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“We would have been able to keep the fire under control,” MJ said, elbowing King. “Easy. How could that have been dangerous?”

After landing in the chopper at the airport, the four of them had taken a five-minute taxi ride to the car-rental agency. Evans had asked King to give him Mundie's credit cards, and no other customers were at the counter. Not needing to wait had eased King's stress, but only a little. He expected a bunch of SWAT guys to surround them at any moment, just as they had done at the mobile home under drone surveillance.

More frustrating for King was that he hadn't had a chance to ask any questions. Not inside the chopper because of the engine noise, and not inside the taxi because the driver would have heard everything.

“And chances are with a fire alarm and firemen on the way,” MJ said, “those four suit guys in the hallway would have bolted. So lighting a fire in the room was a good idea.”

“You're right,” King said to MJ. “I was wrong. A fire would have been a good idea.”

King wanted to monitor what was happening at the counter, and MJ was too much of a distraction. The best way to get MJ to stop arguing was to agree with him. Otherwise, MJ would stay with it for hours.

“Knew it,” MJ said, leaning back in satisfaction. “Absolutely knew it.”

At the counter, Evans pulled out his CIA badge and held it in front of Slick-Back Hair.

“This isn't a situation I'm able to explain to someone without clearance,” Evans said, leaving the badge on the counter. “But it won't take long to get that clearance. I'll give you a Washington, DC, phone number. Call in, give my boss your full name and birth date so he can put you into the system and confirm you are the person you say you are, working at this rental location. In turn, he'll give your new file a level-two clearance and also give you an authorization number to put on the rental agreement.”

“Put me into the system?” Slick-Back said. “New file?”

“Not a big deal,” Evans said. “It's some software thing. Pulls up everything about you. Goes through your Google search history, confirms that you're an upstanding citizen…that sort of thing.” Evans paused. “You don't have any unpaid traffic violations, right? Taxes are fully paid? Nothing the Internal Revenue System would be interested in reviewing?”

As if on cue, a woman walked into the office with a pet poodle on a leash. Evans glanced back at her.

“Ma'am,” he said. “I apologize if you're in a hurry. Looks like we need to put a call into DC and run some routine background checks before I can proceed with some business here. Might be a half hour. I'd be happy to arrange to get you some coffee while you wait. On the government's tab, of course.”

To Slick-Back, Evans said, “I'll need you to disable the GPS tracker on the vehicle too. Once you get your level-two clearance, you'll understand why.”

“A half hour?” she called to the counter, beginning to huff. “I don't have a half hour. I set this rental up three weeks ago!”

Evans turned to her. “Ma'am, could I have your name please?”

“My name? Why on earth would you—”

“Background check won't be necessary,” Slick-Back broke in and told Evans. “We'll get this rental agreement printed out in about thirty seconds. You'll notice I've discounted the rate as a thank-you to our
government. It shouldn't take long at all to disable the GPS tracker either.”

Slick-Back spoke over Evans' shoulder to the woman. “Should be with you in less than a minute. Just need to get this gentlemen his car.”

CHAPTER 12

In less than ten minutes, they were heading down the road.

“Have to make a call,” Evans said. “To the front desk and make sure they send someone to untie Mundie. If he were to vomit for some reason, he'd suffocate.”

As Evans made the call, King kept watching for swarms of police vehicles. He couldn't get Mundie's threat out of his mind.
“Because if you don't untie me, every law-enforcement officer in the state is going to be looking for you within the hour.”

After Evans finished the call, King let a few seconds of almost silent wind noise go by before speaking.

“My first question,” King said, “is why Mundie picked me up, pretending you had sent him.”

“You knew he was pretending?” Evans said.

“Mundie didn't give us the code phrase,” Blake said. “You told us anyone who was part of the team would give us the code phrase. Mundie didn't.”

“Yeah,” MJ said, “so King snuck up behind him with a belt to use as a choke chain.”

“Choke chain” brought bad memories to King. Dead Man's Switch
memories. It reminded him of someone who had used a real choke chain on him, intending to take King to…

King forced away the thought, feeling a tightness in his chest return. He didn't want to deal with a panic attack here in the car.

“King?” Evans said, pulling King into the present.

“At my house, Mundie called me William, not King,” King said. “That didn't seem right. Then he agreed with me that you like your coffee with two creams and two sugars. You hate it that way. All you drink is black.”

“That's right,” Evans said. “The blacker the better.”

“Sir, is that a racist remark?” MJ asked. “I mean, what if I said the whiter the better? Wouldn't you be offended?”

King did a mental face-palm.

Then MJ said with triumph. “Wow. How about this awkward silence? One black or white joke is all it takes?”

“MJ,” King said. “Really?”

They were best friends, but there were times when MJ could drive King nuts.

“Kinger,” MJ said. “You must be losing a step, thinking I really meant what I said.”

“Did not buy it,” King said. A second later, King snorted. “Okay, I did. But it worked only because you're such a dork, it was an easy sell.”

“Dang,” Blake said. “I bought it too.”

“Not me,” Evans said. Then he laughed. “Okay, yeah, me too.”

“Knew it,” MJ said. “Absolutely knew it.”

King gave it a few more beats and then asked, “So now that the comedy is out of the way, what's going on? What about what Mundie said in the hotel room?”

“About me conning you?” Evans answered. “I think it comes down to whether you believe me or him. He's saying what a rogue agent would say if I were the one tracking him down. And I'm saying what a rogue agent would say if he were the one tracking me down.”

