Kevin swung his arms furiously at the others. “Get back, you idiots! There’s a bomb!”

They ran. A siren wailed through the air. Someone had already called the cops.

Kevin had run a good fifty paces from the greenway before it occurred to him that the bomb hadn’t gone off. What if there wasn’t a bomb after all? He pulled up and whipped around, panting and trembling. Surely three minutes had come and gone.

Nothing.

Was it a practical joke after all? Whoever this caller was, he’d done almost as much damage through the threat alone as he would have by detonating an actual bomb.

Kevin glanced around. A gawking crowd had gathered on the street at a safe distance. The traffic had stalled and was backing up as far as he could see. Steam hissed from a blue Honda—presumably the one that had hit his right rear fender. There had to be a few hundred people staring at the nut who’d driven his car into the ditch. Except for the growing wail of sirens, the scene had grown eerily silent. He took a step back toward the car.

At least there was no bomb. A few angry motorists and some bent fenders, so what? He’d done the only thing he could do. And really, there still could be a bomb. He’d leave that for the police once he explained his story. Surely they would believe him. Kevin stopped. The car tipped into the dirt with its left rear tire off the ground. From here it all looked kind of stupid.

“You said bomb?” someone yelled.

Kevin looked back at a middle-aged man with white hair and a Cardinals baseball cap. The man stared at him. “Did you say there was a bomb?”

Kevin looked back at the car, feeling suddenly foolish. “I thought there—”

A deafening explosion shook the ground. Kevin instinctively crouched and threw his hands up to protect his face.

The bright fireball hung over the car; boiling black smoke rose into the sky. The red flame collapsed on itself with a soft whomp. Smoke billowed from the charred skeleton of what was only a moment ago his Sable.

Kevin dropped to one knee and stared, dumbstruck, wide-eyed.

2

WITHIN THIRTY MINUTES the crime scene was isolated and a full investigation launched, all in the purview of one Detective Paul Milton. The man was well built and walked like a gunslinger—a Schwarzenegger wannabe with a perpetual frown and blond bangs that covered his forehead. Kevin rarely found others intimidating, but Milton did nothing to calm his already shattered nerves.

Someone had just tried to kill him. Someone named Slater, who seemed to know quite a lot about him. A madman who had the forethought and malice to plant a bomb and then remotely detonate the device when his demands weren’t met. The scene stood before Kevin like an abstract painting come to life.

Yellow tape marked a forty-yard perimeter, and within it several uniformed police officers gathered pieces of wreckage, labeled them with evidence tags, and stacked them in neat piles on a flatbed truck to be transported downtown. The crowd had grown to well over a hundred. Bewilderment was fixed on some faces; other spectators wildly gestured their version of the events. The only injury reported was a small cut on a teenage boy’s right arm. As it turned out, one of the cars Kevin had clipped in his mad dash across the street was none other than the impatient Mercedes. Once the driver learned he’d been following a car bomb, however, his attitude improved significantly. Traffic on Long Beach Boulevard still suffered from curiosity, but the debris had been cleared.

Three news vans were in the lot. If Kevin understood the situation correctly, his face and what was left of his car were being televised live throughout the Los Angeles Basin. A news helicopter hovered overhead.

A forensic scientist worked carefully over the twisted remains of the trunk, where the bomb had clearly resided. Another detective dusted for prints on what was left of the doors.

Kevin had spilled his story to Milton and now waited to be taken down to the station. By the way Milton glared at him, Kevin was sure the detective considered him a suspect. A simple examination of the evidence would clear his name, but one minor fact haunted him. His account of events omitted Slater’s demand that he confess some sin.

What sin?The last thing he needed was for the police to begin digging into his past for some sin. Sin wasn’t the point. The point was that Slater had given him a riddle and told him that phoning the newspaper with the riddle’s answer would prevent Kevin from being blown sky-high. That’s what he’d told them.

On the other hand, willfully withholding information in an investigation was a crime itself, wasn’t it?

Dear God, someone just blew up my car!The fact sat like an absurd little lump on the edge of Kevin’s mind. The front edge. He smoothed his hair nervously.

Kevin sat on a chair provided by one of the cops, tapping his right foot on the grass. Milton kept glancing at him as he debriefed the other investigators and took statements from witnesses. Kevin looked back at the car where the forensic team worked. What they could possibly learn from that wreckage escaped him. He stood unsteadily, took a deep breath, and walked down the slope toward the car.

The forensic scientist at the trunk was a woman. Black, petite, maybe Jamaican. She looked up and lifted an eyebrow. Pretty smile. But the smile didn’t alter the scene behind her.

It was hard to believe that the twisted pile of smoldering metal and plastic had been his car.

“Whoever did this had one heck of a chip on his shoulder,” she said. A badge on her shirt said she was Nancy Sterling. She looked back into what was left of the trunk and dusted the inside lip.

Kevin cleared his throat. “Can you tell me what kind of bomb it was?”

“Do you know bombs?” she asked.

“No. I know there’s dynamite and C-4. That’s about it.”

“We’ll know for sure back at the lab, but it looks like dynamite. Leaves no chemical signature that ties it to a specific batch once it’s been detonated.”

“Do you know how he set it off?”

“Not yet. Remote detonation, a timer, or both, but there’s not too much left to go on. We’ll eventually get it. We always do. Just be glad you got out.”

“Boy, no kidding.”

He watched her place tape over a dusted fingerprint, lift it, and seal the faint print on a card. She made a few notations on the card and went back to work with her flashlight.

“The only prints we’ve found so far are in places where we would expect to find yours.” She shrugged. “Guy like this isn’t stupid enough not to wear gloves, but you never know. Even the smartest make mistakes eventually.”

“Well, I hope he made one. This whole thing’s crazy.”

“They usually are.” She gave him a friendly smile. “You okay?”

“I’m alive. Hopefully I don’t hear from him again.” His voice shook as he spoke.

Nancy straightened and looked him in the eye. “If it’s any consolation, if this was me, I’d be in a pool of tears on the sidewalk. We’ll get this one, like I said; we always do. If he really wanted to kill you, you’d be dead. This guy’s meticulous and calculating. He wants you alive. That’s my take, for what it’s worth.”

She glanced up to where Detective Milton was talking to a reporter. “And don’t let Milton get to you. He’s a good cop. Full of himself, maybe. Case like this will send him through the roof.”

“Why’s that?”

“Publicity. Let’s just say he has his aspirations.” She smiled. “Don’t worry. Like I said, he’s a good detective.”

As if on cue, Milton turned from the camera and walked straight for them.

“Let’s go, cowboy. How long you here for, Nancy?”

“I have what I need.”

“Preliminary findings?”

“I’ll have them for you in half an hour.”

“I need them now. I’m taking Mr. Parson in for a few questions.”