They stopped in the light spilling out of the lobby so Mike Carling could finish his cigar.

‘Hope that’s the end of the rain,’ said Munro.

‘Don’t let these farmers hear you say that,’ said Potts. ‘Round here that’s blasphemy.’

Carling drew on his cigar and Tom watched it glow orange and black like a microcosmic planet, new and molten in the dark. He felt calm and content and knew he’d sleep well in his good-smelling shorts and clean hotel sheets. He’d call Lucia first. He’d done what he promised her he would – he’d found her sister – even if it was a week late. That had to count for something, didn’t it? He thought it did, and that made him feel good.

‘I’m turning in,’ said Jan.

Munro grunted as if in agreement, and stumbled sideways. Tom put out an arm automatically to steady him but Munro’s knees gave way and Tom found himself stumbling too, dropping to the ground with the man in his arms, trying to break his fall.

‘Hey, Lenny, you lightweight!’ said Potts.

Carling laughed and bent to help them both up.

Tom looked down, fuzzily confused by the blood on Munro’s neat blue shirt, suddenly unnerved by the way the man’s head lolled on his thigh.

It was only when he heard the squeal of tyres as a car peeled out of the hotel lot that he realized Lenny Munro had been shot.

Tom was running before he even knew he’d stood up.

In the dark and sodium-light the Jeep was big and black and reflective, glimmering in the night. He sprinted at an angle across the lot to intercept it at the stop light and, for a few heady seconds, he closed on it. Then it got away from him again.

He vaulted a low wall and cut another corner; horns blared as he raced down the white centre line, fifty yards behind the car in traffic. Forty yards.

Thirty.

His feet pounded, his breath tore painfully through his lungs and he thought dimly of joining a gym. The Jeep slowed. For a crazy moment he thought it was going to stop for the red light, and the problem of what he would do with it when he caught it loomed large.

And then, when he could almost reach out and touch the back of the vehicle, he saw the passenger window slide down, a narrow bar of dead black opening in the liquid mirror of glass, and the muzzle of a gun point straight at him.

Tom dived to the side and felt something spit into his face as he hit the ground. He rolled behind the Jeep, out of the firing line, and lay panting, his nose pressed against the asphalt. Then his world turned from black-and-red to brilliant colour as the reversing lights blazed on.

If the driver hadn’t hit the gas so hard, he’d have run Tom Patrick over, like a Virginia squirrel. As it was, the wheels spun and shrieked and smoked for the split second it took Tom to register what was happening and throw himself out of the way, rolling against the kerb. Then he was up and running again, but away from the Jeep this time, across a grassy bank, through a McDonald’s drive-thru, over a chain-link fence, wrenching his shoulder, scattering trash. He heard no sounds of pursuit but wasn’t taking any chances. He hurtled down an alleyway and skidded onto a well-lit street filled with restaurants, including the steak bar they’d left a lifetime ago. Immediately he forced himself to walk. Dozens of people were spilling out of bars and eateries, and cars drifted softly by.

He was wearing a black hooded top; he ripped it off so he was in just a white T-shirt. Cars passed him and he dared not look round. At any second he expected to feel white-hot bullets. His leg screamed furiously at him, but he tried to minimize any limp. He straightened and walked back to the main drag.

He emerged half a block up from the Holiday Inn, where blue and red lights now flickered lazily over the body of Lenny Munro.

35

A NURSE PICKED chips of asphalt out of Tom’s cheek and forehead. He winced and the doctor smiled cheerfully. ‘You’re lucky she’s not picking a bullet out of your eye socket.’

Tom stayed quiet. There were few things he hated more than happy doctors; he wasn’t encouraging this one.

‘As for your leg …’

The stitches in his calf had been torn free. His freshly laundered jeans, socks and sneakers lay in a bloody pile near the door.

The doctor irrigated the jagged tear, humming a tune, then pushed his glasses down his nose so he could look over them to thread a needle.

‘I need to make a phone call.’

‘When I’m through here.’

‘How long will that be?’

‘Not long.’

‘How long is not long?’

‘Soon,’ he said, and dug the needle into Tom’s leg.

‘Shit!’

‘I know.’ The doctor grinned. ‘It really hurts, doesn’t it?’

Tom left the hospital in somebody else’s pants. Somebody who was shorter and a lot fatter than him and who, Tom imagined, was also probably dead.

Jan Ryland had been waiting for him, so he hadn’t been able to call Lucia, and they drove back to the hotel in virtual silence. They said good night at her door and she hugged him. ‘I don’t understand it,’ she said flatly. ‘Why Lenny?’

‘Yeah,’ he said noncommittally, although disturbing answers had already taken root in his mind.

Lenny Munro might have been a random victim. Or he might have been a target before Pete had given him the bolt. Might have been either. But Tom doubted both. And if Munro had become a target because of the bolt, then Tom had to look at the people who had known he had it.

Pete LaBello. Ryland. Carling. Potts.

And Ness Franklin.

He let go of Ryland and stepped back. ‘Where’s the bolt, Jan? From the South African jet?’

She looked confused. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Where did Lenny keep it?’

Her brow furrowed. ‘In the trailer, I guess. Or in his room. He wouldn’t have wanted it getting mixed up with 823 wreckage.’

‘Which is his room?’

‘Two nineteen.’

*

Upstairs, there were still a few cops outside Munro’s room. Tom showed his ID and told them what he was looking for and why. He didn’t have time to mess around.

Sniffing a motive, a young detective in a suit and tie introduced himself as Sean Hapgood. ‘Someone was sure looking for something,’ he said, and opened the door to 219.

The place had been turned over. No drawer was unemptied, no closet unraided. Lenny Munro’s few clothes and many files were hurled about as if a twister had passed through.