Middleton’s automatic kitchen brewed coffee and toasted him a bagel.
“Meredith Vines is at the front door, Mr. Middleton.” The computer’s dulcet voice seemed to come from midair.
“Let her in,” Middleton said. “Computer, make a note.” He refused to call the system Adam and still intended to change the voice as soon as possible. “Whenever Miss Vines is here, she’s to be let in automatically. Just announcing her is all you need to do.”
“Yes, Mr. Middleton,” the computer said. “I’ve updated Meredith Vines’ profile.”
Meredith found him in the kitchen a minute later, and he poured her a cup of coffee.
“Bryant says a complete extraction of the program from his system should be complete in the next seventy-two hours. Maybe sooner,” Meredith told him.
“How did he take that?”
“He wasn’t thrilled,” she said. “He didn’t say anything, but I could tell.”
“He’s a valuable asset,” Middleton said. “He doesn’t have to worry about his job.”
“Marketing is screaming,” Meredith said. “The words indefinite delay have them pulling their hair out. They want to know why they can’t get their package together for potential buyers. Care to share what you’re thinking?”
“Who are the most likely buyers for the new software?” Middleton asked.
“Governments,” she said. “Fortune 500 companies. Research universities.”
“If a government buys it, what’s half the value?”
“That other governments don’t have it,” she said.
“Let’s say the federal government buys it,” Middleton said. “They’ll want exclusivity. Otherwise, they won’t pay top dollar.”
“We’ve crunched those numbers,” Meredith reminded him. “Selling it to everyone nets us more even at a greatly reduced price.”
“When everyone is special, then no one is.”
She blinked. “What?”
“A line from a movie I like,” Middleton said. “Every government intelligence agency will need it to keep up with every other intelligence agency. But they’ll all negate each other then, won’t they? And then this amazing thing we’ve created will be a big nothing.”
“Sure, but after the company has made a gazillion and a half dollars.”
“Money isn’t everything.”
Her eyes narrowed, pinned him hard. “What supervillain scheme are you concocting, sir?”
“I keep it.”
“You keep it.”
“Yes.”
“For your own personal plaything?”
“That’s not quite how I’d put it.”
Meredith shook her head, eyes rolling. “The board will love this.”
“I don’t mean keep it forever,” Middleton said. “We do a press release saying that we’re tweaking it. In the meantime, I’ll use it myself. It will make us money with market analysis alone. There are easily a hundred other applications. By the time we’re ready to sell, we’ll already have the gen-two version ready to go. We market the old one, keep the new one for ourselves. We’ll always be one step ahead of the rest of the world.”
Meredith sipped coffee, brow furrowed, thinking. “It’s really taking the long view, but we might be able to sell the board on that.” She yawned, rubbed an eye with a thumb.
“Are you okay?” he asked. He’d noticed that her eyes were red, dark circles underneath just beginning to form.
“Just … long hours.”
“You’re not still driving back and forth from San Mateo, are you?”
“That’s where my apartment is,” she said.
“You know I’m transitioning to working at home full-time,” Middleton said. “Perks of being the boss. But the fact is, I need you. You’re my right hand. The house is huge, and I had an office built for you, but really, it’s a suite of rooms. One could easily be a bedroom. If we work late one night, there’s no reason to risk a long drive if you’re half-asleep.”
That teasing smile quirked to her face. “My goodness, are you asking me to live with you, Mr. Middleton?”
He knew she was just messing with him, and yet he literally flinched, stomach fluttering. He’d seriously meant the proposal as strictly work-related, but her offhanded joke had ripped away the veil over his emotions. She watched his reaction, and all the humor drained from her face.
“No … I … I would never…” Why couldn’t he make his words work? His mouth felt so dry. The more he tried to object, the more obvious it was that yes, he’d like nothing better than for her to be near him always, that every time she went away, his life was reduced to time spent waiting for her to come back again.
Meredith set her coffee cup on the counter. She looked at Middleton. He looked back.
