like a day without clothes.

He felt naked. He'd had to leave his trusty Glock and backup home today because of his annual trip to the Empire State Building. He'd designated April 19^th King Kong Day. Every year he made a pilgrimage to the observation deck to leave a little wreath in memory of the Big Guy. The major drawback to the outing was the metal detector everyone had to pass through before heading upstairs. That meant no heat.

Jack didn't think he was being paranoid. Okay, maybe a little, but he'd pissed off his share of people in this city and didn't care to run into them naked.

After the wreath-laying ceremony, he decided to walk back to his place on the West Side and ran into Loretta along the way.

They went back a dozen or so years to when both waited tables at a long-extinct trattoria on West Fourth. She'd been fresh up from Mississippi then, and he only a few years out of Jersey. Agewise, Loretta had a good decade on Jack, maybe more- might even be knocking on the door to fifty. Had a good hundred pounds on him as well. She'd dyed her Chia Pet hair orange and sheathed herself in some shapeless, green-and-yellow thing that made her look like a brown manatee in a muumuu.

She stopped and stared at a black cocktail dress in a boutique window.

"Ain't that pretty. 'Course I'll have to wait till I'm cremated afore I fits into it."

They continued to Sixth Avenue. As they stopped on the corner and waited for the walking green, two Asian women came up to her.

The taller one said, "You know where Saks Fifth Avenue is?"

Loretta scowled. "On Fifth Avenue, fool." Then she took a breath and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "That way."

Jack looked at her. "You weren't kidding about the bad mood."

"You ever know me to kid, Jack?" She glanced around. "Sweet Jesus, I need me some comfort food. Like some chocolate-peanut-butter-swirl ice cream." She pointed to the Duane Reade on the opposite corner. "There."

"That's a drugstore."

"Honey, you know better'n that. Duane's got everything. Shoot, if mine had a butcher section I wouldn't have to shop nowheres else. Come on."

Before he could opt out, she grabbed his arm and started hauling him across the street.

"I specially like their makeup. Some places just carry Cover Girl, y'know, which is fine if you a Wonder bread blonde. Don't know if you noticed, but white ain't zackly a big color in these parts. Everybody's darker. Cept you, a course. I know you don't like attention, Jack, but if you had a smidge of coffee in your cream you'd be really invisible."

Jack expended a lot of effort on being invisible. He'd inherited a good start with his average height, average build, average brown hair and nondescript face. Today he'd accessorized with a Mets cap, flannel shirt, worn Levi's and battered work boots. Just another guy, maybe a construction worker, ambling along the streets of Zoo York.

Jack slowed as they approached the door.

"I think I'll take a rain check, Lo."

She tightened her grip on his arm. "Hell you will. I need some company. I'll even buy you a Dew. Caffeine still your drug of choice?"

"Yeah. Until it's time for a beer." He eased his arm free. "Okay, I'll spring for five minutes, but after that, I'm gone. Got things to do." "Five minutes ain't nuthin, but okay." "You go ahead. I'll be right with you."

He slowed in her wake so he could check out the entrance. He spotted a camera just inside the door, trained on the comers and goers.

He tugged down the brim of his hat and lowered his head. He was catching up to Loretta when he heard a loud, heavily accented voice.

"Mira! Mira! Mira! Look at the fine ass on you!"

Jack hoped that wasn't meant for him. He raised his head far enough to see a grinning, mustachioed Latino leaning on the building wall outside the doorway. A maroon gym bag sat at his feet. He had glossy, slicked-back hair and prison tats on the backs of his hands.

Loretta stopped and stared at him. "You better not be talkin a me!"

His grin widened. "But senorita, in my country it is a privilege for a woman to be praised by someone like me." "And just where is this country of yours?" "Ecuador."

"Well, you in New York now, honey, and I'm a bitch from the Bronx. Talk to me like that again and I'm gonna Bruce Lee yo ass."

"But I know you would like to sit on my face." "Why? Yo nose bigger'n yo dick?"

This cracked up a couple of teenage girls leaving the store. Mr. Ecuador's face darkened. He didn't seem to appreciate the joke.

Head down, Jack crowded close behind Loretta as she entered the store.

She said, "Told you I was in a bad mood."

"That you did, that you did. Five minutes, Loretta, okay?"

"I hear you."

He glanced over his shoulder and saw Mr. Ecuador pick up his gym bag and follow them inside.

Jack paused as Loretta veered off toward one of the cosmetic aisles. He watched to see if Ecuador was going to hassle her, but he kept on going, heading toward the rear.

Duane Reade drugstores are a staple of New York life. The city has hundreds of them. Only the hoity-toitiest Upper East Siders hadn't been in one dozens if not hundreds of times. Their most consistent feature was their lack of consistency. No two were the same size or laid out alike. Okay, they all kept the cosmetics near the front, but after that it became anyone's guess where something might be hiding. Jack could see the method to that madness: The more time people had to spend looking for what they'd come for, the greater their chances of picking up things they hadn't.

This one seemed fairly empty and Jack assigned himself the task of finding the ice cream to speed their departure. He set off through the aisles and quickly became disoriented. The overall space was L-shaped, but instead of running in parallel paths to the rear, the aisles zigged and zagged. Whoever laid out this place was either a devotee of chaos theory or a crop-circle designer.

He was wandering among the six-foot-high shelves and passing the hemorrhoid treatments when he heard a harsh voice behind him.

"Keep movin, yo. Alla way to the back."

Jack looked and saw a big, steroidal black guy in a red tank top. The overhead fluorescents gleamed off his shaven scalp. He had a fat scar running through his left eyebrow, glassy eyes and held a snub-nose.38-caliber revolver-the classic Saturday night special.

Jack kept his cool and held his ground. "What's up?"

The guy raised the gun, holding it sideways like in the movies, the way no one who knew squat about pistols would hold it.

"Ay yo, get yo ass in gear fore I bust one in yo face."

Jack waited a couple more seconds to see if the guy would move closer and put the pistol within reach. But he didn't. Too experienced maybe.

Not good. The big question was whether this was personal or not. When he saw the gaggle of frightened-looking people-the white-coated ones obviously pharmacists-kneeling before the pharmacy counter with their hands behind their necks, he figured it wasn't.

A relief…sort of.

He spotted Mr. Ecuador standing over them with a gleaming nickel-plated.357 revolver. Robbery.

Okay, just keep your head down to stay off the cameras and off these bozos' radar, and you'll walk away with the rest of them. The black guy pushed him from behind. "Assume the position, asshole."

Jack spotted two cameras trained on the pharmacy area. He knelt at the left end of the line, intertwined his fingers behind his neck and kept his eyes on the floor.

He glanced up when he heard a commotion to his left. A scrawny little Sammy Davis-size Rasta man with his hair packed into a red-yellow-and-green-striped knit cap showed up packing a sawed-off pump-action twelve and driving another half a dozen people before him. A frightened-looking Loretta was among them.

And then a fourth-Christ, how many were there? This one had dirty, sloppy, light brown dreads, piercings up the wazoo, and was humping the whole hip-hop catalog: wide baggy jeans, huge New York Giants jersey, peak-askew cap.

He pointed another special as he propelled a dark-skinned, middle-aged-Indian? Pakistani?-by the neck.

Both the newcomers had glazed eyes, too. All stoned. Maybe it would make them mellow.

What a crew. Probably met in Rikers. Or maybe the Tombs.

"Got Mr. Manager," the white guy singsonged.

Ecuador looked at him. "You lock the front door?"

Whitey jangled a crowded key chain and tossed it on the counter.

"Yep. All locked in safe and sound."

" Bueno. Get back up there and watch in case we miss somebody. Don't wan nobody getting out."

"Yeah, in a minute. Somethin I gotta do first."

He shoved the manager forward, then slipped behind the counter and disappeared into the pharmacy shelves.

"Wilkins! I tol you, get up front!"

Wilkins reappeared, carrying three large plastic stock bottles. He plopped them down on the counter. Jack spotted Percocet and Oxy-Contin on the labels.

"These babies are mine. Don't nobody touch em."

Ecuador spoke through his teeth. "Up front!"

"I'm gone," Wilkins said, and headed away.

Scarbrow grabbed the manager by the jacket and shook him.

"The combination, mofo-give it up."

Jack noticed the guy's name tag: J. Patel. His dark skin went a couple of shades lighter. The poor guy looked ready to faint. "I do not know it!"

Rasta man raised his shotgun and pressed the muzzle against Patel's quaking throat.

"You tell de mon what he want to know. You tell him now! "

Jack saw a wet stain spreading from Patel's crotch.

"The manager's ou-out. I d-don't know the combination."

Ecuador stepped forward. "Then you not much use to us, eh?"

Patel sagged to his knees and held up his hands. "Please! I have a wife, children!"

"You wan see them again, you tell me. I know you got armored-car pickup every Tuesday. I been watchin. Today is Tuesday, so give."

"But I do not-!"

Ecuador slammed his pistol barrel against the side of Patel's head, knocking him down.

"You wan die to save you boss's money? You wan see what happen when you get shot inna head? Here. I show you." He turned and looked at his prisoners. "Where that big bitch with the big mouth?" He smiled as he spotted Loretta. "There you are."

Shit.

Ecuador grabbed her by the front of her dress and pulled, making her knee-walk out from the rest. When she'd moved half a dozen feet he released her.

"Turn roun, bitch."

Without getting off her knees, she swiveled to face her fellow captives. Her lower lip quivered with terror. She made eye contact with Jack, silently pleading for him to do something, anything, please!

Couldn't let this happen.

His mind raced through scenarios, moves he might make to save her, but none of them worked.

As Ecuador raised the.357 and pointed it at the back of Loretta's head, Jack remembered the security cameras.

He raised his voice. "You really want to do that on TV?"

Ecuador swung the pistol toward Jack.

"What the fuck?"

Without looking around, Jack pointed toward the pharmacy security cameras. "You're on 'Candid Camera.'" "The fuck you care?"

Jack put on a sheepish grin. "Nothing. Just thought I'd share. Done some boosting in my day and caught a jolt in Riker's for not noticing one of them things. Now I notice-believe me, I notice."

Ecuador looked up at the cameras and said, "Fuck."

He turned to Rasta man and pointed. Rasta smiled, revealing a row of gold-framed teeth, and raised his shotgun.

Jack started moving with the first booming report, when all eyes were on the exploding camera. With the second boom he reached cover and streaked down an aisle.

Behind him he heard Ecuador shout, "Ay! Where the fuck he go? Wilkins! Somebody comin you way!"

The white guy's voice called back, "I'm ready, dog!"

Jack had hoped to surprise Wilkins and grab his pistol, but that wasn't going to happen now. Christ! On any other day he'd have a couple dozen 9mm hollowpoints loaded and ready.

He'd have to improvise.

As he zigged and zagged along the aisles, he sent out a silent thank-you to the maniac who'd laid out these shelves. If they'd run straight, front to back, he wouldn't last a minute. He felt like a mouse hunting for cheese, but this weird, mazelike configuration gave him a chance.

He hurried along, looking for something, anything, to use against them. Didn't even have his knife, dammit.

Batteries… notebooks… markers… pens… gum… greeting cards…

No help.

He saw a comb with a pointed handle and grabbed it. Without stopping, he ripped it open and stuck it in his back pocket.

He heard Ecuador yelling about how he was going this way and Jamal should go that way, and Demont should stay with the people.

Band-Aids.ice cream.curling iron-could he use that? Nah. Hair color…humidifiers…Cheetos…beef jerky- Come on!

He turned a corner and came to a summer-cookout section. Chairs-no help. Umbrella-no help. Heavy-duty spatula- grabbed it and hefted it. Nice weight, stainless-steel blade, serrated on one edge. Might be able to do a little damage with this. Spotted a grouping of butane matches. Grabbed one. Never hurt to have fire.

Fire.he looked up and saw the sprinkler system. Every store in New York had to have one. A fire would set off the sprinklers, sending an alert to the NYFD.

Do it.

He grabbed a can of lighter fluid and began spraying the shelves. When he'd emptied half of it and the fluid was puddling on the floor, he reached for the butane match-

A shot. A whizzz! past his head. A quick glance down the aisle to where Scarbrow-who had to be the "Jamal" Ecuador had called to-stood ten yards away, leveling his.38 for another go.

"Ay yo, I found him! Over here!"

Jack ducked and ran around a corner as the second bullet sailed past, way wide. Typical of this sort of oxygen waster, he couldn't shoot. Junk guns like his were good for close-up damage and little else.

With footsteps behind him, Jack paused at the shelf's endcap and took a quick peek at the neighboring aisle. No one in sight. He dashed across to the next aisle and found himself facing a wall. Ten feet down to his right-a door.

Ted Bell wrote his first novel for children. In the pre-Harry Potter 1990s, Bell lived in London. The generally inclement weather kept his nine-year-old daughter indoors much of the time. Fine reading weather but, in the neighborhood bookstores, the children's fare was dominated by horror and "message" books. Where was Treasure Island, Captain Blood or their modern equivalents?

