The dust blowing off the deserted dirt road was almost enough to blind him, but Fade left the window down anyway. From a weather perspective at least, the morning had turned out beautifully—still air almost completely lacking in humidity beneath a cloudless sky. He leaned forward and turned the car's underpowered CD player up another notch. In his experience, it was almost impossible to be depressed when listening to the Go-Gos. The Ramones and The Monkees were a close second and third, but he was convinced that a giant loudspeaker playing Beauty and the Beat could bring peace to Congo.
     The trip odometer turned over twenty miles and Fade skidded the car to a stop in the quickly diminishing shade of a tree.
     "End of the line."
     Karen Manning lifted her face from the car seat and looked up at him, eyes registering the fear that she wouldn't let her face show.
     "Oh. Sorry, bad choice of words." Fade leaned over her and threw the passenger door open. A solid shove sent her rolling into a dense patch of weeds next to the car.
     He stepped on the gas, accelerating quickly enough for the door to slam itself shut and did a one-eighty in the road, leaving a cloud of dust that almost completely obscured the woman struggling to her feet with her hands cuffed behind her.
     As he passed, she tripped on something and rolled down into a dry creek bed. It was kind of a pathetic scene and, as he watched her in the rear view mirror, he started to think maybe he was being overly harsh. Jamming his foot down on the brake pedal, he slammed the car into reverse and pulled up even with her, once again creating a nearly opaque cloud of dust.
     She was letting out an impressive stream of obscenities as she tried to extract herself from the creek bed without the use of her hands and Fade jumped out of the car to help.
     "Mouth like that, you should have been in the Navy," he said, grabbing her under one arm and hauling her to her feet. "Do you have a key for the handcuffs?"
     Her eyes shifted almost imperceptibly toward the breast pocket of her shirt and he reached for it, but she jerked back.
     "You sure? It's gonna be hard to get those things over your boots and even harder to take the boots off. How about if I promise that under no circumstances will I enjoy a single moment of feeling you up?"
     "You just stay away from me."
     "Your call."
     He reached through his car's back window and pulled out a liter bottle of water, which he dropped on the ground. "It's twenty miles straight back up this road to the main highway. You look pretty fast, but it's gonna get hot today and that's not a lot of water. Watch your pace and try to stay in the shade where you can." He turned and started to climb back into the car.
     "Wait. You've got to give yourself up. You've got no chance."
     Fade smiled and looked back at her. "I don't get your logic."
      "You just killed a bunch of cops and they're going to pull out the stops to get you. Give yourself up now and let me take you in. I'm willing to personally guarantee your safety. Then you'll have a chance to get a lawyer and tell your side of the story. If you honestly thought you were being attacked and were in danger, a jury will listen to that."
     "I don't think so. Thanks for the offer, though."
     "Where are you going to go? What are you going to do? By now, there are pictures of you all over the TV. The police will be in the process of contacting everyone you ever knew and looking into everywhere you've ever been. That's no way to live."
     "As sad as it sounds, it's a step up for me." He tried to get back in the car again but she actually moved to block him.
     "More people could get hurt."
     "I can almost guarantee it."
     He grabbed her shoulders to move her aside, but as he did, his cell phone started to ring. Sighing quietly, he pulled it from his pocket. "Probably Mrs. Melman wondering why I haven't delivered her daughter's hope chest. Woman's driving me nuts..."
     The number registering on caller ID didn't look familiar and the fact that he didn't have any friends, combined with the fact that his number was unlisted, suggested that the call related in some way to last night.
      "Look familiar?" he said, holding the phone up in front of Karen.
     "My boss's direct line."
     "What's his name?"
     "Seymore Pickering."
     "You made that up."
     "Why would I lie? That's really his name."
     Fade shrugged and pressed the phone to his ear. "Good morning, Seymore."
     The silence on the other end suggested that this man's mother indeed had named him Seymore Pickering.
     "Am I speaking to Salam al Fayed?"
     "Yup."
     "I want to know where Karen Manning is. Has she been harmed?"
     "I wouldn't really say harmed. A little dented..."
     "I want to talk to her."
     "Relax, Seymore. She's fine. You have my word."
     "Then you won't mind putting her on. As a gesture of good will."
     Fade rolled his eyes and held the phone up to Karen's ear. She glanced at his car, probably considering blurting out a description but then wisely thought better of it. It seemed likely the cops had the description already anyway.
     "Captain? I'm fine."
     Fade pulled the phone back. "See? You should try to be more trusting."
     "You have no reason to keep her or hurt her, Mr. al Fayed. She was just doing her job. As a former soldier, you should understand that."
     "Whatever."
     "I want you to let her go."
     "Okay."
     Another confused silence. "Uh, what do you want in return?"
     "Nothing that I can think of."
     A third silence. This guy wasn't exactly a riveting conversationalist.
     "I want you to turn yourself in, Mr. Fayed. I can guarantee your safety—"
     "It's al Fayed and let me stop you there. I've already been through this with Officer Manning. So why don't we just cut through the crap. Here's the situation, Seymour: I've got a couple of things I need to do and they don't include getting a lethal injection. You've got some freak running around Virginia killing young women and making you look like a jerk. So why don't you focus on that for a while and stay the hell away from me. In return for that small favor, I can pretty much guarantee you I'll be dead in a month."
     "You know as well as I do that I can't just ignore this. Even if I wanted to."
     "Yeah, I guess not..." When Fade spoke again, his voice had softened slightly. "Look, I'm sorry about your men. Tell their families that. Tell them that they fought really well and showed a lot of courage. I don't know if they're going to want to hear that. Probably not. What I'm trying to say here is that I don't want to get into it with any more of your guys. But if they start shooting at me, I'm going to shoot back. And I almost never come up on the short end of those kinds of exchanges."
     "Mr. Fayed—"
     Fade hung up and threw the phone back through the car window. "It's al Fayed, you dick," he mumbled to no one in particular and then slapped Karen on the shoulder. "Catch you later."
     Her eyes widened again in that nearly imperceptible way that was kind of endearing.
     "It's just a figure of speech," he said as he slid behind the wheel. "You need to lighten up."