The bus seemed to take hours to move, but eventually it did, and with each yard it traveled his heart began to slow; and he felt himself start to believe he’d actually succeeded. He’d gotten his hands on the green book.

After several blocks, he cast a glance around the interior, still careful to keep his head lowered so the baseball cap covered his face. Nobody came toward him with menace or any intent. Orelia was not on board, nor any pursuers. He sighed and shuffled himself across to lean against the window. Exhaustion overwhelmed him as the adrenaline left his system. He could almost fall asleep, there in the middle of his escape. So not a seasoned international spy response.

After the bus had traveled several stops, he figured he could now take the chance to check inside the tote. He placed it on his lap and stared at the fastened zipper, proud of himself that his plan had worked. Now he would have answers to his questions. He hoped.

The unzipping sounded loud and accusatory as if the bag objected to its own theft. He checked around again, but nobody had noticed him. He returned to his prize and peered in, slipping a hand inside to push around the contents. A wallet, makeup case, two notepads, a novel by Dean Koontz, a pen and pencil, gum and keys.

No green book. Where was it?

He darted his hand between the items again, checking, moving, growing more puzzled as the seconds ticked by.

Then he noticed the zippered section in the lining on one side.

Ah, of course. She would keep it hidden away.

He couldn’t get that pocket zip open quick enough. Or his hand inside quick enough.

That was the moment when his euphoria evaporated like drops of water on a hot rock. His luck had left him—if he’d ever really possessed it—fizzled away it had, after he’d risked so much.

The book was not inside.

He returned to the Dean Koontz novel, flicking through the pages in a frantic thumbing of the edges, in case inserted inside the covers of the horror author’s thriller was the green book’s contents.

Nope. No. Negative. Nada.

He slid to the aisle seat and systematically pulled out everything, placing the bits and pieces beside himself, pushing and grouping them together. His disbelief so high he kept imagining he’d see it in the empty spaces. But there was no book, journal, balance sheet notepad, whatever the damn thing was according to her.

His excitement from the earlier moment had gone and been replaced by a gooey, black mess of thick disappointment. Orelia’s luck continued, while his took the same old course of fail, fail, fail.

When would he catch a break?

He thought to give up right now, throw the contents back in the bag, leave the thing on the bus and await his fate. Something stopped him, and it wasn’t his own fear. The image of poor Jan, hopeless, homeless, and Morris, idiot, terrible agent, and the others whose lives she’d destroyed, hovered over the scattered belongings.