So Bell wrote a young-adult novel that recaptured the adventure and romance of his own childhood favorites. In Nick of Time, a boy of eleven and his seven-year-old sister conspire to thwart the Nazi invasion of their small Channel Island just prior to the Second World War. With the aid of a time machine, Nick and Kate also save Nelson's fleet from the wicked pirate Billy Blood. The book was optioned by Paramount Pictures and ultimately translated into seven languages.

After retiring from advertising, Bell began the Alex Hawke series of adult thrillers. Like his first novel, the new books recapture a lost sense of adventure and glamour. The hero of Hawke is Lord Alexander Hawke. As the series begins, three renegade generals abduct Fidel Castro, and turn Cuba into an immediate and frightening threat to the U.S. In the second of the Hawke series, Assassin, Alex Hawke battles an ancient cult of killers who are eliminating U.S. ambassadors and their families, prior to launching a horrific attack on America. The third Alex Hawke book, Pirate, debuted on the New York Times bestseller list. This time, Alex Hawke must stop a French-Chinese oil conspiracy and avert a nuclear showdown with America's latest global rival, China.

The Powder Monkey is a bit different. Here, we travel back in time to 1880. It's the tale of a lovelorn newspaperman's journey to the Channel Islands to learn the true story of the pirate captain Billy Blood's demise. In doing so, our hero learns how a small boy held captive aboard Blood's frigate, Mystere, is saved from certain death.

The boy's name is Alex Hawke.

And his dramatic rescue sets the stage for the further adventures of his later namesake.

London and the Channel Islands, 1880

Legal thrillers have always provided high drama and intense conflict. As a child, M. Diane Vogt was a devoted fan of Perry Mason. Every week, Vogt and her dad would watch Erle Stanley Gardner's Mason outsmart the bad guys on television, matching wits with Mason in the process. Those evenings were at least in part responsible for Vogt becoming a lawyer and, many years later, writing legal thrillers. She is the author of the highly acclaimed and popular Judge Wilhelmina Carson series.

Vogt believes that fictionalization of the legal world is necessary to good stories. But, like Gardner, she takes little dramatic license with the lawyers she portrays and the world they inhabit. From an insider's perspective, she shows what actually happens in lawsuits, courtrooms and lawyers' offices, not just in criminal matters, but in civil cases-where most people collide head-on with the law.

Karen Ann Brown is a young lawyer disillusioned with the law's compromises enough to leave her job as a prosecutor and strike out on her own. She now works as a "recovery specialist," with a cover identity as a travel writer. Karen is forced to make tough choices when her clients' needs are thwarted by gaping holes in the law, particularly concerning children abducted by their parents. Surviving Toronto was inspired by the plight of Vogt's good friend, who was embroiled in a futile ten-year custody battle. It's a tale of irrational anger and rage, something all too familiar to many divorces. But, luckily, Karen Brown is watching.

Dressed in black, Karen Brown was indistinguishable from her surroundings. Ambient light was nonexistent in the expensive, quiet neighborhood, where crime should've been nonexistent. The microwave clock glowed 3:00:15 a.m.

She switched the Sig-Sauer's grip to her left hand, raised her right to rub her sore neck and stretched her shoulders. Man, she hated custody battles. But this one was different, not because of the challenge, but the parties.

Karen leaned back, ankles crossed, heels propped on the kitchen table, and settled in to wait through the remainder of the third night.

Jeffrey London, as malevolent a bastard as ever drew breath, was far from stupid. He would try again to steal his daughter. If not tonight, then tomorrow or another night soon. She felt it. And she knew Jeffrey. Instinct and preparation had saved her life before. She wouldn't ignore them now.

Combating boredom, her thoughts wandered to Jeffrey when she'd been in love with him. He was her first college romance and she'd felt as treasured as a rare art object, although the warning signs were there. A chill ran through her. How narrowly she'd escaped his bondage when he dumped her for sexier, younger, more fun-loving and naive Beverly.

Ten years later, Karen felt not only grateful to have escaped, but guilty. Survivor guilt was what psychologists called it. Irrational perhaps, but real enough. Jeffrey had to marry someone. Karen had tried to warn her, but Beverly's inexperience prevailed and the two began the destructive tango that led them all here.

Karen knew exactly why she'd accepted this job. A second chance to save Beverly and her child before Jeffrey destroyed them. Maybe Beverly had forgotten her worth, but Karen would not.

At 3:34:17, as if her thoughts had conjured him, she heard Jeffrey's heavy tread on the squeaky plank decking. Karen pressed the remote button to activate the security camera outside the back door. The night vision would record everything in an eerie green glow.

Karen blended with the darkness and waited, holding the Sig in her right hand, ready to use it. But not too soon. Only when he left the premises with Deidre would he be guilty of kidnapping.

Should she be forced to confront him before then, he'd claim he wasn't taking Deidre anywhere. Beverly was the custodial parent, but Jeffrey had bought and still owned this house. Technically, he wasn't trespassing and he could visit whenever he chose. His twisted lies had persuaded Beverly to excuse his behavior before.

Karen timed him. Jeffrey spent exactly twelve seconds forcing the lock and opening the back door. She smiled to herself. He should have tried the old key. She'd made sure it would work.

The alarm began its incessant bleat. Karen breathed silently, disturbing the air as little as possible. Jeffrey had the instincts of a predator. He would sense her presence if she made the slightest sound.

He crossed the tile to the alarm panel next to the refrigerator. He rapid-punched the six numbers of his wedding date, the code he and Beverly had chosen when he still lived here. Before their bitter divorce. The alarm stopped. He turned, never glancing in her direction.

Arrogance was Jeffrey's Achilles' heel. It simply didn't occur to him that anyone would be watching. She grinned to herself inside the black ski mask she wore over her head and face.

She watched Jeffrey climb the stairs and cover the short distance to the first door on the right. He paused. The night-light illuminated him enough that the camera would record perfectly. He showed his face to avoid frightening his daughter, to keep her quiet and not awaken her mother. Beverly's sheer terror tomorrow morning when she found Deidre missing was much of what the sadistic asshole wanted to accomplish. He wanted Beverly off balance and afraid. He would always control her and Deidre as surely as if they were confined to prison.

He glanced around, maybe assuring himself that he'd made it this far, that Beverly slept soundly down the hall. Then he faced the door to Deidre's room, opened it and crept inside.

He emerged shortly with the sleeping girl in his arms. She was dressed in white pajamas. Strawberry curls framed her cherubic face and cascaded down the back of his arm. She didn't stir.

He eased the door almost closed, leaving it as Beverly had when she saw Deidre last, and descended the stairs in silence. Karen waited. Her right hand held the Sig firmly pointed in Jeffrey's direction. She'd shoot him if he forced her to.

If Jeffrey saw her, he would do something stupid. Something that might hurt Deidre. The child's safety was paramount.

He snuck out the back door and closed it without a sound. Karen activated the tiny camera she wore in a pendant around her neck, waited until she heard the creaking boards under his feet and hurried out behind him. She followed him to the street where he'd parked a dark SUV.

Jeffrey was bent over, placing Deidre in the back seat when Karen came up behind him.

"Move away from the car. Much as I'd like to shoot you…" She allowed her deep, husky voice to trail away.

He stepped back, cavalierly raised both hands palms out.

"Turn around," she said quietly, hoping not to awaken Deidre. He complied. He saw the gun, pointed now at his chest. "Smile," she said, picking up the pendant and pointing the micro camera directly toward him. "A picture's worth a year of testimony, isn't it?" She photographed Deidre sleeping in the vehicle, too.

She'd argued with Beverly and Beverly's sister, Brenda, for hours about this part of their plan. Beverly had cried, said she didn't want her child's father incarcerated. She wasn't desperate enough yet. But Karen knew she would be. Released and alone, Jeffrey would take his daughter again, not because he loved her, but because he owned her. Deidre would never be safe from him. He should have gone to prison for battering his wife. Or when he stole Deidre the last two times. But Beverly had refused to testify. Now she had proof, when she needed it.

Jeffrey stared at Karen, wary but unafraid. Her lanky frame was indistinguishable from a man's in these clothes. And she held an equalizer pointed at his heart. Did he recognize her voice? Probably, although they hadn't talked in years. She could almost see him calculating his next move.

"If you ever set foot in Florida again, the video of tonight's escapade will be delivered to the U.S. Attorney's Office. You'll die in prison."

He smirked. He wasn't afraid of her. Karen's hand itched to smash the gun into his face, but she kept calm.

"Move to the front of the car." He sidled to the center in front of the grille. Her gaze never leaving him, the gun steady, Karen bent down and lifted the little girl. She stirred, but didn't waken.

When she was sure Deidre was secure in her grasp, Karen distanced herself from the SUV. "Get in and drive away."

Hands in his pockets, Jeffrey sauntered around to the driver's side and opened the front door. Instantly, the car alarm sounded, repeated long blasts of the horn. The cacophony awakened Dei-dre. When she saw the black-clad apparition holding her, she began to cry and kick, yelling, "Let me go! Let me go!" Karen grabbed her tightly to keep her from taking them both down to the ground, but the gun didn't waver.

"Hush, Deidre. It's me, Aunt Karen. It's okay. Be quiet now."

"Aunt Karen?" the astonished child cried, tears and screams coming to a shaky, tentative halt.

Jeffrey now had one leg in the SUV, his weight shifted toward the driver's seat. He pressed the key fob to silence the blasting horn, and then flashed a sardonic grin. "How nice to see you again, Karen."

She stiffened and extended the gun, her intention clear. "Don't forget what I told you, Jeffrey. No contact. Go."

"You think I take orders from you?" He slid into the SUV, started the engine, rolled down the window and threw a stare of pure hatred at Karen. She shivered imperceptibly. She'd made an open enemy. Somehow, he would prove he controlled her, too, along with everything in his world, no matter what the cost.

All pretext of the gentleness he'd shown his daughter gone, he said, "You'll be sorry you screwed me, Karen."

"I've been sorry about that for years."

Numbered Account was Christopher Reich's first book. And not just his first work to be published, but the first Reich ever tried to write. He never took an English class in college. The drawers of his work desk did not contain drafts of earlier novels, short stories or aborted screenplays. Numbered Account was it for him. One chance to make it as a writer or return to the salt mines of the financial world-more mergers and acquisitions-more back to work. "The struggling writer, the starving artist.-.that's the other guy," Reich liked to say.

Numbered Account came from Reich's own wanderings of the snowy, cobblestone alleyways of Geneva, on his way to and from work at the Union Bank of Switzerland. There, he learned the sophisticated art of handling money for the richest people in the world. For Reich, the seeds of Numbered Account were planted on his first day of work. But it was six years later before he realized that some people are cut out for fourteen-hour days and he wasn't one of them. So Reich decided to write a novel and always knew that it was going to be a thriller. To his credit, Numbered Account went on to become a New York Times bestseller.

Assassins, the story for this collection, finds the hero of Numbered Account, Nick Neumann, back on Swiss soil with a new mission. This is the first time Reich has written about Nick since 1997. All thriller writers know that it's never wise to fall in love with any particular character. Who knows when they might turn a corner and walk right into a knife, or a gun, or a poison-tipped umbrella?

So Nick Neumann should tread carefully.

Nick Neumann sat stiffly in the corner booth, back pressed against the leather banquette, shoulders pinned in the finest Swiss tradition. He was tired and hungry, and he wished the dinner would come so he could get on with the job. He placed his hands on the tablecloth, willing himself not to adjust the cutlery or examine the stemware. The heavy sterling knives and forks and spoons were, he noted, perfectly placed. The glasses were made of Austrian crystal, and absent the slightest smudge. Whenever he wondered how he had survived so long, the answer always came back the same. Details.

Turning his head, he let his eyes wander the restaurant. At a few minutes past seven, the Kronenhalle was nearly full. It was a Friday, and the weather had been unseasonably cool for early October. He had always thought of the Kronenhalle as a cold-weather restaurant. The tightly placed booths, the bold lighting, the crisp tablecloths, the bustle of waiters across the hardwood floor, the chef guiding his gleaming wagon down the narrow aisles, and of course, the hearty cuisine. All of it conspired to create a cozy formality, a warm and convivial antidote to rain and snow and biting wind.

Expertly, he scanned the dining room for a familiar face. The men were ruddy, well fed and prosperous. The women were elegantly dressed, and, if not as beautiful as their Parisian or Roman counterparts, as immaculately coiffed. He recognized no one and admitted to relief. Anonymity was a cornerstone of his profession.

Neumann checked his watch. He had ordered eleven minutes ago and his appetizer had not yet been served. Not long by any measure, but he was more nervous than the assignment demanded, and anxious to see it to its completion.

Zurich.

Years ago, he had lived in this city. He had worked at a prominent bank. He had fallen in love. He had killed a man and put another in prison. His stay had been short-a few months, no more-but his memories of it had proven long-lived. It was those memories that made him restless and antsy. Not for the first time, he wondered if he should have turned the job down.

