Lack of sleep had probably contributed to their poor judgment that morning, but their employer wouldn’t care anything about that. They had been watching Nemo for the past week, and you never knew when he was going to sleep or wake up. When Nemo finally went in to kill Jasper, they were ready to search the house as soon as he left, but after three hours they hadn’t found anything, and they decided P.J. Harcourt must have the paper. She was the one person who had regular contact with Jasper. Even though Erich wasn’t brilliant, he was observant, and he had seen P.J.’s name on one of the two mailboxes at the end of Lone Pine Road—the box that didn’t say Fleming.

They figured they would take out this Harcourt character, find the paper, and be out of there as fast as possible. Erich would do the job; Karl would stay in the van, monitor the police radio, and watch the road for Nemo, in case he came back. But Nemo had stayed hidden as he followed Erich to P.J.’s house and the morning hadn’t gone quite the way Karl and Erich had expected.

Thirty minutes after hightailing it away from the body of a dead sheriff’s deputy and finally back on the main highway, Karl and Erich picked up a signal from Patton Jackson Harcourt’s cell phone, which their employer had helped them hack into.

“They’re headed west,” said Karl, “toward Tennessee.”

“Where in Tennessee?” said Erich.

“Who cares where,” said Karl. “Just get on Interstate 40 and drive west. And don’t get too close. We don’t want them to know we’re following.”

They were well past Knoxville when the signal came to a stop in the parking lot of a BBQ joint.

“You stay here,” said Karl, pulling the van around to the back of the building. “I’ll check to see what they’re up to.” Karl slipped in through the back door and got a view of the entire dining area before someone asked what he was doing in the kitchen. He didn’t see Nemo or the woman anywhere.

“Sorry,” said Karl in English. “My mistake.” Five minutes later he found Patton’s phone taped to the running board of a semitruck in the parking lot.

“Bitch thinks she’s smarter than us,” said Karl, slamming the door as he slid back into the passenger seat of the van. “If she sent the phone west then she’s going east, but she’s got a hell of a lead on us now.” They pulled back onto the highway, heading east, and Erich gunned it to eighty.

“Slow down,” said Karl. “The last thing we need is to get pulled over by the police.”

“Do you think the assassin is with her?” said Erich.