LITMIR.BIZ

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      She caught herself. She believed in a universe that could be influenced by positive and negative thoughts. In the situation she was in, there was no sense thinking violent thoughts. She closed her eyes for a moment and briefly envisioned getting away from the man.

      He pulled into the parking lot of a diner, which, unlike the post office lot, looked fairly full.

      DeDe’s was a plain, square clapboard building that never made it into visitors’ guides. Tourists who came to Chadds Ford to discover the country’s colonial past wouldn’t have looked at it twice, anyway. But the food was divine, which made it a favorite meeting place for locals. She used to have breakfast here with her grandmother every Sunday, before she’d passed.

      She closed her eyes for a moment and drew a deep breath. “What are we doing here?”

      “Getting breakfast.” He was checking out the lot carefully.

      “How can you eat at a time like this?”

      He shrugged. “If you don’t eat, you won’t have the strength to face whatever comes next.”

      He had a very pragmatic view of eating. Judging from his lean body, he’d never spent a day of his life overeating, or dieting, or wrought with emotion that made ice cream a necessity, for that matter. “I don’t think I can eat right now.”

      “You can always give it a try. A sandwich and orange juice?”

      “Okay. And coffee.” Although if there were ever a morning when she was wide-awake without caffeine, this would be it. Still, old habits died harder than Duracell batteries. And caffeine wasn’t just about waking up. It was her comfort food of choice. Among others. Suddenly she could have killed for a bag of Cheetos.

      Not that there was a chance of getting Cheetos out of Cade. She’d seen his grocery bags before—he was a health nut. He shopped at Trader Joe’s.

      “You stay here.” He scanned the parking lot one more time before starting out. “I’ll get it to go.”

      She watched him walk to the front door and hold it open for a group of old ladies. He trusted her to stay put. He really had seemed competent until now. So competent that she was beginning to feel dejected about her chances of getting away from him. Well, everybody makes mistakes.

      She was out of the SUV the second the door closed behind him. And she nearly got run over by the cop car pulling into the lot.

      HE THOUGHT HE’D LOST Palmer, but spotted him in that SUV by accident and thanked his lucky stars for it. Luck had always been on his side. And why not? Luck favored the prepared mind. Wasn’t that what they said? And he always was prepared.

      So was Cade Palmer, it seemed. He’d escaped that explosion. That had been a surprise in the middle of his morning surveillance. He’d been checking out the house, making his own plans. He wouldn’t have minded if someone else took care of Palmer. He wasn’t vain that way, didn’t take his business personally like some others he knew—no sense in that. Whatever way the man was rubbed out was fine with him.

      As he had stalked closer, he’d watched the woman Palmer left in the car. He wanted Palmer, but he could settle for her now. Palmer would come after her—he could never resist saving everyone in sight and then some. He would have grabbed her were it not for the damn cop who came at the worst moment, when he was a few feet from the Escalade and she was looking in the opposite direction, not having a clue.

      He did have time to notice her nice legs. He wasn’t averse to bonuses. That Palmer had likely had her already didn’t detract from her charms—maybe it even added to them. He’d enjoy taking something that was Palmer’s.

      But he couldn’t risk her making any noise now, couldn’t afford even a momentary struggle. He pulled back into the cover of his own vehicle. He could wait. He had waited for months already, never knowing where the bastard was, never knowing if he was going to wake to Palmer’s gun pressed to his forehead.

      He had the man’s scent now, was on his trail. He would get him in the end. He always got his man. That was how he had stayed alive in parts of the world where violence was an everyday occurrence and respected businessmen and politicians went to dinner with assassins and murderers.

      He couldn’t say he liked the life, but he understood it and was good at it, had achieved a measure of success fishing in those murky waters. He wasn’t about to let Cade Palmer take that away from him. And one thing was clear. With the past they shared, it would always come down to kill or be killed between the two of them.

      Palmer was good at killing.

      But he was better.

      CADE STUDIED THE POSTED menu, turning his cell phone over in his hand. He was supposed to meet Abhi in half an hour. Had the man betrayed him? He’d been the SDDU’s trusted man in Jodhpur. But people switched sides all the time. No one knew that better than he did. The name David Smith tasted bitter on his tongue. Cade gripped his phone, irritated that the man at the front of the line was taking forever to order.

      Abhi might know that he was alive. He had to consider that possibility. He had contacted the man under an assumed name, but Abhi had connections. He would dig deep before agreeing to a meet. Cade hadn’t thought he could dig deep enough to get to him, but what if he had?

      But even if Abhi had discovered his identity, he still wouldn’t know where he lived. Cade couldn’t see any possible way how the man could have found that out. Still, at one point Abhi had worked for BAKIN—Indonesian intelligence—which had since been restructured into BIN, the Badan Intelijen Negara. The man was scary good. A great guy to know as long as he was on your side. And therein lay the gamble.

      He couldn’t go to Abhi with Bailey in tow, and he couldn’t leave Bailey behind. The question was whether to call Abhi and set another time for their meeting. If he didn’t show, would Abhi pack up and go back to his Jodhpur hideout, taking his information with him? Probably not, not for a few days, not with the amount of money Cade had put on the table for information on David Smith.

      He slipped his phone back into his pocket. He had to get Bailey out of the cross fire and hand her over to the authorities for safekeeping. But first he had to figure out why the FBI wanted them in the first place, and convince the Bureau that she didn’t have anything to do with anything. He needed time, and he needed to find out which of his enemies had orchestrated this morning’s attack—and how they had found him.

      PERFECT. NICE TO HAVE some luck for a change. Bailey relaxed for the first time that morning. She smoothed her T-shirt down, tugged her hair into place and straightened her spine.

      The black-and-white rolled into a parking space a few feet to her right. She walked toward it, wincing as the gravel scratched her bare feet. With a little more luck, she’d be given a ride home.

      Not that she had shoes at home.

      Not that she had a home. The thought took the air out of her lungs. She paused to catch her breath. Cade’s craziness had distracted her from the fact that her house was gone. Why was it so hard to breathe? Her eyes burned.

      She couldn’t fall apart. Not yet. Not yet. She had to ask for help.

      The nice officer was going to take her someplace safe where she could call her brother. They would let her wait at the police station until he came to pick her up. They would wrap her in a blanket and give her hot coffee. She watched TV—she knew how it went.

      She would be told that it had been a gas explosion after all. Grenade launcher. Right. Could be that Cade was a crazy maniac who had blown up the house himself and concocted the whole story so she would willingly go with him.

      What did she know about him, anyway? He’d lived in the house for only three months. He claimed to be Frank Garey’s nephew, but she’d known Frank for nearly seven years and the retired truck driver had never mentioned any relatives to her.

      She glanced toward the diner’s entrance. A young couple came out, hugging and kissing for all they were worth, acting

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