Just then, the table rocked slightly as the chef arrived with his wagon. A wineglass teetered and Neumann rushed to stop it from overturning. Point against.

"Gerstensuppe?" The name on the smock read "Stutz." Wrong man.

"Bitte," said Neumann, not caring to meet his gaze.

With ceremony, the chef dipped his ladle and poured a generous cup of soup. The aroma of beef stock and barley tickled Neumann's nose. The brass stockpot was polished as well as a symphony instrument. Point in favor.

Neumann picked up his soupspoon and began to eat. He noted the broth's consistency, the pleasant aftertaste of sherry and mark. The temperature was ideal. The flavor full bodied but clean. Invariably, he dined alone. It was one of the challenging aspects of the job. Still, if he must dine by himself, at least he dined well. He never arrived in a city without having laid out his culinary itinerary in advance.

Details.

Tonight, the gerstensuppe would be followed by a warm nus-sli salad with chopped bacon and crumbled Stilton cheese, and as an entree, the specialty of the house, zurigeschnetzltes mit rosti. For dessert, there would be chocolate mousse and coffee. Besides an aperitif of champagne, he did not drink. A man in his profession was wise not to dull his senses.

It was then that he saw him.

There, across the room, removing his trench coat and hanging it on the rack, was Milos the Greek. He was grayer, his posture bent more than in the past, but it was him, all the same. There was no doubting the sharp nose, the tortoiseshell glasses, the hair combed and parted with military precision. Neumann had taught himself never to stare, but for a moment he couldn't help himself.

The Greek was in Zurich.

Calmly, he continued with his soup. He tore off a roll and buttered his bread. He sipped his flute of champagne. But all the while he kept a discreet eye on the Greek who, like him, was seated alone at a table in the main salle, back to the wall with a view on the entry and exit. Another man with a past. A fugitive unsure where and when an enemy might appear with retribution foremost on his mind. A professional who did not welcome surprises.

When Neumann looked up from his soup, the Greek was smiling his sly smile, his hard gray eyes locked on his own. He had been spotted, too. A shiver passed through him. Recognition was a constant risk. Some wore disguises: wigs, mustaches, spectacles. Some even tinted their hair and dressed against type. But not the Greek. He'd never made his identity an issue. Neumann had decided he wouldn't either. For better or worse, his face was a liability to be factored into his assignments.

Neumann raised his eyebrows and gestured toward the empty seat across from him. For a moment, the Greek hesitated. There was no etiquette governing what two men in their profession were to do should they meet. They had never been formally introduced, yet by reputation they were well acquainted. These days it was a small world, and in their rarefied circles, smaller yet.

The Greek was renowned for his hawk's eye. It was said that he was able to spot the smallest slipup, the split-second lapse that led to a target's demise. When he found the killspot, he was merciless.

Neumann knew his own reputation, as well. They said he had an uncanny ability to pinpoint the larger flaws, the structural weaknesses that would compromise the target. Bravado was his strong suit. Even the long-entrenched Capos, protected by their armies of minions and bully boys, were not safe from his reach. Some questioned his abilities, claiming an American didn't possess the finesse for the work. Not in Europe. They said he was best left to the gunslingers in Las Vegas and Miami Beach. The loudmouthed impresarios in Manhattan. And the braggarts in Beverly Hills. Six years in the trade said they were wrong.

The Greek shrugged, rose from his table and ventured across the room. "Finally, we meet," he said, offering an arthritic hand.

Neumann stood. "A pleasure. Won't you join me?"

The Greek sat down and spent a long moment placing the napkin in his lap, adjusting his necktie, pulling the cuffs from his sleeves. Finally, he looked up. "I trust you ordered the specialty of the house."

"Each year I think of choosing something else, but can't quite force myself to do it."

"In summer, I prefer the Dover sole. I ask them to grill it, then add lemon juice. Never any butter."

"I'll make a note of it." But Neumann was sure to keep his hands away from his jacket for fear of upsetting the uneasy truce.

The Greek leaned forward, beckoning with his trigger finger. "I've heard rumors."

Neumann shifted uncomfortably. "Oh?"

"They say that you enjoy your work as much as I do."

Neumann considered this. "It's a living."

The Greek laughed richly. "A paltry one for the services we provide. We cull the weak from the strong. I think of it as 'natural selection.' Tell me one thing. Are you satisfied?"

"More or less. You?"

"After so many years, there can only be one answer. However, I find that it's hard on the soul. I only think of the bad ones. I feel as if my hands were covered in blood. So many dreams destroyed. I sleep poorly."

The waiter arrived. The Greek made sure to hear the specials, then said, "The same as my friend."

"And the champagne…Veuve Clicquot is acceptable?"

"Eminently." The Greek measured Neumann with a respectful eye. "You're here on assignment."

"Unfortunately. And you?"

"I can't afford to quit. A tip.Rome.Sabatini.the trout isn't bad."

"Beirut.Alfredo's.minced lamb and couscous. Passable." "You travel to Beirut?"

"The region's a bit unstable, but if you know your way around, it can be lucrative."

The Greek motioned toward his jacket. "May I?"

Neumann studied the cut of the coat, then said, "Yes."

"My memory isn't what it used to be." The hand dug out a small notepad and jotted down a few words. "Did you hear about Yuri? He let one off the hook."

Neumann didn't bother hiding his shock. Yuri's reputation was second to none. He was ruthless, daring, and always relentless. A master. "Was he terminated?"

"There are no second chances in this game. At least, he can be thankful it was quick."

"What happened?"

"They lured him back to the head office in Paris. The Boss likes to do it in person." To make his point, the Greek made a grotesque pantomime of slashing his own throat. Despite himself, Neumann winced. The Greek removed his glasses and spent a long moment polishing them with his napkin. "And now you and I together in Zurich?" he said absently. "After the same target. Hardly a coincidence, I imagine."

"Probably not."

"Contract or freelance?"

"Contract. You?"

"Same as ever."

"And so?"

"We do what we must do. It is our calling. May I wish you luck."

"Likewise." Neumann smiled to himself, viewing the assignment with added relish. He'd always enjoyed competition, the zest of going face-to-face with another as well trained.

The meal arrived. Heaping portions of sliced, infinitely tender veal bathed in a delicate cream sauce were portioned onto generous wedges of lightly fried potatoes. He picked up his knife and fork, hesitating at the last instant. "A Bordeaux? After all, for one of us, it is to be his last meal."

"The LaTour '79 would be suitable."

"Eminently," said Neumann.

Brad Thor spends a lot of time in Greece and has always wanted to set a novel there. When he was approached to write for this anthology, he knew right away that he wanted to write about an idea that came to him in the Greek Islands several years ago.

For decades a terrorist organization known as 17 November wreaked havoc throughout Greece. In fact, the United States still spends more money defending its embassy in Athens than any other embassy in Europe. It started in 1975 when the organization assassinated the CIAs Athens station chief with what would become its trademark.45-caliber pistol. Since then, the group has claimed responsibility for twenty-one murders, four of which were U.S. diplomats. Though 17 November's initial attacks were directed at senior U.S. officials and Greek public figures, they eventually expanded their targets to include ordinary citizens, foreign businesses and European Union facilities.

Thor was always perplexed by the government's inability to make any progress in bringing 17 November to justice. For years, no member of the organization had ever been arrested, and no clues as to who was orchestrating their attacks had ever been found.

A breakthrough occurred in 2002 when a bomb being carried by a forty-year-old icon painter prematurely detonated in the Athenian port of Piraeus. The bomber was also carrying a set of keys and a prepaid telephone card, which led police to an apartment in downtown Athens packed with antitank rockets, missiles and other weapons. Within two weeks, police uncovered a string of 17 November safe houses, two of which contained additional caches of weapons, disguises and the group's signature.45-caliber Colt 1911 semiautomatic pistol used in some of their most high-profile assassinations.

Since those successes things have been relatively quiet in Greece, but intelligence officials are concerned that several members of the organization may have slipped through their net and have gone deeper underground. These same officials worry that if and when these last remaining members do surface again, it will be with a terrible vengeance.

Which brings us to The Athens Solution.

June 12 Athens, Greece

U.S. ambassador to Greece Michael Avery picked his way through the late-afternoon throng of tourists clogging Athens's famous Plaka district. Behind him, a team of CIA operatives mixed within the crowd, while two streets over, in a nondescript van, a contingent of heavily armed Diplomatic Security Service agents and NSA communications experts followed as closely as they dared. Avery had been told to come alone, but both the Departments of State and Defense would hear nothing of it. Too much was at stake.

With his crisp white sport shirt and blue blazer, Avery looked like any other upscale Westerner visiting Greece during the height of the tourist season. He even had a small backpack casually slung over one shoulder. But unlike the other backpacks around him, his contained an encrypted laptop, complete with a wireless modem and sophisticated remote-viewing application.

He was passing a small outdoor cafe with a nice view of the Acropolis and the majestic Parthenon atop it when his cell phone rang.

"Stop here and take a table," said a voice with a heavy Greek accent. "You know what to do next."

Yes, the ambassador did know what to do next. A CD ROM and final set of instructions had been delivered to the embassy that morning. The instructions indicated that the CD could only be used once and that any attempts to copy or crack it before the appointed time would result in all of its data being destroyed.

Avery sat down at a table and, after ordering coffee, removed the encrypted laptop from his backpack and powered it up. The CD whirred in its tray. Within moments an instant-message screen appeared and the words, "Good afternoon, Mr. Ambassador. Thank you for coming," flashed.

Back in the van, the NSA communications experts could see in real time exactly what the ambassador was seeing, thanks to the laptop's remote-viewing application, and began trying to locate the source of the transmission.

Are you prepared to transfer the funds? appeared next.

How do we know the merchandise is authentic? typed Avery.

One word was returned, Watch.

The ambassador's screen split into two separate windows. Next to the dialogue box, an image came up entitled JFK/ATC. He discreetly tilted his head and spoke toward the microphone sewn into the lapel of his blazer, "Are you getting this?"

"Loud and clear. So is Washington," replied one of the techs in the van. A satellite uplink was beaming everything back to the States for verification.

Avery pressed the mini-earpiece farther into his ear as he anxiously awaited word. Seconds later, it came.

"Verification complete. Mr. Ambassador, you are looking at a live picture of JFK's Air Traffic Control system."

Knowing what would happen next sent chills down Michael Avery's spine. His hands shook as he typed the following message, We are ready to proceed.

One by one, aircraft started disappearing from the screen.

Ninety seconds later, the NSA man's voice came back over the ambassador's earpiece. "JFK is reporting a major ATC system malfunction. They're losing track of aircraft left and right. The merchandise is authentic. You are authorized to complete the transaction."

Initializing funds transfer, typed the ambassador as he began the predetermined sequence. The green status bar seemed to take forever. When the Transfer Successful message finally materialized on the screen, aircraft flying in the New York area began reappearing on ATC radar.

Simultaneously, a third window appeared on the ambassador's laptop. In it, he could see a live picture of the device the United States had just paid so handsomely for. As the image widened, he could see the Parthenon in the foreground.

"We're on it," said one of the NSA men over Avery's earpiece as the van took off to claim the merchandise.

The ambassador continued to watch the feed as a pair of hands came into view, picked up the device and secreted it inside the nearest trash can, as agreed, for pickup.

"Sir," said one of the CIA operatives as he approached the table. "There's a car waiting. We'd like to get you back to the embassy."

Avery nodded his head and was just about to shut down his laptop when he noticed the live image from the Acropolis was moving. There were jerky flashes of legs and feet as someone moved the camera and repositioned it overlooking the road below. Seconds later, the white embassy van with the Diplomatic Security Service agents and the NSA team entered the frame.

"Jesus Christ," said Avery. "It's a trap. Get them out!"

The CIA operative who had been sitting in the cafe looking over the ambassador's shoulder grabbed both him and the laptop while shouting into his radio, "Beachcomber, this is Point Guard. You've been compromised. Abort now. Repeat. You have been compromised. Abort!"

Before the men in the white van could respond, they heard what sounded like a giant knife tearing through the fabric of the afternoon sky. The ambassador grabbed the laptop back just in time to see a shoulder-fired missile slam through the windshield of the van and explode.

The CIA operative, code named Point Guard, didn't waste any more time. He steered the ambassador out of the cafe and down the closest side street as he radioed the driver of their car to come get them. The other operatives headed for the Acropolis as people ran out of the shops and restaurants around the Plaka in response to the explosion.

As Point Guard and the ambassador turned the next corner, the pair could see the embassy's dark, armor-plated BMW and began running even faster. They were almost there.

Suddenly, a motorcycle screamed out of a nearby alleyway. Point Guard reached for his gun, but he was too late.

One week later Dodecanese Islands Southeastern Aegean, Greece

Lying in the tall grass one hundred meters from a sprawling, whitewashed villa, Scot Harvath used the Leupold Mark 4 scope and Universal Night Sight of his SR25 Knights Armament battle rifle to search for any sign of Theologos Papandreou, the man U.S. Intelligence had fingered as the mastermind behind the murder of Ambassador Avery and his multiagency security detail.

