Hansen was maneuvering for another try, squealing the tires as he did so, when the two men who had been racing after him arrived on the scene, now in front of him.

Two quick gunshots rang out and drove through the front windshield, both missing Hansen as he ducked down. Unable to see where he was going, he instinctively slammed on the brakes. As the car screeched to a halt, he knew that both he and Erin Palmer were dead, and with them the chance for humanity to be diverted from its own deadly path.

But as terrified as Hansen was, as much out of his element as he was, adrenaline was flooding into his bloodstream. If he was going to die, he was going to go out fighting, not only for his own life and that of a woman he had come to care for in a short period of time, but for a cause he believed in.

He threw open the door and dived from the Malibu before it had stopped completely. He was vaguely aware of additional gunshots coming from room one forty-eight. Erin wasn’t going down easily either.

Hansen came out of the roll on his back. When he stopped, one of the men who had chased his car was standing three feet away, crouched behind the Blue Medusa to avoid any flying bullets. He calmly raised his gun and pointed it dead center at Hansen.

“Please,” croaked Hansen. “Don’t shoot. I surrender.”

“Good to know,” said the man. And with that he calmly squeezed the trigger.

33

HANSEN OPENED HIS eyes with a start and was totally disoriented. It was night. Where was he?

Who was he?

His mind groped around in horror trying to get his bearings and remember what had preceded his awakening.

It all came rushing back to him. The motel. The Blue Medusa. The gun pointed at him at point-blank range.

How was he still alive?

He felt around his body for bullet holes or blood but found none.

He realized he was lying across the backseat of a car, which was outside and not moving. The windows were open and cool night air surrounded him, although he was unable to see the moon from his vantage point.

The air felt strangely cool against his head. It was the oddest thing. Still in a daze, he brought his right hand to his head and touched it.

He gasped, thrown fully awake instantly. He was bald. He moved his hand around the unfamiliar contours of his skull, covering all real estate above his ears. No hair anywhere.

Erin Palmer had been resting her eyes in the front seat, which was fully reclined. When she heard him in the backseat her eyes shot open. “Kyle, thank God,” she said. “You’ve been out for over ten hours. I was beginning to think you’d never wake up.”

Hansen pushed himself up to a seated position in the back of the car. Since his eyes had been closed they were adjusted for night vision—at least to the limits that human anatomy would allow—and he stared out of the window, straining to get his bearings. There were no lights of civilization. In the dim illumination provided by moonlight and starlight alone, he saw the outline of a massive concrete pillar with mighty steel struts extending upward into the blackness, just a foot from the car.

“You’re probably wondering where we are and how we got here,” said Erin.

Hansen turned to her and noticed that her hair was cut to just below the ears.

“I thought I was dead,” he said simply. And then, shaking his head as though he didn’t believe it still, he said, “How is it that I’m not dead?”

Erin spread her hands. “I don’t know. I was surprised too. Pleasantly surprised,” she hastened to add, and then, deciding this wasn’t nearly a strong enough sentiment, added, “Ecstatic. Relieved out of my mind.” She paused. “Anyway, our attackers—the hostiles as you put it—were armed to the teeth and shot up this car pretty good. Took me a long time to clean up the glass once we arrived. But they only used a tranquilizer gun on you.”

Hansen blew out a long breath. “Boy, it sure looked like a regular gun to me.”

“I don’t doubt it,” she replied. “But for some reason they wanted to take us alive.”

“For some very unpleasant reason I’m sure. Aren’t there a small portion of psychopaths who are not only indifferent to suffering, but actually get off on it?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“So go on. How did you possibly get us out of that?”

“You helped a lot. You took one of them out with the car. And I had already injured one. While you were getting shot I was able to hit another of them in the thigh. Turns out I was in a far better tactical position than I realized. They couldn’t see where I was in the room. To root me out, they had to cover territory without adequate cover. I might have been able to get them all before they got me, but I was out of ammo. Their man at the student union probably had some extra clips somewhere. In hindsight, I should have looked for them.”

“What, in the two seconds you had before a hundred pairs of eyes turned to you and the twitching bad guy on the ground?”

She smiled. “I guess I can’t beat myself up too much for that. So far, things have worked out. I realized I was out of ammo, but your stunt with the car had them second-guessing themselves, and they pulled back to regroup. This gave me the chance to leave the room and retrieve a gun from the guy you had hit. Turns out it was a tranquilizer gun. Didn’t know it, but those things are great. Much better than a real gun.”

Hansen raised his eyebrows. “How so?”

“If you hit someone, anywhere, they’re out of the picture. With a real gun, that isn’t necessarily the case. You might hit them, but if the shot is off even a little they remain a threat. With a tranquilizer gun it’s one and done. Within seconds.”

Hansen nodded. “So you were able to hit them all?”

“Well, you get credit for one. And without you, I wouldn’t have had a chance. Thanks,” she said warmly. “That was incredibly brave of you.”

“I was absolutely terrified. But there were no other options.”

She turned away, and Hansen imagined he saw a tear in her eye, but in the poor light, even this close, he could well have been wrong.

“There were other options,” she said softly, her voice now distant. “You could have frozen. Until you’re faced with a situation like that, you never know how you’ll react.” There was a long silence. “I froze up once.” She paused once more and then shook her head. “Never again.”

The car was as silent as a tomb for several long seconds. Finally, Hansen decided to change the subject. “Did the cops ever show up?”

“No. You need to work on your nine-one-one calls,” she chided him. “They may have arrived after the fact. Who knows? Time seemed to work in slow motion. I think the entire attack, from start to finish, only took a minute or two. When they were all down I pulled you back into your car and drove off. You know what they say about adrenaline making you many times stronger than normal?”

Hansen nodded.

“They’re lying. I can’t believe how hard it was to move you. And you don’t have a pound of excess weight on you. Unconscious bodies need to come with a handle. Or a dolly would have been nice.”

“Sorry about that. Good thing we never got that cheesecake at the union.”

Erin smiled. “So then I drove for a few miles, parked in an alley behind a Dumpster so I could think for a bit, and decided to come here.”

“And where is here?”

“We’re in the center of the Santa Cruz River. Directly under a bridge that doesn’t see much use anymore. Pretty good, huh?” she said happily. “Even the few drivers crossing the bridge have no way of seeing us under here.”

“Two things. One, Tucson has a river? Really? And two, if we’re in a river, why aren’t we floating? Or sinking to our deaths more like it?”

“It’s a dry riverbed for most of the year. Some good rain in the Tucson mountains above us and it floods. That would be very bad for us, but I didn’t think it was very likely. The river is over two hundred miles long, in a U shape, and some is underground, but Tucson was originally settled along its banks.”