He used the beer to wash down a few pills before reclining and closing his eyes. The episode in the parking lot combined with hours of crisscrossing the country in the relative anonymity of economy class hadn’t done his back any good. At least he’d stopped coughing up blood.

“Get some sleep, Jon. It’s a long flight to Okinawa. Fred’s cleared us for a nice quiet landing at our Kadena Air Base there, and then we can make our way to mainland Japan. I need you firing on all cylinders. Right now you look about a hundred years old.”

“It’s not the years,” he said, not bothering to open his eyes. “It’s the mileage.”

She didn’t respond immediately, but when she did she sounded unusually contrite. “Thanks back there. If it weren’t for you, I’d have shot an innocent woman and gotten crushed by a jacked-up Nissan. Not the way I want to go out.”

He smiled thinly. “I remembered what Fujiyama said about cars. He insisted we drive an old one.”

“Sure, but I thought that was because modern ones can be tracked by satellite. I still don’t understand what happened back there, Jon. How were those cars being controlled? It seems—”

The sound of insane laughter cut her off and forced Smith to look down at his phone. The extremely appropriate ringtone belonged to Marty Zellerbach, a high school friend of his who’d grown up to be a technological wizard and one of the world’s top hackers. Occasionally very useful, he could also be incredibly exhausting. Zellerbach suffered from Asperger’s syndrome and had a love-hate relationship with his medications that created wild pendulums in his mood.

“Are you going to pick up?” Randi asked.

“No.”

“You know what he’s calling about, Jon. And you know we’re going to need to talk to him eventually.”

“Eventually sounds good.”

She flicked a hand out, putting his phone on speaker before he could intercept. “Marty. Sweetheart. How are you?”

“Randi? The question is, how are you?”

“I’m good, thank you.”

“I noticed you’re as gorgeous as ever. I’m glad to hear the arm wasn’t serious.”

Smith frowned. By the time he’d made it to Chicago, CNN was already running shaky cell phone footage of what had happened in Portland. He and Randi had both been vaguely recognizable, but in the chaos it was doubtful that anyone would come to the conclusion that they were the target of the attack. Or even that it was an attack at all.

“Jon? Are you there? Are you all right? You looked a little slow out there.”

“I’m fine, Marty.”

“Can I assume those cars were after the two of you and not the woman with the Baby Jogger?”