She took three slow steps to close the distance between them. He didn’t dare move. She lay a slim hand on his chest, palm flat over his heart. It beat so hard, and he knew she felt it. She tilted her head and very slowly lifted herself on tiptoes until her lips brushed his as softly as a whisper.
Middleton went dizzy, felt light, as if he might float up and out of his own body.
Meredith pulled away and said, “Am I fired?”
“You are so not fired.”
They kissed harder.
* * *
The Pontiac GTO blazed across Highway 84 through brown Nebraska pastureland. The landscape had widened considerably in the last hour, an occasional stand of trees or farmhouse humping up on a small hillock breaking the monotony.
Francis had spent enough time in Manhattan that it had nearly erased the memory of wide-open spaces. Ohio had plenty of farmland, but so much land stretching between the horizons felt strange instead of familiar.
Francis had taken random highways, keeping generally south and west. He’d hoped to throw off any pursuit. He hadn’t wanted to stop for gas, but with the needle nearing E, he hadn’t any choice.
Now, he yet again had to force himself to ease off the gas pedal. It was as if the Pontiac had a mind of its own and wanted to go fast, but Francis equally wanted not to get a speeding ticket.
Sometime soon he’d need to stop and see to Emma, but he still wanted to put more miles between himself and Cavanaugh and all his goons.
A pickup truck passed him. The truck’s sudden appearance startled him. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. Francis was concerned about going the speed limit, but apparently the locals weren’t. The truck sped ahead and left him in the dust.
Francis adjusted the rearview mirror to see down into the back seat. Emma still slept peacefully. Seeing her this way, it was difficult to imagine her with that hard edge. She seemed the sort of person who eternally had her fists up against whatever the world might bring. There was a soft prettiness about her now, a surprising vulnerability, and whatever Francis felt for her before doubled at that moment. He realized that whatever happened from here forward, he wouldn’t undo what had brought him here. He’d still take the suitcase in the alley. He’d still follow the girl into peril.
He shifted the rearview mirror back into place, just in time to see another car coming up fast. At least this time he’d spotted it ahead of time so it wouldn’t frighten the crap out of him when the car whipped past. Francis drifted to the edge of his lane to give the other driver plenty of room.
Francis glanced back again. The car approached at top speed, rapidly filling the rearview mirror until—
The car slammed hard into the back of the Pontiac.
The GTO fishtailed all over the road, and Francis wrestled with the steering wheel to get it back on course. The right tires went off the shoulder, kicking up dirt and rattling the car violently.
Francis yanked the Pontiac back onto the road just in time for the car behind him to fly up and slam him again.
The Pontiac spun, the world in the windshield distorting into a muddle of light and color, tires squealing. The smell of burned rubber filled the car. Francis went rigid, knuckles white on the wheel, and waited to die.
When the car lurched to a stop, Francis faced the opposite direction back east. He saw the other car in the rearview mirror. It had blown a hundred yards past him when he’d gone into the spin and was now making a three-point turn in the middle of the road to roll back through its own cloud of dust and get after Francis again.
Francis cracked his knuckles, then gripped the wheel at ten and two, his jaw set.
Then he mashed the GTO’s gas pedal flat.
For a split second, the tires spun in place, rubber burning, and then an instant later, the Pontiac rocketed down the highway, Cavanaugh’s car shrinking rapidly in the rearview mirror. Francis thought this might be how a bullet felt being shot out of a gun. He’d had the car up at a pretty high speed a few times, but this was his first go at taking it flat out. The acceleration pressed him back into the leather seat. His entire body hummed with the GTO’s power.
The Pontiac ate up the miles, the scenery on each side of the road melting into a blur. Francis thought the car might actually take flight at any second. At this speed, Francis was afraid even to twitch. He wanted to glance down at the speedometer, but he didn’t want to risk taking his eyes off the road. Sweat trickled down his back. Just a little longer, just until he could find a place to turn. The more distance and zigs and zags he put between himself and Cavanaugh, the better.
