He’d be long gone before anybody got to the wreck and figured things out. He’d get to L.A. where he had support: cash, passports, and contacts. He’d fly to Frankfurt, then Lisbon, then Algiers and back to work.

He had to be the luckiest sonofa-

Crack!

Stars exploded, and Yacine thought a rock had fallen on him just as he recognized Dark Eyes, whose swing of a club-sized tree branch had landed on Yacine’s jaw, breaking both on impact.

Yacine staggered.

Fortin took the murderer to the ground, manhandling him to his stomach, driving his knee into the back of his lower neck, drilling his face into the pavement, reaching for plastic handcuffs in his jacket, turning to the flash of an approaching grill.

-Chapter 56-

Jade Falls, Washington

Ren’s tears blurred her vision when her Jeep, traveling at seventy-one miles an hour, came upon two men.

On the road, feet in front of her!

It ended when it started, before Ren could react. Before her brain issued the command to take her foot from the gas and stomp on the brake, before her mouth opened and her hands spasmed on the wheel, Ren felt the heart-sickening thud.

Something – a man? – streaked over her windshield as something else grazed under her!

Ren shrieked, her stomach clenched, ice shot up her spine, her skin tingled.

She stopped her Jeep.

But it was too late.

Rooted in shock, Ren’s memory of what followed came in rapid, staccato bursts.

Two men, twenty-thirty yards apart bleeding on the road.

Other cars and trucks, stopping.

Concerned faces.

Cellphone calls.

Blankets, the wail of sirens.

Ambulances, sheriff’s deputies, Washington State Patrol.

Over and over someone saying, “I’m so sorry! I didn’t see them! I’m so sorry!”

-Chapter 57-

Jade Falls and Ice Lake, Washington

Fortin was lying on his back, alive, but frozen in moments scored by sirens and emergency radios.

A distraught older woman was sobbing near a police car.

“I’m so sorry! Why were they on the road? I didn’t see them! I’m so sorry!”

“Just take it easy, ma’am.”

“Oh God, but I have to get to my son in Seattle! I have to go! You don’t understand! Please, I’m so sorry! But I have to go!”

“Ma’am I need you to sit over here and take a breath. Can you do that for me? Ma’am, please?”

Fortin felt nothing, saw faces, paramedics tending to him, getting a board under him, lifting him to a gurney, soothing him.

“Sir, your friend is going to be fine. Sir, can you hear me? Your friend is going to be fine, he …”

Friend?

“ … went under the car, just some scrapes. But we want to get you to a hospital straight away.”

Fortin searched the hovering faces; saw the Stetson of a trooper or deputy and grabbed her wrist hard. She had a kind face, smooth skin.

Warm.