Assuming that Vin followed through and broke things off with Devina, and provided the guy managed to get through Marie-Terese’s shell, Jim had to wonder what the hell his own role was with the whole “crossroads” bit. Yeah, maybe he’d managed to get the pair of them in the same place on Friday night, but other than that, what had he done?

This was either the easiest gig on the planet, or he was missing something.

A little later, Jim glanced at the clock. And then a half hour after that he looked again.

Matthias worked fast. Always. And on its face, the request was a simple one: Verify the registration and owner of a five-year-old Toyota Camry and perform a criminal background check. It was the kind of thing that took two sweeps of a mouse, six strokes on a keyboard, and about a nanosecond.

Unless a national security emergency had occurred. Or something had been found in Marie-Terese’s records.

There were reasons why people felt the need to look behind themselves in dark alleys. Good reasons why most tended to hurry along, even if it wasn’t chilly. Excellent reasons why lighted streets were much preferred at night.

“Oh…God, no…. please—”

The downward sweep of the tire iron cut off the pleading and it was a sharp extinguishing, like turning off a light: One moment there was illumination, the next nothing but blackness.

One moment there was a voice, the next nothing but silence.

Blood was on both their faces now.

As he set about killing the man, rage lifted his arm more than any conscious thought did and his anger gave him the kind of strength that meant this wasn’t going to take long. Just one more strike, if even that, and there would be more than a temporary silence.

Shifting his weight to get the most out of the downward trajectory, he—

At the far end of the alley, the headlights of a car swept around, the twin paths of beams hitting the brick of the building to the left and pouring down its rough wall.

No time for another strike. In a split second, he was going to be lit as clear as if he were on stage.

Wheeling around, he shot over to the opposite side of the alley, running as fast as he could. As he gunned around the corner, they were going to catch sight of his jacket and the back of his baseball cap, but there were a hundred black Gore-Tex windbreakers in Caldwell, and a black hat was a black hat was a black hat.

There was a screech of brakes and then someone yelled something.