As a Navy SEAL, and now as a covert counterterrorism operative for the U.S. government, Harvath had spent the better part of his professional life pulling a trigger. One of the sadder truths he had learned was that there were a lot of people in the world who needed to be killed. He tried to remind himself that more often than not, the people on the receiving end of his lead-tipped missives were beyond reasoning with. They posed serious threats to the stability and safety of the civilized world and had to be taken out.

Tonight, though, Harvath had his doubts. Something didn't feel right.

Before leaving D.C., Harvath had been fully briefed on the murder of Ambassador Avery. Two years prior, a Greek company headed by a man named Constantine Nomikos had approached the United States to partner up on a technology venture. They were developing a revolutionary new system to better track their fleet of next-generation tanker and cargo ships worldwide. Nomikos needed heavy access to satellite and radar systems to further his research. While reviewing the project, the U.S. had noted several excellent military applications and immediately jumped into bed with them. It wasn't until later in the development process that the Defense Department discovered the device's full potential.

Anything with an electronic guidance system-aircraft, missiles, ships-could be rendered completely invisible to radar. But that was only the half of it. The device could also override guidance systems and remotely control an object's course, speed, tra-jectory-you name it. With the right satellite uplinks, a missile could be diverted off course or a plane could be hijacked without terrorists ever having to set foot on board.

The Defense Department deemed it one of the most exciting and dangerous pieces of technology ever developed. They also gave it its code name, the Achilles Project.

Two weeks prior to Ambassador Avery's assassination, the device had been stolen from Nomikos's research and development facility near the Athenian port of Piraeus. Shortly thereafter, an unidentified organization contacted the U.S. embassy in Athens and offered to sell it back to the United States. Avery and his team had been participating in an operation to recover the device when they were killed.

Despite the fact that a firebomb had been tossed into the car after the shooting and the bodies were burned beyond recognition, ballistics reports indicated that the weapon used to kill Ambassador Avery, as well as the CIA operative accompanying him, was a.45-caliber automatic-the same.45 caliber used in a string of high-profile assassinations attributed to the Greek terrorist organization 21 August.

The name 21 August corresponded to the organization's first attack. On August 21, 1975, they shot and killed the CIA's Athens chief and deputy chief of station. In a long and rambling letter to a left-wing Athenian newspaper, they claimed credit for the murders, spelled out their Marxist-Leninist beliefs and outlined their plans for ridding Greece once and for all of any Western-specifically American-influences.

Be that as it may, the current president of the United States had different plans for 21 August. He was furious that in a country of only eleven million, the Greeks couldn't seem to lay their hands on what every Western intelligence agency agreed was a cell of no more than ten or fifteen people. The "Athens Problem," as it had become known in Western intelligence circles, had been a problem for too long, and he wanted it stopped. He wanted 21 August neutralized before they could mount any more attacks against American interests or, God forbid, sold the Achilles device to one of America's enemies.

The CIA had tentatively identified Papandreou, an associate of Constantine Nomikos, as a key personality behind 21 August. Evidence also suggested he had a hand in the attacks upon Ambassador Avery and his team. The dots didn't connect for Har-vath as cleanly as he would have liked-and certainly not cleanly enough to base a decision to take a man's life, but nevertheless, he had his orders. He had been sent to Greece to take Papandreou out as quickly as possible and recover the Achilles device by any means necessary. Adding to the mission's urgency, the CIA had just learned that 21 August had a buyer for the device-an unidentified Jordanian national, and the transaction was going to take place any day.

Still dubious about the intelligence the U.S. had gathered from its Greek sources, Harvath glanced at his Kobold tactical wrist-watch and wondered where the hell his target was. Papandreou should have been here by now.

Suddenly, the sound of the ocean crashing on the rocky beach below was replaced by the sound of tires crunching down the villa's long gravel drive. Harvath readied his rifle and pressed himself flatter against the damp earth. He prayed to God his superiors back in Washington weren't making a mistake.

A blue Land Rover rolled to a stop before the large double doors of the house. When the driver's door opened Harvath peered through his scope, but it was no good. He couldn't see the man's face. He'd have to wait for him to exit the vehicle.

"Norseman, can you properly ID the target?" said a voice over his headset, thousands of miles away in the White House Situation Room.

"Negative," replied Harvath. "Stand by."

Pressing his eye tighter against his scope, Harvath strained to get a positive identification on Papandreou so he could do his job and pull the trigger.

"Norseman, satellite is giving us only one, I repeat one individual in that vehicle. Can you confirm the subject's identity? Do we have our man?"

Command-and-control elements in the rear always wanted to know everything that was going on in the field. Harvath, though, couldn't give them a play-by-play and pay full attention to his assignment, so he gave them the field operative's polite equivalent of shut the hell up, "Clear the net."

The chatter on his headset fell silent and Harvath watched as the driver began to exit the vehicle. From where he was positioned, he'd have to wait until the man came around the Land Rover and made it to the double doors of the villa before he had not only a clear view of his face but also a clean shot to take him out.

"Ten seconds until subject ID," said Harvath, more for his own benefit than the men and women gathered in the Situation Room.

Three more steps, Harvath thought to himself as the man rounded the grille of the Land Rover.

It was hot and Harvath could feel beads of perspiration collecting on his forehead. What if this wasn't the right guy?

As the man's head came into view, Harvath took a deep breath, held it, but delayed applying pressure to the trigger of his SR25. A few more steps, he thought to himself. A few more steps.

Suddenly a shot rang out and Harvath's target fell face-first in a spray of blood onto the gravel drive.

"What the-" Harvath whispered into his microphone.

"Norseman," came the voice from the Situation Room. "What just happened?"

Harvath scanned the area as best he could with his scope. "We have another shooter on-site and the subject has been downed. Who else is on this job?"

"You're the only operator on this assignment," replied the voice from Washington. "Can you ID the target?"

Harvath stared through his scope at the man lying in the driveway. "Negative. A positive ID is impossible from my position."

Moments later the voice responded. "Norseman, you're going to need to change your position ASAP and get that ID."

"The subject's facedown in the gravel."

"Then get down there and lift him up."

Harvath tried to keep his anger in check. "We've got an active shooter. I need you to pinpoint him for me first."

"Negative, Norseman," said the voice from the Situation Room. "No can do. All the infrared satellite is showing is you and the subject adjacent to the vehicle."

"No heat signature from a recently discharged weapon?" asked Harvath, though he knew if they could see it, they'd tell him.

"That's a negative. No heat signature."

Whoever that shooter was, he was very good and being very careful.

Harvath was truly up against it. There was no way he could move to the driveway, not when the other sniper could be out there waiting for someone to approach the body.

Though he was trained to expect the unexpected, an additional shooter was something Harvath hadn't banked on. Nevertheless, the idea that somebody else might be after the Achilles device was perfectly reasonable, but none of that mattered now. Harvath needed to identify the guy in the driveway and make his way into the villa where the device was supposedly being kept, and to do that, he was going to need a distraction.

Waiting for him two hundred meters offshore was the Amalia, a weather-beaten Greek trawler manned by the only two people in Greece Harvath could trust, Ben and Yannis Metaxas. Harvath had met Ben while his SEAL team was training in the Aegean with the Greek navy. The two had become fast friends, and to this day Harvath still spent a good amount of his vacation time every year kicking back at Ben's beach bar on the island of An-tiparos.

Changing his radio frequency, Harvath raised Ben out on the Amalia and told him what had happened and what he needed him to do. When Ben's flare broke over the water four and a half minutes later, Harvath was already up and running.

He never bothered ID'ing the body-it would have been suicide. Instead, Harvath grabbed the man by the collar, kicked open the villa's double doors and dragged him inside the courtyard. It was only then that Harvath rolled the body over. There was no mistaking the man whose photo he had seen during his briefing in Washington, Constantine Nomikos. What the hell was he doing here? Harvath examined him. Head wounds always bled profusely and he looked like he had lost a lot of blood. Harvath doubted he would make it.

"Goddammit," he mumbled under his breath. Nomikos had picked a hell of a time to come visit his old pal. Changing freqs, Harvath clued the Situation Room in on the development.

With no other vehicles inbound, Harvath was told to shift to locating the Achilles device. Easy for them to say, he thought. Somewhere, very nearby, was a killer who was most probably sent to Papandreou's villa with the same orders as he was.

With the Metaxas brothers offshore on the Amalia, Harvath had no direct backup. He could only rely on himself. He was in the process of rigging a booby trap when the landscaping lights illuminating the neat rows of olive trees throughout the courtyard dimmed and went dark. Harvath had been in this game long enough to know there was no such thing as coincidence. The other sniper had just cut the power. That could only mean one thing-he was about to breach the villa. Harvath needed to move.

Finding the front door unlocked, Harvath quickly made his way inside and searched for the study. Five minutes later, he had uncovered Papandreou's safe. While he knew more than most about safecracking, tonight it made no difference. Secreted behind a false panel was an American-made Safari-brand safe. Safaris were the best and Harvath knew he had no choice but to blow it. The only question was whether or not he'd brought along enough C4.

Considering Safari's impregnable reputation, Harvath prepared to use everything he had. If he overestimated and it resulted in him damaging the Achilles device inside, then so be it. He knew Washington would be glad just to know the device was out of commission.

Taking cover behind Papandreou's desk, Harvath blew the door off its hinges in an enormous explosion. Once the smoke had cleared, he rushed forward only to discover that it was totally empty.

The CIA was positive the device was being kept at the villa- most likely in Papandreou's safe, but apparently that location had seemed too obvious.

Knowing that blowing the safe had drawn the attention of the other sniper, Harvath quickly exited the room and began making his way down the hallway, his SR25 up and at the ready.

He passed several rooms, and was about to pass the kitchen when something caught his eye and caused him to back up. In the middle of the kitchen floor was a trapdoor standing wide open. After double-checking the SureFire flashlight mounted to his rifle, Harvath swept into the kitchen and made his way down the stone steps beneath the trapdoor.

The steps led him into a low-ceilinged, rough-hewn corridor illuminated by a string of bare bulbs. From what he could tell, a generator somewhere at the end of the corridor was powering the lights.

Harvath hated tunnels. They provided little cover and had a rather undesirable propensity for funneling enemy fire right at you.

Hugging the wall, he made his way toward a fissure of some sort at the end of the corridor. He was now well beyond the grounds of the villa above and could smell saltwater from somewhere off in the distance.

He entered the fissure and had to crouch to make it through, but when he emerged thirty-five meters later he found himself in a brightly illuminated grotto with a narrow strip of sandy beach. Upon it were parked two heavily armed, high-end Faral-lon DPVs, or Diver Propulsion Vehicles. The lingering doubts Harvath had harbored about Papandreou's innocence were beginning to melt away.

From the far end of the beach, a flash of sparks and a high-pitched, grinding whine caught Harvath's attention. A figure dressed in black was using what appeared to be a circular saw to carve into a metal canister propped between two large rocks. Har-vath's instinct was to call in what he was seeing to Washington, but he had lost all radio contact the minute he had entered the first subterranean passage.

A million questions raced through his mind, the answers to which appeared to be on the beach.

Harvath found a narrow footpath and carefully picked his way down, never once taking his eyes off the figure so intent upon opening the metal canister wedged between the rocks. When his feet hit the sand, Harvath moved forward as silently as a shadow.

With sparks flying and the grinding of metal upon metal, the black-clad figure never noticed Harvath's approach. When the suppressor of Harvath's SR25 was pressed up against the back of the man's wet suit, he let the saw fall to the ground.

Harvath told the man to turn around slowly, and when he did, Harvath was rendered nearly speechless. "Ambassador Avery," he stated. "I don't understand. I thought you were dead."

An aura of shock was replaced by one of dignity and power as the silver-haired ambassador replied, "Obviously I'm not. Who the hell are you?"

"My name's Harvath. I was tasked by the Pentagon to find your killers."

"The Pentagon? They couldn't find their ass with both hands. I suppose you've also been tasked with retrieving the device."

There was something about looking into the eyes of a dead man that caused Harvath to mentally pull back and play it dumb until he could get a handle on what was going on. "The device, sir?"

"Don't bullshit me," commanded Avery. "That's what this is all about. Put your weapon down and give me a hand. We haven't got much time."

"Where's Papandreou?"

Avery was silent and so Harvath repeated, "Where is Papan-dreou, sir?"

"Somebody took him for a swim," said the ambassador, motioning over his shoulder toward the water. "I don't think he's coming back any time soon."

Harvath looked to where the beach dropped off into the deep water of the grotto. Several feet below the surface he could make out the shape of a man wrapped multiple times in what looked like heavy anchor chain. Pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place.

"And Nomikos?" asked Harvath. "Let me guess. Someone was just trying to help him clear the wax out of one of his ears."