Francis couldn’t understand how they’d found him in the first place. He was literally in the middle of nowhere. And they’d found him fast too. A pang of hopelessness made his gut clench. Was there no place they could go? Nowhere to hide?
No. He’d bested these assholes already. He’d do it again.
He hoped.
Francis passed back through an area with more trees. It had stood out when he’d come through before because the rest of this area was just brown fields stretching forever. The road took a long lazy bend toward the south, and if he remembered correctly, there was some kind of little crossroads on the other side. He eased up slightly on the gas pedal going into the turn.
At these speeds, the Pontiac guzzled unleaded like Kool-Aid. Francis had no idea where the next town might be, and the idea of running out of gas this far from—
There was a tractor in the middle of the road.
Not just a tractor. It was pulling a trailer stacked twelve feet high with square bales of hay. A couple had fallen as the tractor had tried to make the turn at the very crossroads Francis had been gunning for. An old man in faded jeans and a work shirt stood over them, seemingly in no hurry to rectify the situation. His head came up at the sound of the Pontiac’s engine, eyes going to the size of dinner plates. The old man could not have looked more frightened if the grim reaper himself were the GTO’s hood ornament.
A jolt of alarm went through Francis at the sight of the blocked road, and he slammed the brakes too hard. Tires squealed, the back of the GTO fishtailing and clipping one of the hay bales as it slid past. The car bumped front wheels and then back as it left the humped-up asphalt and spun halfway around in the semi-tall grass, finally coming to a stop in a cloud of brown dust.
Francis sat for a stunned moment, still gripping the wheel and breathing hard, heart thumping against his insides. Going from full speed to a sudden stop was an odd sensation.
“Hey, boy,” called the old man. “You okay?”
Francis ignored him, turned the key in the ignition.
Nothing.
Shit shit shit shit shit.
He took the key out, put it back in and twisted again. The engine didn’t even cough. At the edge of his vision, he saw the old man hobbling toward him. Francis kept turning the ignition key, hoping something different would happen.
Come on. Come on.
The old man was right at the driver’s-side window now. “Hey, boy.”
Francis heard the distant engine and didn’t have to look to know it was Cavanaugh. He looked anyway. The sedan was coming around the long curve.
Francis slammed the dashboard with a fist. “Start, you piece of shit!”
The old man knocked on the window. “You’re in drive, boy.”
Francis rolled the window down. “What?”
The old man pointed at the gearshift on the steering column. “You need to put it in park first.”
Francis shifted into park and turned the key again. It cranked immediately.
“Thanks,” Francis told him. “Sorry if I startled you.”
The old man took a step back, flipped a two-finger salute. “Good luck.”
Francis cut across the corner of the field, heading for the road that went south. The ground wasn’t as flat as it looked from the road, and the Pontiac swayed and bounced. A quick glance back showed Cavanaugh following his path down the gentle slope from the road. The old man waved as the sedan with the thugs rolled by, kicking up dirt.
The slope back up to the other road was steeper, and Francis felt and heard the Pontiac scrape bottom. The sedan made it up the slope with less trouble, and in an eyeblink, both cars were flying south down the narrow county road. The sedan swung around to pull up next to him.
Francis was about to mash the gas pedal again, but the road curved in and out of an area of low hills and scattered farmhouses. He couldn’t rocket away like he did before on the straightaway, and he wasn’t a good enough driver to outmaneuver the other car.
So when the other car came around the back and started to pull alongside, Francis jerked the wheel. The Pontiac veered toward the other car. Cavanaugh was doing the same thing, coming right back at Francis.
Both automobiles met at the dotted yellow line down the center of the road, the scrape and crunch of metal on metal sounding like the end of the world. The cars bounced off each other, both going off the road, then careening back and meeting in the middle to collide again.
It took all Francis’s focus to steady the Pontiac and keep it on the road.
He chanced a glance at the other car and saw the passenger-side window roll down. Cavanaugh held his little silver pistol and was aiming it out the window not ten feet away, and now Francis was going to die.
