“Somebody help me!” a woman screamed.

Coltrane spun toward the far-left corner of the Burger King, seeing the panic of a gray-haired woman who knelt beside a young girl with a six-inch shard of glass embedded in her right arm. Blood spurted.

“Help me!”

He couldn’t count how many times, in how many languages, he had heard that wail. In northern Israel after a Shiite Muslim rocket barrage. In Chechnya, after a Russian artillery assault on a rebel village. How many times had he taken photographs of victims as doctors and nurses raced across blood-covered streets?

“HELP ME!”

And how many times had he hurried toward the victims, hoping that one of the doctors would understand his desperate English and tell him what to do?

If he couldn’t help Greg, he was going to help somebody, by God.

In a rush, he untied a kerchief from the woman’s neck and twisted it around the girl’s arm, above the embedded glass. The girl, who had been trying to stand, sank back onto the glass-covered floor.

“Hold the kerchief tightly, Jennifer.”

He knelt beside the girl, gripped the shard, and pulled it free. The girl turned instantly pale. Blood continued to gush.

“Twist the kerchief tighter.”

Approaching sirens wailed.

“She needs a pressure bandage.”

The girl had a sweater tied around her waist. Coltrane tugged it free, wrapped the sleeve around the wound, and used his belt to secure it tightly. The sweater, which was blue, turned pink. But it didn’t turn crimson. The belt’s pressure on it was partially sealing the wound.

“That’ll buy some time. You have to get her to a hospital,” Coltrane told the woman.

Outside, the sirens wailed to a stop.

“Take her to one of those ambulances. Hurry.” Even as Coltrane said that, it became obvious that the woman was in no condition to carry the girl outside. But no matter how determined he was to make sure the girl was safe, he didn’t dare risk carrying her out there himself. Ilkovic might spot him.

Alarmed by how pale the girl was, watching her tremble, he realized that the child was going into shock. “No, don’t move her. We have to lay her flat. Prop her feet on that overturned chair. Keep them above her head. Somebody cover her with something.”

A man in a windbreaker stared.

“You,” Coltrane said. “Take off your jacket. Cover her.”

In a daze, the man complied.

As other sirens wailed, Coltrane spun toward a young woman in a jogging suit. “Get to one of those ambulances. Bring help.”

The direction broke the woman’s paralysis. She scrambled toward the littered sidewalk.

The moment Coltrane saw the woman speak urgently to an ambulance attendant, he stepped away. “We have to get out of here,” he told Jennifer. “Through the back.”

Jennifer stared at him as if she had never seen him before.

14

“WHERE DID YOU GET PARAMEDIC TRAINING?”

Coltrane sped around a corner, saw a gas station, and steered toward a pay phone next to the rest rooms at the side.

Jennifer persisted. “This isn’t the first time you’ve had to-”

Before she could finish her sentence, Coltrane skidded the car to a stop and jumped out. After hurrying to the phone booth, he shoved in coins and pressed numbers.

“Threat Management Unit,” an authoritative voice said.

“Give me Sergeant Nolan. This is an emergency.”

“I’m afraid he isn’t – Wait a minute. He just walked in.”

Coltrane gripped the phone tighter.

“Sergeant Nolan here.”

“Greg’s dead.”

“What?”

“I’m telling you-”

“Who is this? Coltrane? Slow down. What are you-”

“I made an appointment to talk to him on a pay phone at a Pizza Hut in Century City.”

“He told me.”

“Ilkovic must have followed him. While Greg was in the restaurant, the bastard slipped a bomb under his car. It took out half a block. He’s dead.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”

“Go to Greg’s house.” Coltrane couldn’t stop feeling breathless.

The sudden change of topic startled Nolan. “What for? What are you talking about?”

“Greg sent a surveillance team over there to look for microphones. I need to talk to you. We can trust that phone.”

The instant Coltrane broke the connection, he pulled out a credit card and placed a long-distance call to New Haven, Connecticut – to his grandparents.

Although the sky threatened rain and the temperature was in the fifties, he sweated as he listened to the phone ring.

It rang again.

Pick it up, Coltrane thought.

It rang a third time.

A fourth.

Come on, come on, he thought urgently.

“Hello,” an elderly male voice said.

“Grandpa, it’s Mitch. I-”

“You have reached the number for Ida and Fred,” the frail voice said. “We’re away from the phone at the moment. Please leave a brief message, and we’ll call you back.”

Beep.

“Grandpa, it’s Mitch,” he said quickly. “As soon as you hear this, take Grandma and leave the house. Go to the police. Ask them to contact Sergeant Nolan at the Threat Management Unit of the Los Angeles Police Department. He’ll explain what’s happening. I don’t want to scare you, Grandpa, but there’s a very dangerous man after me, and you’re going to need protection. Don’t trust anybody you don’t know except the police. Make sure they help you.”

Beep.

The machine had reached the end of the time limit for the message. Coltrane hung up and stood tensely motionless in the phone booth, debating whether to call back and leave a further message. But he didn’t know what he would accomplish other than to frighten his grandparents even more than he already had.

Maybe that’s a good thing, he thought. Being afraid of Ilkovic is a survival skill.

“Mitch?”

Jennifer’s voice surprised him. He turned.

“You’ve been staring at the phone for two minutes now. Are you waiting for someone to call back? Are you okay?”

“First Daniel. Now Greg. How many others are going to die because they’re close to me?”

15

AS THE GARAGE DOOR RUMBLED SHUT, Coltrane got out of the Saturn, unlocked the trunk, and took out the pump-action shotgun, along with the box of buckshot.

Jennifer stepped back from the weapon.

“You’re going to have to feel comfortable with this,” Coltrane said. “You’re going to have to learn how to use it.”

Jennifer continued to look uneasy.

It was midafternoon. Coltrane had driven around the valley, taking an erratic route that would have required Ilkovic to stay close and make his presence obvious. Amid the chaos of the explosion’s aftermath, with rescue workers arriving, victims being taken away, and onlookers milling, he didn’t think it likely that Ilkovic would have managed to see Jennifer and him leave the back of the Burger King and follow them to the car, but Coltrane couldn’t take anything for granted.

The first two times he had phoned Greg’s house, someone from the electronic-surveillance team had answered. On the third try, he had gotten Nolan, and as alternating surges of grief and anger swept through him, he had bitterly told Nolan the plan that he and Greg had worked out.

“Nothing’s changed. I’m still going through with it.”

“I can’t sanction this. It’s too dangerous. We’ve already lost Greg. Don’t add yourself to the body count.”

“Well, sanctioned or not, I’m going to show up at that cemetery Wednesday afternoon, so are you going to make sure I have backup or aren’t you?”

“… Yes.”

“That’s all I ask. Give me the cooperation Greg would have given.”

“I want to give you something else. Police protection until Wednesday.”

“Hey, if I had accepted police protection, if I’d been with Greg, both of us would have gotten blown up. Staying on my own is working out fine.”