The driver was down there on the road a second later as she regained consciousness. “Oh, my God, I didn’t… What happened to you? Are you—what happened to you?”

“Please.” She barely mustered the word. “If they find me here, they’ll kill us both.”

The man’s strong hands wrapped around her, grazing the dime-sized hole in her back as he picked her up. She only exhaled, too weak to scream now. A cluster of gray and indistinct moments later, they were inside the truck and moving really fast down the two-lane highway.

“Hang in there, darlin’.” The driver’s voice was shaky now. “Tell me who did this to you.”

Hannah could feel her consciousness slipping away again. “The men…”

“The men? What men, sweetheart? Who are you talking about?”

An answer floated vaguely through Hannah’s mind, and she wasn’t sure if she said it out loud or maybe just thought it before everything went away.

The men from the White House.

Two

HIS NAME WAS Johnny Tucci, but the boys back in his South Philadelphia neighborhood all called him Johnny Twitchy, on account of the way his eyes jumped around when he was nervous, which was most of the time.

Of course, after tonight, the boys in Philly could go screw themselves. This was the night Johnny got into the game for real. This was man time. He had “the package,” didn’t he?

It was a simple job but a real goody, because he was alone and had to take full responsibility. He’d already picked up the package. Scared him, but he’d done just fine.

No one ever said so, but once you started making deliveries like this, it meant you had something on the family, and they had something on you. In other words, there was a relationship. After tonight, there’d be no more running numbers for Johnny, no more scrapping for crumbs in southside neighborhoods. It was like the bumper sticker that said, Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

So naturally, he was pumped—and just a little bit nervous.

His uncle Eddie’s warning kept playing like a tape in his mind. Don’t blow this opportunity, Twitchy, Eddie had said. I’m way out on a limb here for you. Like he was doing him some kind of big favor with this job, which Johnny supposed maybe he was, but still. His own uncle didn’t have to rub his face in it, did he?

He reached over and turned up the radio. Even the country music they played down here was better than listening to Eddie’s nagging in his head all night long. Turned out, it was an old Charlie Daniels Band tune, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” He even knew some of the words. But the familiar lyrics couldn’t keep Eddie’s voice out of Johnny’s head.

Don’t blow this opportunity, Twitchy.

I’m way out on a limb for you.

Oh, fuck!

Blue flashers danced off his rearview mirror—coming out of nowhere. Two, three seconds ago, he could have sworn he had I-95 all to himself.