Something stretched out from the car at the farthest limit of Francis’s peripheral vision, and Francis realized it was Emma’s arm reaching out the window behind his seat, her slender fingers curled around—
Cavanaugh’s eyes shifted, going wide with alarm—
Three sharp cracks of thunder exploded behind Francis’s left ear. He flinched and swerved. Three new holes bloomed in Cavanaugh’s door, and they hit the brakes, swinging back behind the Pontiac.
Francis’s left ear rang, felt like it was stuffed with cotton.
Emma climbed over the seat, the smoking revolver in her hand. She clicked the seat belt into place.
“You could have grabbed me some pants.” She still wore only panties and a T-shirt.
“We sort of left in a hurry,” Francis said.
Three loud pops drew Francis’s attention to the rearview mirror. Cavanaugh was leaning out of his window, his little automatic spitting fire at them. Francis ducked his head, his shoulders hunching up. He swerved back and forth across the blacktop, trying to make the GTO a difficult target. More pops chased him down the road.
Emma unbuckled her seat belt again. “Don’t crash.”
She rolled down the passenger-side window, leaned out, and fired the revolver back at Cavanaugh. Cavanaugh’s car mimicked the Pontiac’s evasive maneuvers. The two cars roared down the highway, bullets flying.
They came out of the hilly area, the road curving into low ground and another crossroads. But here there was a scattering of buildings, a mom-and-pop gas station, post office, and feedstore. A collection of old clapboard houses spread out in a circle from the crossroads, some little rural community God had dropped out of the sky and into the middle of nowhere.
“You’ve only got one shot left!” Francis shouted over the engine racket and the wind howling past.
“Two,” she said. “I’ve been counting.”
Francis thought briefly of the man he’d killed, those wide eyes staring at nothing. “One.”
“Fuck.” She climbed halfway out the window, her butt resting on the edge of the door.
“Are you nuts?” Francis shouted, trying to grab for her. “Get back in here!”
“I got one shot, Frankie.”
“Francis!”
The little gas station ahead sat at a gentle bend in the road. Francis slowed the GTO but not enough. The car slid, tires screaming, the GTO’s back end coming around.
Emma’s hand flailed inside the car looking for something to hold.
“Emma!” Francis’s hand shot out to grab hers, only just preventing her from flying out of the car.
She hung on tight. Francis steered the Pontiac through the curve one-handed. Sweat soaked his shirt at the neck and under his arms, panic jolting his system with adrenaline.
Please please please.
He made it through the curve without losing control of the car or letting go of Emma. Cavanaugh’s car hit the turn right behind them.
Emma extended her shooting arm, closing one eye tight, sighting along the barrel of the revolver. She held her breath. Let it out slowly.
And squeezed the trigger.
The pistol bucked in her hand, and Cavanaugh’s front passenger tire blew.
The sedan slid into the curve just as the Pontiac had before, but with the blown tire, it slid halfway around and went off the road, its back end sweeping into the single gas pump at the mom-and-pop filling station. A crack and crunch of metal and glass, and the pump went over, banging against the cement. Gasoline fountained up from the new hole in the ground.
Francis watched the calamity unfold in the rearview mirror.
Two people fled from the filling station—a middle-aged guy and a freckled girl who looked like a teenager. A second later, Cavanaugh and the henchman with the shaggy mustache stumbled from the sedan, paused a moment to take in what was happening, then started running.
They got clear a second before the whole thing went up. Francis felt the Pontiac shudder with the explosion, fire and roiling black smoke reaching into the sky.
Emma climbed back into the passenger seat, refastened her belt. “We’ll need to ditch the Pontiac.”
Francis forced himself to breathe more slowly. He nodded. “Right.” He forced his grip on the steering wheel to ease. His fingers ached. All of him was sore. He let out a long, ragged breath.
“And we’ll need a store,” she said. “I packed another pair of jeans, but I don’t have shoes.”
“Right. A store. Okay.” Francis glanced in the rearview mirror one more time, the fiery orange glow shrinking behind them. “Where do we find a store?”
“Go west, young man.”