"Who cares? They were both 21 August. All that matters now is that we get the device out of here ASAP."

The hair on the back of Harvath's neck was standing up. He didn't like this. Steadying his SR25 on the center of the ambassador's chest, he ordered, "Get your hands up where I can see them."

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Taking you into custody."

"No, you're not. I've got an assignment to complete. If you get in my way and fuck this up, I'll make sure you burn for it." "Just the way you did in Athens?"

The ambassador fell silent and the only sound that could be heard throughout the grotto was the steady hum of the generator.

"I ought to put a bullet in you right here," continued Harvath, his mind rapidly cobbling together a picture of what must have happened. "Good men on your detail died. And for what? Money?"

"Lots of money," came a voice from behind. "Twenty-five million and counting."

Harvath turned to see the head of the ambassador's security detail, the agent known as Point Guard. In his hands he carried a fully automatic French FA-MAS with a heat shield over the barrel. The man was enormous-almost twice Harvath's size and was wearing an Infrared reduction suit.

Though he didn't mean to, Harvath laughed.

"What's so funny?" demanded Point Guard.

"I was just thinking of that old joke about the difference between a BMW and a porcupine, except in the case of you and the ambassador, this time the pricks actually were on the outside."

Point Guard stepped up to Harvath and wiped the smile off his face with a butt stroke from the MAS across his jaw.

Harvath saw stars and fell to one knee.

"We've all gotta do what we've all gotta do," said the ambassador as he stripped Harvath of his weapons and equipment and tossed them into the water.

"And in your case," added Point Guard as he kept him covered, "you've gotta join Mr. Papandreou for a little swim."

Harvath spat a gob of blood from his mouth and said, "Probably not a good idea. I just ate before I got here."

"Very funny, wiseass."

"Why don't you tell me how long you've been working for 21 August."

The ambassador smiled. "We don't work for them. They work for us. Our associate, Mr. Papandreou, screwed up very bad a while back and we offered not to turn him in if he would be our eyes and ears inside the organization."

"Did the State Department or CIA know about this?"

"Of course not, Papandreou was too valuable an asset to be shared."

"And he used his friendship with Nomikos to steal the device?" "Yes, but Nomikos was no angel. He was the chairman of 21 August."

Harvath was stunned.

"Papandreou had suspected for quite some time that his cover within the organization was blown," continued Avery. "He knew that they were going to come for him eventually. In fact, I suspect that was why Nomikos showed up here tonight. Looking back on it, we probably should have done away with Papandreou much sooner and gotten out of the country, but we had other loose ends to tie up and hindsight is always twenty-twenty."

"So you and Papandreou put this plan together yourselves? The hit on your detail, your car?"

"We threw a couple of bodies in the car," replied Point Guard, "swapped out our dental records and then firebombed them so only the bullets would survive to tell the tale."

Harvath had to hand it to them. "And the entire trail led right back to 21 August. You skated with the money and the device, ready to start a new life anywhere you choose."

"Precisely," replied Point Guard.

"And the Jordanian buyer?"

"Will be meeting us in a hotel on Sicily in three days," said Avery, "so I'm sure you can appreciate that we need to get on with our business."

As Point Guard grabbed a length of anchor chain from a nearby pallet and began to approach, Harvath tried to stall for more time. "So that's it? Papandreou double-crosses Nomikos and 21 August, after which you double-cross him, and your country, then fake your deaths and make off to sell the device to some character who is very likely to be an enemy of the United States?"

"Well said," replied the ambassador as he accepted Point Guard's assault rifle so the man could bind Harvath with the heavy chain.

Harvath made a move to take Point Guard's legs out from under him and get control of his sidearm, but he wasn't fast enough. Point Guard dodged left and brought an elbow crashing down into Harvath's temple, causing him once again to see stars. As he fell to the ground, he felt clumps of sand between his fingers made moist not from seawater but from the blood running from his mouth.

Point Guard worked quickly, wrapping the anchor chain around Harvath's wrists and ankles and then began half dragging, half carrying him into the grotto's saltwater pool. All Harvath could think about was staying alive, but no matter how hard he struggled he couldn't get free.

As Harvath felt the bottom dropping away beneath the bigger man's feet, he knew that any moment now he was going to be let go.

Drowning seemed like one of the most ignoble deaths a SEAL could face and yet that was exactly what was rushing headlong to meet him.

Harvath summoned all of his strength and tried for one more major contortion of his body. If nothing else, maybe he could get a hold of the sick son of a bitch who was about to drown him and take him down, too.

He counted to three and then as fast and as hard as he could rolled his shoulders forward, his hands grasping for any item of his killer's clothing. As he did, there was a snap, followed by a searing pain in his upper arm. Somewhere in the back of his mind, something told him he had just torn something very serious, but he didn't care. All that mattered was staying alive.

Harvath tried again, struggling with all of his might to break free, and then heard another snap. A second later, blood began to drip into his eyes. As he looked up, he saw something bracing his killer's throat and blood pouring out all over. It was only a quick snapshot and before Harvath knew what had happened, the powerful hands that had been dragging him deeper into the water let go.

In an instant, the heavy chain pulled him to the bottom. It happened so quickly he had barely enough time to fill his lungs with air. He tried desperately to locate the upward slope and inch-worm his way back to the beach, but it was no use. The sand was too soft-each time he moved he only dug himself in deeper.

His chest felt like it was pinned beneath a thousand tons of concrete. Every fiber of his body was screaming for oxygen. His vision was dimming at the edges and he knew it was only going to be a few seconds before his mouth automatically opened in one final, desperate attempt at life and his lungs sucked in a hopeless quest for air.

Harvath prepared himself for the end and as he did, he felt something strange bump his back. It felt distinctly like the nose of a shark, which shouldn't have come as any surprise since the grotto most likely opened up onto the sea.

The bump came again, followed by another. Soon, he felt himself being pulled away. He strained to see the animal, but his vision was almost black and the water was filled with blood.

The great beast propelled him forward and he had the eerie sensation of breaking the surface. Immediately, he was jolted by a heavy impact followed by a searing pain in the same spot in his upper arm where he had felt a similar pain moments ago. A popping sound that reminded him of gunfire, but which he knew were actually teeth snapping bone came next and Harvath told himself it would all be over soon. Finally, there was quiet. Deep, cold, the end is finally here quiet.

It was at that moment that Harvath's eyes shot open and he began sucking in hot, greedy gasps of air. Thrashing in the shallow water, he looked to his left and swung to his right, trying to find the shark.

"Easy," said a voice from above as a pair of weathered hands began unwinding the chain from around his wrists and ankles.

Harvath looked up and saw the face of Ben Metaxas. "Ben, what the-"

"Careful, my friend, don't move," he said.

"Why? What's going on?"

"I'm not as good a shot as Yannis, I'm afraid."

Harvath didn't understand. "What are you talking about?"

"Your arm," said Ben.

Looking down at his arm, Harvath saw a long metal shaft and realized what had pierced the throat of his killer-a speargun. Harvath's own wound was almost as serious. The spear had gone straight through his left bicep and almost punctured his rib cage.

"It was very difficult pulling you out of the water."

"But how did you get here?"

Ben held up his mask and swim fins. "There was another boat offshore. We saw a man bringing out supplies from inside this cave. When we couldn't reach you on the radio, we decided to take a look."

Harvath remembered the ambassador. "The other man. What happened to the other man?" "The man on the beach?"

"Yes."

"He's dead," said Yannis as he made he way back toward them. "I shot him with this." Yannis held up Point Guard's weapon.

"What about the canister?" asked Harvath, fighting back the shock beginning to take over his body.

"He dropped it in the tunnel. Don't worry."

But Harvath was worried. They had to secure the canister and get the hell out of there. "We need that canister. Go get it."

Harvath collapsed onto the beach and waited for Yannis to come back with the Achilles device. While he lay in the sand,

Ben did his best to work the spear free of Harvath's arm and dress his wounds. It was an incredibly painful procedure.

The longer Yannis was gone, the more Harvath began to worry. When he did finally return, it wasn't with good news. "I can't find it."

"What do you mean?" said Harvath as Ben helped him to his feet. "The canister is gone."

"That's impossible. We're the only ones here."

"I don't think so. There's a trail of blood leading down the corridor and up the stairs into the kitchen."

Upon hearing that piece of information, the bottom dropped out of Harvath's stomach. "We've got to get upstairs."

Harvath led the way as quickly as he could through the low tunnel, down the corridor and up the stone steps into the house. The trail of blood couldn't be missed. He used the beam of his SureFire to trace it back through the house, out into the courtyard, and right up to the spot where Constantine Nomikos's blue Land Rover had been sitting less than half an hour before. There was no sign of the Land Rover, the device or Nomikos.

Harvath reached for his radio only to realize that Ambassador Avery had pitched it into the water, along with the rest of his gear.

Defeated, Harvath leaned back against the outer wall of the courtyard. He tried to tell himself that it would be impossible for a man as high profile as Constantine Nomikos to hide forever, but Harvath had been around long enough to know that with enough money, anything in life was possible.

He had also been around long enough to know that the good guys didn't always win.

Raelynn Hillhouse's spy fiction draws upon her extraordinary life experiences. As a former smuggler, Hillhouse has slipped through some of the world's tightest security. From the Uzbek-Afghan border region to Central Europe, she's been followed, held at gunpoint and interrogated. Six months before the Libyan Intelligence Service's East Berlin office orchestrated the bombing of Pan Am 103, one of their operatives attempted to recruit her as a spy. Another foreign government later tried, too, but failed.

Hillhouse loves cold war intrigue, but has recently been fascinated by how the war on terror has transformed modern espionage, adding new players, while decreasing the role of traditional ones. Her debut, Rift Zone, a cold war thriller, received widespread critical acclaim. Her next thriller, Outsourced, deals with a Pentagon operative who infiltrates a for-profit, private military corporation suspected of selling seized arms to terrorists. He becomes a target in the multi-billion-dollar war on terror, and the only one he can trust is his ex-fiancee. Unfortunately, she's been hired to kill him.

While researching Outsourced, Hillhouse came across a little-known event that kept nagging at her. She knew her main character, Stella, had somehow been involved in an incident that marked the first time the United States was targeted by fundamental Islamic terrorists. Two weeks after American hostages were seized in Iran in 1979, the U.S. embassy in Pakistan was overrun by Islamic extremists, razed, and two Americans and two foreign nationals lost their lives. This all-but-forgotten incident was actually a key event in the origins of modern terrorism, and was pivotal for Stella, whose life would become entangled in the complex struggle.

Islamabad, Islamic Republic of Pakistan November 21, 1979

In the first draft of Robert Liparulo's thriller Comes a Horseman, the coprotagonists-FBI agents Brady Moore and Alicia Wagner-were helped out of a particularly hairy situation by police sniper Byron Stone. Byron was a moody fellow, renowned as much for his reticence as for his skill with a rifle. Ultimately, pacing considerations trumped Liparulo's (and early readers') affection for Byron, and his scenes wound up being edited out.

Byron, of course, wasn't happy. He nagged at the edges of Liparulo's mind, always asking the same questions: What makes me so gloomy? How did I become so proficient with a gun? What's my story? After a while, Liparulo started jotting down answers, eventually explaining Byron's life in the notes, outlines and fragments of three yet-unwritten thrillers- Recoil, Recon and Return.

While Byron Stone draws blood from Liparulo's own heart, he's also a compilation of Liparulo's acquaintances, including a SWAT sniper and an FBI sniper (imagine their disagreements). These two shared the qualities of quiet, nearly impenetrable machismo and subtly troubled spirits. The taking of lives made them each respect life that much more.

They would kill only when it would save more lives, or a more innocent life. But this creed allowed them only to pull the trigger. Bad guy or not, a life is a life, and to hell with how tough snipers act, their souls ache for each of the ones they ended.

A sniper's knowledge that his job is necessary, crashing headlong into his humanity-this was the conflict Liparulo wanted to explore with Byron. Kill Zone does not answer all of Byron's questions, but it opens a window on the police sniper's moral struggle.

The sweaty, beard-stubbled face wavered behind the sniper's crosshairs. The suspect's eyes flicked around-to the kids, weeping in a corner; to the apartment door, propped closed with a chair because he had broken the latch when he kicked it in; to the window, where he seemed to expect the peering faces of would-be rescuers. Forget that it was five stories up, with no fire escape.

Keep looking, buddy, the sniper thought. All the better to keep you in my sights.

It was bad enough that the gun-brandishing creep had provoked the wrath of the city's SWAT team; now he had Byron Stone's rifle pointed at him. Most folks would have told the offender to jump out the window and get done with it.

Byron was as comfortable with a rifle as an accountant is with a mechanical pencil. From his eighth birthday, when he was bequeathed his granddaddy's.22 for plunking at cans and groundhogs (and stray cats when no one was looking), through boot camp, Ranger training, sniper school and the police academy, he figured he hadn't gone longer than a week without shooting a gun. Breathing required more thought.

