Mikal waited for Anna to leave before he made his own preparations. Years of training and experience had made these rituals little more than routine, but Mikal prided himself on his caution and care. An hour after she’d gone, convinced there was no possibility she might follow, he finally got up to leave. Closing the apartment door, he was just about to go to the car, when he realized that he couldn’t remember if he’d turned off the coffee maker. He opened the door again, checked (it was off, sitting in the corner of the kitchen counter, mute and friendly, shining in the sun from the doorway), then locked up again.

It was going to be a long drive, and he would have liked to have driven directly to the freeway, south along Oliver North Boulevard, but again his experience told him...

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