The agent ushered him in the direction of the lead SUV. His partner crossed toward them, slipping between the bumpers of the two vehicles. George glanced down at the sizeable dent in the SUV’s rear fender. The Bureau was slipping. There had been a time that a Bureau vehicle with a dent would have been off the road and in the shop in twenty-four hours. Then George caught the license plate, and his smile disappeared. It didn’t have government plates, and it wasn’t from DC or Virginia either. Tennessee plates . . . he’d been too busy calling Jenn to pick up on it when he’d been pulled over. The agent hadn’t shown him credentials either. Whoever they were, they weren’t Bureau. He’d have given a small fortune for the gun in his glove compartment, but it was a long way away now.

George slowed and patted his sports-jacket pockets as if he’d forgotten something.

“I left my phone in the car,” he said and began to turn back.

“Just get in the car, sir.” The man took him by the arm to turn him back.

The man expected a little resistance. George offered none and used the tug to spin back toward him. His fist caught the man under the chin. It was a hammer blow, and if it had caught the man in the throat as George intended, then it would have crushed the larynx. But George’s feet had slipped slightly in the gravel, and it didn’t land cleanly.

As it was, the man’s head snapped back, and he let out a snarl of pain. George couldn’t run, and while he might take both of these men in close quarters, the two men in the rear SUV would put him down. George went for the man’s gun instead. His only chance was to draw it before the partner reached him. George found the gun’s grip and pulled it clear, twisting sideways as he did to put some space between himself and the partner who was closing in on him. George tried to bring the gun up, but it snagged on the lining of the man’s jacket. He wrenched it free, but the partner was on him by then.

Taser voltage exploded through George’s central nervous system.

Jenn sat in the passenger seat of the Cherokee. On the dashboard lay the crime-scene photo of Terrance Musgrove’s suicide. In the shock of discovering Tate’s murder, she’d forgotten all about it. Wondering what Gibson Vaughn was doing back in Pennsylvania had brought it back to her.

She opened her laptop and scrolled to the background dossier on Gibson that she’d compiled before George had approached him for the job. She clicked on the folder labeled “Duke Vaughn” and flipped through it until she found the photograph. Her eyes went back and forth between the two.

“How is this possible?” she said out loud.