Now he was poised across the street and a floor up from the commandeered apartment. He could see the perp, scruffy and likely drunk, holding a woman in front of him with a thick arm around her neck. In his other hand was a pistol, which he alternately held to the woman's temple and pointed at the kids. The sniper panned to the next window. The children were still there. The boy was little, no older than three. The girl was about eleven, his own son's age. They were terrified.

He panned back to the man who was threatening them. He tensed. The woman was no longer struggling. She was hanging like a doll in the man's grip. There was no blood and he'd heard no shot. Could he have strangled her? Broken her neck? She lifted her hand to touch her captor's arm, and Byron relaxed slightly. She had simply realized the futility of fighting, or was too exhausted to continue. Now she was only partially blocking the man's face from Byron's view, instead of randomly flailing her head around, which wasn't the brightest idea in situations involving snipers.

He watched the perp jerk her this way, then that, waving the gun like a conductor's baton. It appeared to be a.38 snub-nose revolver, what they used to call a Saturday night special-cheap, but lethal.

Eyeing the scene through the scope's optics was like watching a television program with the volume turned off. The networks would have dropped this show a long time ago. The acting was melodramatic, the plot was nonexistent. In fact, Byron did not know the story at all. Was this a lovers' spat gone off the deep end? A fouled drug deal? Maybe the guy had chosen a door at random: some people meet their soul mates in chance encounters; the woman and her children had met the devil. Whatever ill wind blew the man to that apartment also stirred people like Byron, people who made it their life's work to stop bad guys from preying on innocence.

Byron noticed the woman was wearing a waitress's uniform, light blue with white trim. A name tag clung to her left breast, but her constant flailing prevented him from reading its inscription. He felt a pang of sympathy for her. Two kids. A deadend job. Living in a one-room dive, in which the "kitchen" amounted to a few appliances and a countertop running along one wall of the living room; he could see its pink tiles, a plastic grocery bag of something lying like a disemboweled stomach on the counter, an open bag of bread. And now this.

He drew a bead on the man's head. He was going for a clean kill, one that would short-circuit even the death spasm that could cause the hostage-taker's finger to twitch on the trigger and grant him one last victim. That meant severing the nervous system pathway, an inch wide, at the back of the skull-on a wildly moving target. Between the rifle's muzzle and the target were a hundred and twenty yards of gusty winds and a pane of glass. If the bullet managed to zing past the hostage's head to find its mark, a final barricade of tooth and bone would try to deflect it away from the brain stem, so crucial to the hostages' safety.

"Piece of cake," Byron whispered as he aligned the crosshairs on the man's philtrum, the dimple between nose and upper lip.

His heart seemed to thump especially hard, causing Byron's aim to jerk away from the man's head. He knew the spasm, imperceptible to anyone but him, was no involuntary physical tic- the kind that ended the careers of surgeons and snipers. This one came from deep within, from a bit of conscience that told him the object in his sights was flesh and bone.

Perspiration tickled his scalp. The sweatband along the inside edge of his cap would keep it from blinding him. He allowed his eyes to close. For only a second, then two. Vision, again…and the man's head in the scope. Byron's stomach cramped.

A creak of wood reminded him he was not alone. His spot-ter-the second half of every police sniper team-stood on a chair behind him, watching the scene through powerful binoculars. Usually, the spotter gave periodic updates on wind velocity and direction, SWAT team movements, the position of hostages. In this case, he would have confirmed the children's whereabouts so the sniper's attention could have stayed on the target. But this spotter was different. He had been silent for the nearly three hours the two had been in position.

Three hours. Sometimes an operation lasted only minutes.

More often, it was a waiting game.

Upon receiving a brief sketch of the situation, Byron had selected this building, and after rejecting three other locations, settled on this abandoned room. The fading ghost of something rotting lingered in the air, but his nose had acclimated to it. Carefully, he had cut the pane from the window, because raised windows tended to draw suspicion, and shooting through glass decreased accuracy. He'd hung cheesecloth over it like sheer curtains to hide behind, without affecting his tightly focused view through the sniper-scope.

Then he'd made a platform to lie on from a door and two chairs. His vantage point and stability were perfect.

Through it all, the spotter had quietly observed. And that was okay; Byron preferred checking things out for himself.

For the first two hours, he'd waited for the word: red to stand down, green to shoot. Some fifty minutes ago, he'd received the go-ahead. Apparently, the creep had a long history of violence. Earlier in the day, before taking the woman and two kids hostage, he'd stabbed his former employer with a screwdriver. Somewhere, a tactical-unit leader had gathered intelligence from sniper teams, police investigators, a psychologist, a hostage negotiator. He had determined there was sufficient cause to effectively sign the guy's death warrant.

Byron wasn't so sure. Against sniping wisdom, he never forgot that his targets were human, men (usually) who'd been boys full of hope and wonder, who probably loved someone and was loved back, who had somehow lost their way. Given the choice, he'd rather see a peaceful resolution. But the choice wasn't his. It was in the hands of the guy on the other end of the scope. If he continued to threaten others, if it looked as though he would cause them serious harm, it was Byron's duty to eliminate him.

So for three hours, Byron had held his position, ready, vigilant. "Shoot 'im, man," his spotter whispered. He had grown impatient. "You got the green light." Byron ignored him.

In the scope, the man half turned from the window and seemed to yell at the door. Byron adjusted his aim to a spot just above his ear, where the side neural motor strip lay, another in-stant-incapacitation spot. He nestled the rifle stock more firmly in the pocket of his shoulder. He had already adjusted the scope's Bullet Drop Compensator for distance and the difference in their elevations. The wind was a concern. It was rising and dropping like gusts through a valley. He had spotted a rag caught on a telephone wire. Its flapping gave him a sense of the wind speeds, and he could see it without lifting his head from the scope by opening his other eye. He would move the crosshairs slightly to the left to adjust for the wind at the time of the shot-a method of compensation called Kentucky Windage.

The perp abruptly spun and fired two shots through the apartment door. The negotiations weren't going well. Byron maintained his composure. He pressed the tip of his finger against the trigger. He knew precisely how many ounces of pressure he was applying to the trigger's four-pound pull, and when it would slam the firing pin into the bullet. His lips moved in silent prayer.

Riding a surge of adrenaline, the man threw the woman to the floor below the window. Her mouth open in a scream Byron could not hear, he raised the pistol toward her.

The rag was almost horizontal in a strong wind. Byron adjusted. He took in three-quarters of a breath, held it-and pulled back on the trigger. The rifle cracked! and kicked against his shoulder, which was well muscled for just such times. He didn't even feel it. He was frozen in what marksmen call the follow-through: no movement for a full second after firing to prevent starting the after-shot procedure a hair before the bullet left the barrel, causing it to miss its mark. He saw the bullet impact and the target go down. He chambered another round, watching for movement through the scope.

"Direct hit to the head," he called to his spotter, who responded, "Suspect down."

The spotter yelled into his mic, then yanked the earbud plug from his radio handset, and a buzz of voices filled the room.

The door of the apartment across the street burst open. Men and women streamed in. They gathered around the body, some of them kneeling, pointing at the hole perfectly placed below the suspect's nose. A policewoman with short-cropped hair inspected the bullet hole in the window. She looked up toward Byron's position, his "hide." She smiled and waved. Behind her, a burly-looking cop with a mustache hoisted up the body, holding it for Byron to see. Someone else gave him the thumbs-up.

A chill skittered along his spine, and he shook it off.

After three hours of mentally filling in the gaps to make the target as real as possible, it was a difficult task to start thinking of it again for what it was-an animatronic target mannequin, used for high-level training and top-flight competitions.

Puppeteers, situated safely away from the target, controlled its movements. He peered once more through the scope at the face of the pretend hostage-taker. The latex skin looked genuine enough. Even the eyes had rolled back, the mouth had dropped open. It didn't look so different from the real corpses he had seen.

The woman cop was dragging the woman mannequin from the room. He panned to the other window. The kids were huddled in place, now just looking like sad dolls. The illusion of reality, so strong in Byron's mind, was wearing off. When he looked again, a photographer was trying to snap pictures of the suspect-mannequin's wound while someone else danced with it.

He released his grip on the rifle. It rocked on its bipod and settled on the sandbag below its stock. Joints popped and muscles protested as he rolled onto his side to look back at his "spotter"- actually, a fine marksman himself who'd volunteered to help judge this contest.

"Jack, I'm getting too old for this," he said.

Jack came around the side of the platform and extended his hand. "My man, that was incredible." His voice, deep and smooth, made the words sound true. They squeezed each other's hands. For a second Byron thought Jack might try to butt heads, or some such crap. Blowing the heads off things had that effect on men. Instead, Jack pivoted and planted his butt on the platform beside Byron. He fished a pack of cigarettes out of a breast pocket and tapped one out. He offered the pack to Byron.

Byron stared without seeing. His mind had returned to the shoot, the perp, the hostages. He rolled back to his scope.

Beside him, Jack said, "You got this thing bagged up, dude." A cloud of white smoke drifted into Byron's periphery. "That idiot Hanson took off the perp's ear. Schumann, that prima donna acting like his farts don't stink because he won National, and everyone said he'd take this one. Sorry cuss plugged a hostage."

He kept rambling, a talker released from a three-hour vow of silence, but his words became background static in Byron's ears.

The kid-dolls reminded him of a time when it wasn't make-believe, when he hadn't been so perfect with his aim, when the perp had retained enough life force to empty his Glock.

One of the kids jerked his head to look directly at him. His heart wedged into his throat.

The kid jumped out of view. Byron panned to see a cop dragging it by one leg toward the apartment door.

He closed his eyes and moaned internally. Could he ever do this without investing so much of himself? He doubted it.

"Dude." Jack elbowed his hip. He turned. "We gotta- What's with you?"

Byron pressed his fingers to his cheek. Wet.

"Bug or something flew in my eye…this smoke." He waved his hand, clearing away a thin tendril.

Jack glared, suspicious. He stood. "Let's get outta here, man. Grub's on, beer's flowing."

Byron nodded, and pushed up onto his knees. He looked out through the cheesecloth. The windows into the kill zone were dark.

History, action, long-lost secrets, intricate conspiracies and international settings-these are the main ingredients in a Steve Berry thriller. His debut, The Amber Room, dealt with a legendary Russian treasure, a room paneled entirely in amber, stolen by the Nazis in 1941. The Romanov Prophecy answered the question-What happened to the two children of Nicholas II, the last tsar of Russia, whose remains have never been found? The Third Secret revolved around the Catholic Church, Marian visions and shocking divine messages.

In his fourth thriller, The Templar Legacy, Berry introduced Cotton Malone, a lawyer/agent who worked with the Justice Department for many years in a special unit known as the Magellan Billet. Deciding the risks were too great, Malone retires out early, moves to Copenhagen and opens an old-books shop. Unfortunately, trouble seems to follow Malone, and The Templar Legacy is just the first of several adventures Berry plans for Malone and the cast of supporting characters. The Devils' Due is a tale from before Malone retired, when he was still active with the Magellan Billet.

Another unique situation with far-reaching consequences.

Typical for Cotton Malone.

cotton Malone stood on the balcony and calmly watched the books burn.

He was standing next to Yossef Sharma, president of a tiny central Asian nation nestled firmly between Afghanistan, China and a host of other American enemies. Which was why Washington had, for years, conveniently ignored Sharma's excesses, including his audacious plan to burn nearly every book in his country.

"We've been collecting for the past month. The people have brought them from every town and village." Sharma spoke a mixture of Russian and Arabic unique to the region. "Tonight, there are fires in every quarter of the nation. All to rid us of Western influence."

"I almost think you believe that crap," Malone said, not taking his eyes off the spectacle.

"After tomorrow, possession of a single book, excepting the Koran, will be punishable by imprisonment. And if my people are anything, they're obedient."

Malone continued to watch as people, bundled in coats and jackets, picked their way over slippery cobbles to heap more books onto the blaze. Clatter from flutes and tambourines added to the surreal spectacle.

"That crazy obedience," Malone said, "more than anything else, explains your current predicament. The world believes this place is another Afghanistan, and you know what that led to."

"Lucky for me, and this country, you know that to be false."

He smiled. "More lucky for you."

Malone was a navy commander turned lawyer turned Justice Department operative, assigned to a covert division within Justice known as the Magellan Billet. Twelve specially trained agents, all lawyers, working under a no-nonsense lady named Stephanie Nelle. On the outside, Nelle reminded most observers of their grandmothers, but inside she possessed the resolve of a Roman centurion. When he was first assigned Malone had thought the tour would be both limited and boring. But that was ten years ago, and the past decade had been anything but dull. Tonight was a good example. Here he was, standing on the balcony of a presidential palace beside a uniformed despot, while an immense bonfire fueled by books roared below, each breath from the cool, arid air laced with the scent of smoke and sorrow.

"You tell your government," Sharma said, "that I'm doing what I have to in order to survive. This nation is Muslim and these people demand a strong leader." The president motioned below. "You think they're burning those books because I ordered it? Never. It's because they want to."

