We were still a couple of miles from Culver when Rink’s phone chimed. He put it on speaker so we could all hear. Harvey Lucas was already doing his magic with his computer.

“Law enforcement’s trying to track a plane that took off from Trenton without filing a flight plan. They think our boy’s on board, ’cause the pilot’s doing his damnedest to avoid radar.”

“Direction?” I asked.

“South.”

“Back toward Florida,” Bryce Lang assumed. “We came here for nothing, just like I said.”

“Not for nothing,” I told him. “I came here for Imogen Ballard and I’m not leaving until I’m sure she’s out of harm’s way. I owe her that: she shouldn’t have to suffer for our crimes, Bryce.”

“Everything we did was lawfully sanctioned, Hunter.”

“Lawfully sanctioned, my arse! Even if it was an approved hit, does that make what happened to Jimena and the boy okay with you?”

“That’s the way of war. Collateral damage is—”

“The death of innocents,” I finished for him. “Whichever way the CIA looks at it. And I’m not prepared to let that happen to Imogen.”

“It hasn’t happened to Imogen,” Bryce argued. “She’s safe now. We should go after the killer instead of wasting any more time.”

I stared at him until he closed his eyes in defeat. The silence was rather strained. Harvey coughed, maybe to remind us he was still at the other end of the phone. “What’s the latest from Tampa, Harve?” I asked.

“Mixed messages at best. Ballistics have shown that the weapon used to kill the two cops was an M–40 sniper rifle. They know now that you couldn’t ’ave been the shooter, but your guess that they’d assume you had an accomplice is still the main theory.”

“So they’re still looking for me?”

“Big style,” Harvey said. “Rink too, seeing as he’s harboring a felon. And because he has marksman training.”

Rink grunted, sounding amused.

It stood to reason that we’d be on the Most Wanted list, but right then I didn’t care. If we stopped the real killer, everything would be put right. I was thinking about the rifle that the shooter had used to kill Castle and Soames. The M40A1 was a specialist rifle developed for and handmade for Marine Corps snipers by craftsmen at Quantico, Virginia. Based on the Remington 700, it was a heavy-barreled rifle, bolt action, and fed by an internal magazine of five 7.62 mm rounds. Not the kind of gun that was readily available on the open market. It made me think again that the shooter came from a military background. Maybe he’d even trained at the Marine Corps Training Unit in Quantico.

I told Harvey my theory.

“I’ll look into it and cross-reference names against anyone who has served in Colombia.”