From where I was, in a gully, I could only see the sedan’s driver. He looked military to me, tall, with a blond buzz cut—and still firing. I didn’t shoot back, didn’t dare.

The problem was the traffic stopped behind him. There wasn’t a safe shot I could take. He seemed to figure that out, and broke for the nearest building.

As he passed the large Avalon sign fronting the complex, I fired off a fast, controlled double tap. Two shells kicked over my shoulder. The blond man went down with the second one.

But we weren’t out of this yet, not by a long shot. Mahoney was up and firing. I could see the other man now, down in the street. He had a wet hole in the leg of his pants, but he got up again.

“Drop your weapon!” Mahoney shouted, as the man began to hobble away.

I came around to cover from a second angle, just as the guy raised a .45 at Mahoney.

Both our shots got off before his. He spasmed twice when they hit, and still managed to pull the trigger one more time. His shot nearly clipped Ned, who dropped and fired back. The last bullet caught the guy in the shoulder.

The shooter was alive when we got to him, wide-eyed and tremoring, his finger still on the trigger. Ned stepped on his wrist and pulled the .45 out of his hand.

“Hang in there,” I told him. “Ambulance is on its way.”

He was in bad shape, though. A wound in his stomach was pumping blood, too much and too fast. While Mahoney ran to Nicholson and the woman, I pulled off my jacket and pressed it to the wound.

“Who do you work for?” I asked.

I wasn’t sure if he could hear me. He didn’t look scared, but his eyes were like saucers. When he tried to swallow, foamy blood came through his lips. My jacket was already soaked.

“Tell me!” I finally shouted at him. “Who sent you here?”

The gunman’s breath hitched, and his grip went tight on my arm—just before everything went lax. He died without saying a word that might help us understand, well, anything about what was happening.

Chapter 58

OUR TWO DEAD soon became three, when Charlotte Nicholson, her face blue, the body still warm, turned up in the Pontiac’s trunk.

Tony Nicholson and his presumed girlfriend, Mara Kelly, were both mute except to say that they hadn’t done anything wrong and they had no idea who the dead men were. That’s as much as we got before the FBI took them into custody.

By now, the response team had swelled to three Bureau cars, Alexandria police, EMTs, and the local sheriff’s department. As soon as I could, I called Bree to check in.

That’s when I realized that my phone had been off for hours—ever since the sweep at the private club out in Culpeper. When I turned it on, there were three voice mails waiting—all from Bree.