Malone was no stranger. Twice he'd worked here, both times directly with Sharma. Malone had actually become interested in the country-a mountainous region of over a hundred thousand square miles, home to four million people, 8.5 percent of whom were Sunni Muslims. He'd studied its history and knew about its expansive tradition of writers, poets and composers, most dating back to the Middle Ages. But yesterday he'd painfully watched while the entire national archive had been cleared. The loss of so much knowledge was incalculable, but a United Nations protest had been swiftly rebuked by Sharma. Now Malone's stomach turned. It was like friends were burning below. He was a confirmed bibliophile. Books meant something to him. His home back in Atlanta overflowed with them. He loved everything about them, and many times lingered a day or two after an assignment to peruse rare-book shops.

In disgust, he allowed his gaze to drift away from the fire to the picturesque remains of mosques and other architecture lining the plaza. He knew that many of the buildings had stood since the nineteenth century, surviving the Soviet takeover in 1922, a Muslim rebellion in 1935, the fall of communism in 1991 and an Islamic revolution a year later. Finally, he faced Sharma and said, "Why am I here?"

"To see this happening."

He doubted that. And that, as far as he was concerned, was the trouble with central Asia. Truth was an underrated commodity. "And to give you this."

Sharma reached over to a small table and lifted up a book. The binding was tooled with brass fittings in excellent condition. Malone accepted it and studied the cover. In English was written, Canterbury Tales.

"I thought you might like that."

Sharma knew him well. One of his favorites. "After tomorrow, I'll go to prison if I have this."

Sharma smiled. "For you, an exception. I know how much you love them. It's a seventeenth-century edition. For some reason we had it shelved in our archive."

He carefully balanced the book in his palm and was about to open it when Sharma stopped him. "Not here. Later."

He thought the comment strange.

"There's another gift. Inside. Especially for you. So later, back at your hotel."

He knew better than to question. So he nodded in understanding, slipped the tiny volume into his jacket pocket and turned his attention back to the bonfire.

Malone returned to his hotel room. The fire was still burning strong after two hours, when he and Sharma vacated the balcony. He locked the door and removed his jacket. Its brown leather smelled of ash.

He sat on the bed and studied the copy of Canterbury Tales. A second Speght edition, dated 1602. A text read and owned by the likes of Milton, Pepys, Dryden and Pope. Worth in the neighborhood of ten thousand American dollars, provided a copy could even be found.

Yet he was now holding one.

Given to him by Yossef Sharma.

He opened the book and, toward the center of the dingy yellowed pages, found a scrap of paper. He freed it and read the feminine English script.

Katherine Neville's award-winning first novel, The Eight, is widely regarded as a cult classic, translated into thirty languages. That story begins at the dawn of the French Revolution when a fabulous, bejeweled chess set, once owned by Charlemagne but buried for a thousand years, is dug up by the nuns of a French abbey and scattered around the world to preserve its mysterious powers. The nonstop suspense moves from the 1790s of the French Revolution to the 1970s of the OPEC oil embargo. The plot itself is a giant chess game, and the characters are pieces and pawns.

When Neville began her long-anticipated sequel, she was glad that she could retrieve many fascinating historic figures, characters like Benjamin Franklin who, due to earlier schedule constraints, she'd had to limit to walk-on parts. But even despite the recent flurry of additional histories, biographies and films heralding Franklin's three hundredth birthday, Neville's research offered her a big surprise that, inexplicably, none of the experts appeared to have noticed. When it came to her character's well-documented, almost obsessive, penchant for creating or joining private clubs, here was an enigmatic gap in his life.

The Tuesday Club fills that void.

Franklin would not have been Franklin without a club, and his club in France was the Lodge of the Nine Sisters. -Carl Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin

Gone Fishing features one of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's favorite characters, Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta, of the New York City Police Department: a working-class cop from Queens with a heart as big as the ocean. D'Agosta made his debut in the team's first thriller, The Relic, alongside their famous Special Agent Pendergast of the FBI. In the Paramount film made from that novel, Pendergast was cut from the story entirely, leaving Vincent D'Agosta (played by Tom Sizemore) as the unrivaled star. It was the character's fifteen minutes of fame, so to speak-and events in D'Agosta's life seemed to go downhill from there.

After reappearing in Reliquary, the sequel to The Relic, D'Agosta disappeared for six years (and five novels). Disappointed at not making precinct captain, D'Agosta quit the force and moved with his family to a small town in British Columbia to live his dream: writing crime fiction. He published two highly regarded novels that didn't sell. Desperate, broke, and separated from his wife, he moved back to New York to reclaim his old job, only to discover the NYPD was under a hiring freeze. He ended up a lowly sergeant in the Southampton, Long Island, police department, chasing beer-swilling teenagers and loose dogs in a dune buggy. His break came when the sleazy art critic Jeremy Grove was found burned to death in his Southampton mansion. D'Agosta's work on the case, alongside his old friend Agent Pendergast, won him back his position in the ranks of the NYPD-a story recounted in Preston and Child's thriller, Brimstone.

Gone Fishing is the first short story Preston and Child have written together, and the first time D'Agosta appears without Pendergast. The story begins with the theft of a priceless Inca sacrificial knife from the Museum of Natural History and ends twenty-four hours later in a clearing in the woods of northern New Hampshire, amidst a scene of transcendental horror.

the Ford Taurus hissed along the slick road, topped the hill and emerged from the woods. A sudden panorama of farms and green fields spread out below, a cluster of white houses and a church steeple along a dark river.

"Speed limit's forty-five," said Woffler, voice tense.

"Don't get your undies in a bunch," Perotta replied. "I was born driving a car." He glanced over at the carpenter: the man's face was white, and the faggoty earring he wore in his left ear- a gold ring with a red stone on it-was practically trembling with agitation. Woffler and his whining was starting to get on his nerves.

"I'm not worried about your driving," Woffler said. "I'm worried about getting stopped. You know, as in cops?" And he nodded pointedly at the velvet bag on the seat between them.

"Yeah, yeah." Perotta slowed to fifty as the car descended the hill toward the town. "Need a potty break, guy?"

"I could use something to eat. It's dinnertime."

A diner lay at the near end of town in what looked like a converted gas station. Six pickup trucks sat in the dirt parking lot.

"Welcome to Buttcrack, New Hampshire," said Perotta.

They got out of the car and approached the diner. Perotta paused in the doorway, surveying the clientele.

"They grow 'em big up here, don't they?" he said. "Or do you think it's inbreeding?"

They took a booth next to the window, where they could keep an eye on the car. The waitress came waddling over. "What can I get you folks?" she said, smiling.

"How about menus?" Perotta said.

The smile disappeared. She nodded toward the wall. "It's all up there."

Perotta scanned the board. "Gimme a cheeseburger, fries and a side of grilled onions. Make it rare. Coffee."

"Same for me," said Woffler. "Except I'll take my burger well done. And no onions."

The waitress waddled off and Perotta followed her with his eyes. As she passed a far booth he saw a man with tats and a tank top staring at him. He was a big man, pumped up. Something about him made Perotta think of prison.

He considered staring the scumbag down, then decided against it. This wasn't the time. He turned back to his partner.

"We did it, Woffler," he said in a low voice. "We freaking did it."

"We haven't done anything yet," Woffler replied. "Don't talk about it in here. And don't call me by name."

"Who's listening? Anyway, we're hundreds of miles from New York City-and nobody's even noticed it's missing yet."

"You don't know that."

They sat in silence. The man with the tats lit up a cigarette and no one told him to put it out. Within minutes the waitress came out with their burgers, slid them on the table.

Perotta checked, as he always did. "I said rare. R-A-R-E. This is well done."

Without a word the waitress picked up his plate, took it back into the kitchen. Perotta noticed the guy with the tats was staring at him again.

The plate came back out and Perotta checked. Still not rare enough. He began to signal the waitress when Woffler stopped him. "Will you just eat your burger?" "But it's not rare."

Woffler leaned forward. "Do you really want to make a big scene right now, so everyone'll remember us?"

Perotta thought about that for a moment and decided that Woffler might be right. He ate the burger in silence, drank the coffee. He was hungry. They'd been driving since before dawn, stopping only for gas and candy bars.

They paid, and Perotta stiffed the waitress. It was the least he could do, a matter of principle. What was so hard about making a hamburger rare?

As they got in the car, the tattooed man emerged from the diner and walked over. He leaned an arm into Perotta's open window.

"What the hell do you want?" Perotta asked.

The man smiled. Up close, Perotta could see the guy had an old tracheotomy scar right below his Adam's apple. His teeth were the color of urine.

"Just wishing you a nice trip. And offering a piece of advice." He spoke pleasantly, rolling a toothpick around in his mouth.

"And what advice might that be?"

"Don't come back to our town again. Ever."

"No chance of that. You can keep your Shitville, or whatever you call this dump."

He jammed his foot down on the accelerator, fishtailing out of the parking lot and pelting the man with dust and gravel. He glanced in the rearview mirror: the guy was slapping dust from his arms but didn't seem to be making a move to follow them.

"Why do you always have to make a spectacle of yourself?" Woffler asked. "You just left two people in that town who'll have no problem identifying us in a lineup, even months from now."

"How's anyone going to know we ever came through here?"

Woffler just shook his head.

The road entered another forest, the damp asphalt shining like blued steel in the dying light. With one hand on the wheel, Per-otta reached over with the other and tipped up the velvet bag, letting the object slide out. Even in the dim light, the glow of the artifact seemed to fill the car. Perotta had read the label on the case at the museum a dozen times; he could practically quote it by heart. It was an Inca Tumi knife, used in human sacrifices to cut through the breastbone of the victim. The blade itself was made of copper and badly corroded; but the elaborate handle, cast in massive gold, was as fresh as the day it was hammered. It depicted the Sican Lord, the god of death, with staring ruby eyes and a grimace of turquoise teeth.

"Will you look at that?" he said, chuckling. "Two million bucks."

"If we can fence it."

"There's gotta be some Arab sheikh or Japanese businessman out there who collects this stuff. And even if we can't, we can always pry the stones out and melt the thing down. Those rubies are probably twenty carats each. I bet we could get fifty grand for them, plus a shitload for the gold."

"Fifty grand's a lot less than two million."

"Woffler, I'm getting a little tired of your negativity. No one made you do it."

Woffler looked out the window at the blur of dark woods. "I don't know. It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"And it was a good idea. A freaking brilliant idea! We saw our chance and took it. You liked building cases at the museum for twenty bucks an hour? As for me, I got tired of shaking doors and checking IDs."

"You aren't worried about Lipski?"

"Screw him. He's just a middleman. The real buyer's that guy in Peru."

"What about him? How's he going to react?"

"What's he gonna do? Fly up here and comb America for us? Nah, he's going to assume Lipski ripped him off and put a cap in his ass."

"He sounds like somebody important."

"If you want my opinion, the guy's a psychopath. Probably wants the knife back so he can rip out a few more hearts, just like his ancestors. I bet he doesn't even know we exist."

"Even if he doesn't, Lipski does. And he's going to be looking for us."

"You think he'll find us at Passumkeag Lake? I'd like to see him, with his Armani suits and handmade shoes, stomping around the New Hampshire woods trying to find two guys bass fishing in the middle of nowhere." Perotta laughed. "I really would."

"Slow down, we're coming to another town."

They flashed past a sign that said Waldo Falls. Just to shut Woffler up, Perotta eased down to the speed limit.

They passed a row of white farmhouses, a church, a firehouse, a neat town square with a Civil War monument and a rusted cannon.

"Welcome to beautiful downtown Dildo Falls," Perotta said. "Can you believe people live in a place like this?"

"As a matter of fact, I can."

In a moment they had left the town behind them and were back in the endless north woods. Perotta started to accelerate, then abruptly slowed again. "Jesus, will you look at that," he said, pointing. "It's like a time warp."

A battered VW bus was pulled off the road in a muddy turnout. It was covered with peace signs, feminist symbols, painted pot leaves and psychedelic flowers. A man with long greasy hair sat smoking in the driver's seat. He watched them go by.

Perotta gave a couple of honks as he passed.

"What'd you do that for?"

"Didn't you see the bumper sticker? Honk If You're Pro-Choice. Hey, I'm pro-choice. Line the girls up and let me choose," he cackled.

"Why don't you just hang a sign out the window, saying, 'Obnoxious museum thief on his way to cabin hideout?'" "Whaddya mean?"

"What I mean is, every town we go through, Perotta, you do something to attract attention."

"Look, will you lighten up? In case you hadn't noticed, it's over. We did it. Quit worrying and enjoy the vacation. When the heat's off, we can figure out how to fence it, or melt it down, or whatever. In the meantime, we've gone fishing."

Woffler sighed heavily. His face looked gray. "I'm no good at this."

"You'll do better next time."

"There won't be a next time."

