Instead, I press a number that rings Callie’s phone a single time. She’s now on alert.

I start walking toward the lady.

“Miss!” I yell, loud enough for her to hear. “Are you okay?”

I wonder why people always ask that. Of course she’s not okay. She just walked into a friggin’ lamp post! But that’s what people always ask. A little kid falls into a well and gets stuck twenty feet below the surface. “Are you okay?” people shout.

She’s not okay.

Before I cover ten yards, her head explodes.

I stop in my tracks and instinctively drop to the ground to make myself a smaller target. I’m so stunned I hardly notice the van slowly backing out of view. But the fact it’s backing up instead of racing forward tells me whoever’s in the van had something to do with the lady’s head exploding. And the way the street light hits the front of the van as it’s backing up shows me something I hadn’t seen before: a magnetic sign on the side, above the front wheel well. I can’t make out the wording from this distance, but it’s an orange logo of some sort, with black lettering. It’s a temporary sign, designed to cover the actual logo beneath it. I’ve seen few vans with small logos painted on the front passenger side. Ropic Industries has one. And their vans are white, also.

I look around to see if anyone’s behind me. I want to check on the lady, but the little voice in my head says, Why? To ask if she’s okay?

Then it adds, You’re alone, miles from your safe place. What if the van circles behind you?

I look at the office and industrial buildings around me, and decide to go vertical.

Running down the alley between two buildings, I spot a staircase, and take it up to the second floor landing. There’s a flat roof ten feet above me. I stand on the railing and carefully raise my arms over my head, grab the roof ledge and pull myself up to about chest height. I swing my right leg up and hook my foot over the ledge and work my way onto the roof. From there, I get a running start and jump to the next roof, then the next, and soon I’m on the rooftop of a building, looking down at the intersection where the white van had been moments earlier.

I lay flat on the roof and wait to see if anyone comes to check on the body.

While I’m doing that, the building beneath me explodes.


 

 

 

 

2.

 

 

 

AS I JUMP to my feet to survey the damage below, I quickly conclude the building beneath me is collateral damage. Based on my knowledge of where the woman had been sitting moments earlier, and seeing only the remnants of her ass there now, it’s clear she’d been wired with explosives.

Which makes her a homeland terrorist.

I press the button that speed-dials Callie.

“Where are you?” she says.

“Corner of Landmark and Trace. Heading north on Landmark, right side of the street. Make it fast!”

“Give me two minutes.”

I hang up, check the street below me, and notice several structures have been decimated.

But why?

I mean, why here? Why now? Nothing in the immediate area remotely resembles a terrorist target.

I’d love to investigate the scene, try to work it out, but within minutes the cops will be swarming the area, and I need to be long gone by then. Whatever role the driver of the white van played in all this, I doubt he’s planning to hang around to deal with me. I carefully work my way down the back side of the building, thankful the blast hasn’t done too much damage.

A couple minutes later I’m in the passenger side of Callie’s black Mercedes CL65 AMG.

“Sweet car,” I say.

“You’re not bleeding, right?” she says.

“Not that I know of.”

She turns right, makes the block, begins heading back to her place. Says, “If I knew you were this filthy, I’d have stolen a car.”

“Sorry.