Karen shook her head. “My intern wouldn’t know something like that. She assumed they were, but she didn’t think to ask for any ID. And, after everything you’ve said today, I do wonder if they could be with George Dornick’s company.”

I rubbed my forehead. “That means they could be at your home. After we go to my lawyer’s, you’d better let me come back with you to check for an ambush. If it was Dornick’s people, he may also have dug up your cellphone number, which means they could be tracking us.”

I smiled bleakly. “No one is safe if they are around me. Dornick is doing an excellent job of driving that point home. Perhaps you and Bernardo could move into an empty room at Lionsgate Manor until this mess gets cleaned up.”

“I’ll be okay, Vic. They’ll believe me when I explain I’m just the pastor who’s been too naïve to see through you.” She made a soft O of surprise with her rosebud lips, and I laughed.

“It’s my Victorian face,” she added. “No one ever thinks I understand the big bad world. It’s you who’s in trouble and in danger.”

The traffic began moving marginally faster. I kept checking the road, using the makeup mirror in the sun visor and peering into the right wing mirror. The same cars crawled around us. I couldn’t tell if any of them were paying us special attention. It was when we oozed off the Kennedy into the Loop that I began to wonder about a certain gray BMW. It had an impressive collection of antennas, and for the last few miles on the expressway it had seemed to be trading places with a black Ford Expedition. Karen’s turquoise Corolla was easy to pick out in a crowd, and they hadn’t needed to stay close to us until we exited. But then the BMW swooped around two cabs and a bus and landed in front of us. The Expedition was moving in from the side.

“We have company,” I said. “I’m jumping out before they pin us. I’ll try to send a cop your way.”

Before Karen could react or speak or even slow the car down, I had stuffed the envelope of negatives and prints into the back of my jeans and opened the passenger door. I held on to it tightly, got my feet and myself out and running alongside the car, then slammed the door and tore off down LaSalle Street toward Freeman’s office. I heard whistles, screams, the screech of tires, and then a messenger bike was on the sidewalk, doing wheelies around me, while another one came at me from the south.