“We made our choice back in the hotel room,” King said. “And I'm not second-guessing it. What I meant was what he said about every law-enforcement officer in the state coming after us.”

“For starters,” Evans answered, “we've probably used up our buffer of time. Not a bad move, trying to get him to think Volvo and that it's just the three of you on the run. So his next move is monitoring his credit card. And that will get him to the first car-rental place right away. He might even have agents moving in on it now.”

Evans paused. “But here's why you don't have to worry. Mundie can't move openly on us. He's the rogue agent. All he has is his four guys. Or more—and that's why I can't make a play on him. We need to know how wide the corruption is and exactly what's going on with him.”

“So,” King said. “Mind telling me what you do know?”

CHAPTER 13

At midday, the sky was still cloudy, but the drizzle was gone, and Interstate 5 wasn't too crowded. If they jumped on it and headed north, they'd hit Canada in a few hours. Yes, King was interested in where Evans was taking them and even more interested in why. But most of all, he was interested in what Evans was saying right now.

“Sorry to Blake and MJ for repeating this,” Evans said. “But we need to bring King up to speed. As an example, King, so you can understand where this got started, the LAPD has IAG.”

Evans paused. “Sorry, I just get used to speaking in acronyms. The Los Angeles Police Department has its Internal Affairs Group. IAG is responsible to investigate the cops on the force. Someone makes a complaint, IAG is in place to make sure nobody inside the LAPD abuses police powers. Got it?”

“Got it,” King said.

Evans was a focused driver. Never getting too close to the car in front, anticipating lane changes by other drivers, moving efficiently with the flow. It helped being in a new car like this Taurus.

Evans reached for the radio, turned it on, and told King, “Try to find a twenty-four-hour news station. Won't hurt to monitor things.”

“Wish we could use our smartphones,” Blake said. “There's a great police scanner app.”

“I'm just being cautious,” Evans said. “Everything should be cool. Police won't be looking for us.”

When King found the news station, he turned down the volume and brought Evans back to the subject. “You were talking about IAG and the Los Angeles police. I'm guessing that what's happening with Mundie is the same?”

“Not quite,” Evans said. “CIA doesn't quite have a division like that. I say not quite because yes, there are ways of investigating internal affairs for corruption or abuse, but by its nature, the organization is not transparent. Citizen complaints rarely come in against us.”

“Or,” King said with a grin, “you might threaten to put them at level-two clearance and have the IRS investigate their background?”

Evans gave King a quick glance and a quicker grin before turning his attention back to traffic. “Yeah, something like that. Thing is, a subtle threat like that only works on people with a guilty conscience.”

Evans tapped the brake to make room for a semi driver who wasn't paying attention.

“Anyway,” Evans continued as if nothing had happened, “the CIA does have an inspector general to keep things in line, and if someone really messed up, it would probably go to a congressional subcommittee devoted to overseeing the CIA. But really, that's not very effective. You need someone in the field to get at the truth. And that's where I come into this picture. I'm in the field, and someone is doing something wrong. But that someone can't know I'm looking into it, or that someone will disappear. With me so far?”

“With you,” King said.

“So my boss—let's call him Smith—asked me if I would get involved in something that only he and I know about. Something off-the-books. When I agreed, he found some slush-fund money and set me loose. Part of the agreement was that I couldn't let anyone know I'd been authorized. The political fallout would be disastrous. Still with me?”

“Buckled in,” King said. “And still with you.”

“The three of you are as off-the-books as anything. I thought it would be perfect. High school guys, no connections, no records, but with the expertise I needed for the first stage, which was to track down someone through cyberspace—a minor actor in all of this. That's what I sold your parents on, and they agreed it would be safe. It should have been routine.”

“Minor actor?” King said. “And the major actor?”

“What I need to find out,” Evans said, “is if Ron Delamarre is guilty as charged, or if someone else in the—”

For King, it was a delayed reaction. “Ron Delamarre!”

“Yeah. That Ron Delamarre. Software billionaire. Indicted on terrorism charges. Fled the country. Wanted by Interpol.”

“Wow,” King said. “Heavy stuff.”

“It gets better—or worse, depending on your perspective. There's some murky stuff that I don't want to explain because, really, you don't have the clearance. But there may or may not be a faction within the CIA that's been putting a squeeze play on Delamarre for a top-secret software thing that Delamarre may or may not possess and that Delamarre may or may not have stolen. Regardless, there's a terrible chance that a faction of a few connected agents have gone rogue within the CIA. We don't know enough to identify them, just that rumors exist.”

“And,” King said, “that Ron Delamarre has been charged with something related to terrorism and is on the run.”

“That about sums it up,” Evans said.

“Except for the fact that Blake and MJ and I are in a car with you after assaulting an agent who pretended to be bringing me in to meet with you.”

“Except for that,” Evans said. “My best guess is that he wanted all three of you together to contain the situation and find out what was going on. That's what really scares me. Somehow, it seems, someone else in the organization has wind of this. They knew where to find you guys, they knew you were involved, and they took down our main witness—Jack Murphy, the guy in the mobile home—who the prosecution wasn't supposed to know would testify that Ron Delamarre wasn't a terrorist.”

Evans signaled and eased two lanes to the right.

Evans said, “Blake? MJ?”

MJ took the lead. “Kinger, Evans went to our parents and asked if we could become cyber bounty hunters and help him find a guy. Someone who was on the run for missing child-support payments. It was a piece of cake for us.”