Ted Bell is a native Floridian. He began his career in advertising as a copywriter at Doyle Dane Bernbach in New York. He has also worked in Chicago, where he was president of the Leo Burnett Company, and later served as vice chairman and worldwide creative director of Young & Rubicam in both London and New York. Ted is the New York Times bestselling author of three action-adventure thrillers: Hawke, Assassin and Pirate. The series features the dashing British intelligence agent Alex Hawke. Ted lives in Florida where he writes thrillers, reads and messes about in boats. Visit Ted at his Web site, www.tedbellbooks.com.

Steve Berry, a New York Times bestselling writer, lives on the Georgia coast. He's a lawyer who has traveled extensively throughout the Caribbean, Mexico, Europe and Russia. Steve's thrillers include The Amber Room, The Romanov Prophecy, The Third Secret and The Templar Legacy. His novels have been feature selections for major book clubs, chosen as BookSense picks, and have been sold in thirty-two countries. Visit his Web site at www.steveberry.org.

Grant Blackwood caught the writing bug while reading Clive Cussler's The Mediterranean Caper. He's a U.S. Navy veteran, having spent three years on active duty aboard a guided-missile frigate as an operations specialist and pilot rescue swimmer. He's been writing for nineteen years and lives in Minnesota, where he's working on a new thriller series.

Previously a television director, trade union organizer, theater-lighting designer, stage manager and law student, Lee Child has been an author for nine years and has published ten Jack Reacher novels. He was born in England but now lives in New York City and the south of France. Currently his books are sold in forty-one countries and have all been international bestsellers.

David Dun, a native of Washington State transplanted to California, where he manages a law practice, acts as general counsel to a large, privately held corporation, and writes. He is the national bestselling author of five action-adventure novels, Necessary Evil, At The Edge, Overfall, Unacceptable Risk and The Black Silent, which are currently published in eight languages. When he's not parked at a desk, he enjoys cruising the waters of Washington State and British Columbia.

New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Heather Graham majored in theater arts at the University of South Florida. After a stint of several years in dinner theater, backup vocals and bartending, she stayed home after the birth of her third child and began to write, working on short horror stories and romances.

Since then, she has written over one hundred novels and novellas. Her books are currently published in twenty languages. Graham loves to travel and enjoys anything that has to do with the water, including being a certified scuba diver.

After twelve years as a Miami trial lawyer, James Grippando is now the national bestselling author of ten suspenseful thrillers. Got The Look is his fifth book featuring Miami criminal defense lawyer Jack Swyteck, a series that critics have applauded as "John Grisham meets Robert Ludlum." He's also the author of a thriller for young readers, Leapholes, the first novel for children ever to be published by the American Bar Association. James was the 2005 recipient of the Distinguished Author Award from Scranton University, and his novels are enjoyed worldwide in over twenty languages. He lives and writes in south Florida.

Denise Hamilton is a Fulbright scholar and Los Angeles Times reporter who turned to crime and thriller writing after her two children were born. Her bestselling Eve Diamond series has been short-listed for the Edgar, Anthony, Willa Cather and Britain's prestigious Dagger awards. Her book Last Lullaby was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2004. Visit her at www.denisehamilton.com.

Raelynn Hillhouse has run Cuban rum between East and West Berlin, smuggled jewels from the Soviet Union and forged Eastern bloc visas. A native of the Missouri Ozarks, Raelynn has lived for over six years in Europe, has traveled in over forty countries and is fluent in several languages. She earned her Ph.D. in political science at the University of Michigan and is a former professor and Fulbright fellow. She has not only faced the barrels of Kalashnikovs, but has also been caught in the crossfire of border guards' snowball fights. Raelynn lives in

Hawaii on the slopes of Mauna Loa volcano. Her debut thriller, Rift Zone, received widespread national acclaim.

Gregg Hurwitz is the bestselling author of The Tower, Minutes to Burn, Do No Harm, The Kill Clause, The Program, and most recently, Troubleshooter. His novels have been feature selections for all four major literary book clubs, chosen as BookSense picks and translated into seven languages. Gregg adapted Rogue Warrior for Jerry Bruckheimer Films and The Kill Clause for Paramount Pictures. He holds a B.A. from Harvard in English and psychology, and a master's degree in Shakespearean tragedy from Trinity College, Oxford. He's published numerous short stories, articles, reviews, and academic articles, and lectured at Harvard, UCLA and USC. Visit his Web site at www.gregghurwitz.net.

Alex Kava is the author of the international bestselling series featuring FBI profiler Maggie O'Dell and the critically acclaimed thriller, One False Move. Her novels have sold almost two million copies and have been published in twenty countries. They have appeared on the New York Times and USA TODAY bestseller lists, as well as making bestseller lists across the globe. Alex divides her time between Omaha, Nebraska, and Pensacola, Florida.

J. A. Konrath is the author of the Lieutenant Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels thrillers. His short stories have appeared in dozens of magazines and anthologies, and he currently teaches fiction writing and marketing at the College of Dupage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. He lives in Chicago with his wife, a few kids and dogs. Visit him at www.JAKonrath.com.

John Lescroart is the New York Times bestselling author of sixteen novels, including thirteen in the Dismas Hardy/Abe Glitsky series of books set in San Francisco. He lives with his wife and their children in northern California.

Robert Liparulo is an award-winning author of over a thousand published articles and short stories for such publications as New Man, Reader's Digest, and even Modern Bride. He has written (and sold) screenplays, celebrity profiles and investigative exposes, but he always returns to his first love, fiction. As testament to his vivid and fast-paced style, his debut novel, Comes a Horseman, ignited a bidding war in Hollywood for the movie rights-months before its publication. Liparulo lives in Colorado with his wife, Jodi, and their four children. Find him online at www.robertliparulo.com.

David Liss is the author of two bestselling novels featuring Benjamin Weaver-A Conspiracy of Paper and A Spectacle of Corruption- in addition to two stand-alone thrillers, The Coffee Trader and The Ethical Assassin. His books have won numerous awards, including the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and they have been translated into more than a dozen languages. The Devil's Company will be the third Benjamin Weaver novel. Liss lives in San Antonio, Texas.

Eric Van Lustbader is the internationally bestselling author of The Ninja, Art Kills, The Bourne Legacy, The Bravo Testament and twenty-six other novels, both thrillers and fantasy, plus a host of short stories. He graduated from Columbia College in 1968 and spent fifteen years in the pop music industry. He has also been a New York City schoolteacher. For more information, visit him at www.ericvanlustbader.com.

Dennis Lynds, aka Michael Collins, wrote the Dan Fortune series that began in 1967. There are now nineteen Dan Fortune books, the most recent being Fortune's World, a collection of short stories spanning from 1963 to 2000. His most recent thriller, The Cadillac Cowboy, featured a new protagonist whose name may or may not be Ford Morgan. As Mark Sadler, John Crowe, William Arden and Carl Dekker, he published another eighteen crime novels and thirteen juvenile crime novels. As Dennis Lynds, he published three novels and two collections of stories, the most recent being Talking To the World. A fourth Lynds novel, Pictures On a Bedroom Wall, is forthcoming. Lynds won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar and has been nominated for two more. Born in St. Louis, he was raised in England. Later, his parents, both English actors, returned to the States and he grew up in Los Angeles, Denver and New York City. Sadly, Dennis died in August, 2005, leaving behind his wife, bestselling novelist Gayle Lynds.

New York Times bestseller Gayle Lynds is the author of eight international espionage thrillers, including The Last Spymaster, The Coil and Masquerade, which have been published in twenty countries. Lynds is generally considered the first woman to write successfully in the thriller field since Helen Maclnnes. With Robert Ludlum she created the Covert-One thriller series. She is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Operatives and is a cofounder of International Thriller Writers, Inc. You can visit her at www.GayleLynds.com.

Chris Mooney was twenty-eight when he published his first thriller, Deviant Ways. He is also the author of The Missing, World Without End and Remembering Sarah, which was nominated for a Barry Award and the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Visit him at www.chrismooneybooks.com.

David Morrell is the author of First Blood, the award-winning novel in which Rambo was created. He holds a Ph.D. in American literature from the Pennsylvania State University and was a professor in the English department at the University of Iowa, until he gave up his tenure to devote himself to a full-time writing career. David has published twenty-eight books, which have been translated into twenty-six languages. His numerous bestselling thrillers include Creepers, The Brotherhood of the Rose and Extreme

Denial, which is set in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lives. His Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing is an analysis of what he has learned during his thirty-seven years as a writer. He is a cofounder of International Thriller Writers, Inc.

Katherine Neville was for many years an international consultant and computer expert, numbering among her clients and employers the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, OPEC, IBM, the Algerian government and the Bank of America. She has also been a professional model, portrait painter and commercial photographer. Katherine's first novel, The Eight, has been translated into nearly thirty languages and was recently voted one of the top ten books of all time, in a national poll in Spain. Her second book, A Calculated Risk, was a New York Times Notable Book, and The Magic Circle was a USA TODAY and an international bestseller. Katherine lives in Virginia, Washington D.C., and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Michael Palmer is a graduate of Wesleyan University and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He started writing as a hobby in 1979 and has since published eleven novels of medical suspense, all international bestsellers. His work has been translated into thirty languages, and Extreme Measures was made into a film starring Hugh Grant, Gene Hackman and Sarah Jessica Parker. He's an avid tennis player and scuba diver, and holds the rank of bronze life master in bridge. Palmer lives in Massachusetts with the youngest of his three sons, Luke. Daniel James Palmer, Michael's middle son, holds a master's degree in communications from Boston University, and is a musician, songwriter and software professional. He lives with his wife and son in Southern New Hampshire, where he mountain bikes and plays tennis.

In one of the more unusual-and successful-writing collaborations in recent memory, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have coauthored ten bestselling thrillers over the past fifteen years. They met when Child, then a young editor at St. Martin's Press, asked Preston, a writer for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, to pen a nonfiction history of the museum. The two later teamed up to write The Relic, set in a fictitious natural history museum, which was made into a hit film by Paramount Pictures. Their protagonist, the eccentric and brilliant Special Agent Pendergast, has become a cult hero among thriller readers. They also work solo: Child has written two thrillers and produced numerous ghost story anthologies, while Preston has written four nonfiction books and three thrillers, as well as occasional articles for the New Yorker magazine. Child is an aficionado of motorcycles, rare books, fast cars and exotic parrots, while Preston is a horseman and a member of the elite Long Riders' Guild. Both writers like to point out that they graduated from college with a "useless" degree in English literature.

Christopher Reich was born in Tokyo. A graduate of Georgetown University and the University of Texas at Austin, he worked in Switzerland before returning to the United States to pursue a career as a novelist. He's the bestselling author of five acclaimed novels, Numbered Account, The Runner, The First Billion, The Devil's Banker and The Patriot's Club. He lives in California with his wife and children.

Christopher Rice is the New York Times bestselling author of A Density of Souls, The Snow Garden and Light Before Day. He is also a regular columnist for The Advocate. The Snow Garden won a Lambda Literary Award. Rice lives in West Hollywood.

James Rollins is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous thrillers, including Map of Bones. You'll often find him underground or underwater as an amateur caver and scuba diver.

From these hobbies sprang his earlier thrillers Subterranean, Amazonia, Ice Hunt and Sandstorm.

M. J. Rose is the international bestselling author of eight thrillers, including The Halo Effect, The Delilah Complex and The Venus Fix. She has been a finalist for the Connecticut Book Award and the Anthony Award. She has also coauthored two nonfiction books and is on the board of International Thriller Writers, Inc. Her work has also appeared in Wired.com, O, The Oprah Magazine, and Poets & Writers. She is presently published in ten countries, including Japan, Israel and Russia. In addition, Rose runs the popular Buzz, Balls and Hype and Backstory blogs and is the creator of AuthorBuzz.com. Visit all of these at www.mjrose.com.

James Siegel is the New York Times bestselling author of Derailed and Detour. His first thriller, Epitaph, was nominated for a Shamus Award as best first novel. Derailed, with Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston, was released in 2004 as a major motion picture, and Detour is in production.

Brad Thor, a native of Chicago and a graduate of the University of Southern California, is the USA TODAY bestselling author of The Lions of Lucerne, Path of the Assassin, State of the Union and Blowback. He and his family divide their time between Park City, Utah, and the Greek island of Antiparos. Visit his Web site at www.bradthor.com.

M. Diane Vogt is the author of the acclaimed Judge Wilhelmina Carson legal thrillers. The Chinese government purchased and translated Diane's fiction and nonfiction as an entertaining read, reflective of American life and the legal system. A lawyer in private practice for more than twenty-five years, Diane has represented the world's largest corporations as well as individuals and governments.

F. Paul Wilson is the award-winning, New York Times bestsell-ing author of thirty books and over a hundred short stories spanning horror, adventure, medical thrillers, science fiction and virtually everything in between. More than seven million copies of his books are in print in the United States and his work has been translated into twenty-four languages. He also has written for the stage, screen and interactive media. Wilson is the creator of the popular Repairman Jack thrillers.

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