“We have company,” said Savage from the rear seat while Karen, still wearing her helmet, continued to drive toward the safe house in Montmartre.
“We do?” she asked, focusing on the thickening traffic as rush hour started. Cars and trucks were pulling in and out of parking spots along both sides of the avenue.
“Yeah,” replied Savage. “Two cars, both white, about two blocks behind us. They keep turning every time we turn.”
“Damn,” replied Karen, cutting right again and then taking her first left, trying to lose them.
“They’re still following us,” Savage replied a moment later, as they turned onto another wide boulevard. “But there’s someone else even closer.”
“Who?” she asked.
Savage laughed, then said, “Well, I’ll be damned. How in the hell did he find us?”
“Who, Troy?”
“I think that’s Tommy Grant back there on that scooter.”
Karen fought to remain in control of the car before she asked, “Tom Grant? Are you sure?”
“That’s the new face the CIA bought for him all right. And sitting behind him is Rachel Muratani.”
Karen’s eyes shifted to the rearview mirror, where she saw the unmistakable face of the only other man she had ever loved aside from her husband.
Tom Grant.
She still remembered the last time she saw him during that lunch in Washington, D.C., a couple months after the plastic surgery, when he had proposed, when he had dropped to one knee and begged her to come away with him to—
“Watch the fucking road!” Savage shouted.
A delivery truck was pulling out of a parking spot, its rear doors filling her windshield.
Karen slammed on the brakes, the Mercedes’ tires screeching as she clutched the wheel. The anti-lock brake system kicked in, rapidly slowing the vehicle, but they were too close. She had allowed herself to get distracted by a fraction of a second and could not avoid the collision.
The impact was sudden, very hard. The air bags failed to deploy, failed to cushion her momentum as she struck the steering wheel with her helmet. As darkness engulfed her from the massive blow, the last thing crossing her mind was the vague memory of how operatives typically disable air bags to keep them from deploying in a car chase.
She sensed additional motion as the vehicle spun following the impact, before coming to a complete stop, before everything faded away and she passed out.