LITMIR.BIZ

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transmission with finesse and took hard corners with the confidence of a Star Wars character piloting an antigravity sled.

      After an almost twenty-minute ride, he slowed in a residential neighborhood in a part of the valley far enough north that it didn’t qualify as a Los Angeles suburb. The houses were old, the properties large, the trees tall and plentiful, live oaks and eucalyptuses and all kinds of palms, some of them long left untrimmed.

      He pulled into a driveway that ran alongside a meticulously maintained bungalow with craftsman details. The place was shaded by immense, well-kept phoenix palms.

      At the back of the property stood a separate garage with three double-wide doors, one of which rose as the Harley approached. The driver coasted under the up-folding panels, stopped in the garage, killed the engine, and put down the kickstand.

      Jane had been expecting him to drop her miles from where they started, but in a public place. Evidently he had brought her home instead. The three garage bays were deep and open to one another, housing a well-equipped machine shop and a number of motorcycles.

      Wary not so much because he’d brought her here of all places, but because the world in its dark ways had woven wariness through her bones, she got off the Road King, alert for trouble.

      He removed his helmet, put it on the bike seat, stripped off his driving gloves, combed his thick hair with one hand. Wide-set malachite eyes. Clean, strong features. The suggestion that a smile was imminent.

      Jane said, “Thanks for the lift.”

      He cocked his head to study her.

      “But where are we, and how far do I have to hike to get a bus?”

      A low growl drew her attention. An enormous dog stood at the open garage door. A mastiff with an apricot-fawn coat, black face, and sooted ears.

      Mastiffs had a reputation as aggressive, which they weren’t—unless trained to be.

      Her rescuer finally spoke. “You leaned in all the way, never tensed no matter how radical the rake.”

      “I’ve ridden before.”

      “Ridden or driven?”

      “Both.”

      Indicating the glowering dog, his master said, “Sparky’s harmless. No bark, no bite.”

      “No wag, either.”

      “Give him time. Maybe old Sparky knows you’re carrying a concealed weapon.”

      “How would he know that?”

      “Maybe the cut of your sport coat.”

      “Your dog has street smarts.”

      “Also, when you were holding tight and leaning in, I felt it against my back.”

      She shrugged. “It’s a dangerous world. A girl’s got to look out for herself.”

      “Too true. Anyway, I’ve got a solid bike for you.”

      “I didn’t know I was in the market for one.”

      “You were on foot, so they must’ve made your car.”

      “‘They’?”

      “The guys with bogus badges.”

      “You brought me all the way here to sell me a bike?”

      “I didn’t say sell.”

      “I’m not going to work for it.”

      “Stay cool. I’m way married. My wife’s in the house right now. She saw us drive up. Anyway, she’s all I need.”

      Jane put down the tote bag to have both hands free. She glanced toward the house. Maybe the wife existed, maybe she didn’t. If she existed, perhaps she was insurance against an attempted assault—or maybe she was cool with rape and would even assist her husband. Jane had once taken down a serial killer whose wife charmed his targets into a sense of safety so they could be easily abducted; she cooked elaborate meals for the girls during the weeks that her husband used them, brought fresh flowers to their windowless basement prison, and assisted in the disposal of their broken bodies after hubby wearied of them. She said she did it because she loved him so much.

      “Name’s Garret. Garret Nolan.”

      “I’m Leslie Anderson,” she lied.

      His face finally formed the smile that had been pending. There was a knowing quality to it, which disturbed Jane.

      The mastiff had entered the garage. He intently sniffed her shoes as though to map the journey that had brought her here.

      Garret Nolan went to a wall switch and clicked on the lights in all six vehicle stalls. “Racers, street cruisers, touring bikes. I break them down, build them better, customize them. If you need to get all the way to the Canadian border, you’ll want a bagger.”

      From the Canadian border reference, she inferred that he had assumed more about her status as a fugitive than she’d given him reason to deduce. She felt the skin crepe on the back of her neck.

      “I have two Road Kings,” he continued, “rebuilt slick, but I’ve got too much in them just to give them away. What I can give you is this 2012 Big Dog Bulldog Bagger, which I was going to tear down next. It’s a righteous bike.”

      “You don’t have to give me anything. I have money. I can pay.”

      “I won’t take your money. The Big Dog has a lot of miles on it, but it’s in good shape. I’ve ridden it myself. You don’t need it flashed up with Performance Machine wheels, Kuryakyn mufflers, and all the rest. It’s a reliable beast of burden and won’t call undue attention. Test ride it around the neighborhood. You like it, take it. There isn’t a license plate, but you could maybe go a couple thousand miles before a cop might notice.”

      She stared at him in silence until his lingering half smile flatlined. Then she said, “I ask for a ride out of a tight spot, and you want to give me a bike. What’s this about, Mr. Nolan?”

      He shrugged. “I believe you. I want to help.”

      “Believe me about what?”

      “That you’re innocent.”

      “I never said I was innocent. Anyway … innocent of what?”

      He was a big guy, about six feet two and solid, with an air of rough experience about him, and yet he suddenly seemed as shy as a boy, looking down at his shoes to avoid meeting her eyes.

      “Innocent of what?” she pressed.

      He gazed through the open door, at the house shaded by phoenix palms, at the still cascades of fronds in the warm, breathless day.

      She waited, and when he looked at her again, he said, “That’s a bitchin’ disguise, but seeing through disguises was part of my job. You’re her. You’re Jane Hawk.”

       11

      Sparky, the mastiff, sniffed along the zipper of the tote bag, as though trained to locate the banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills that, among other things, it contained.

      “If I were Hawk,” Jane said, “maybe it wouldn’t be smart of you to say so to my face. Half the world hunting her down, she must be one crazy desperate bitch.”

      Garret Nolan smiled again. “I won’t say what service I was in. We did black-ops work in Mexico and Central America, no uniforms, we went native. Our actions targeted MS-13, other gangs, those linked to nests of Iranian operatives in Venezuela, Argentina, Nicaragua.”

      He turned his back on her and went to a square of perfboard beside a workbench and took a set of keys from one of the pegs.

      “We knew who we were looking for—names, faces—but a lot of the

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