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Richard Delaney sped south on an unmarked road. Just how much time he had, he wasn't sure. They--whoever they were--would certainly mobilize against him. He calculated he was five minutes ahead of them. Ten if he was lucky.
Rocks and saguaro, creosote and the occasional tortured forms of scrub pine flew past as the speedometer on the late-model Saturn nudged ninety. The two-lane black-top stretched endlessly before him, an asphalt arrow that plunged through the heart of a sun-baked land. He was a moving target in the middle of nowhere.
A dirt road led to one side. Tempting, but he drove past without turning. A reddish plume of dust trailing the car would point toward him as surely as a giant finger painted in the sky. The Saturn's motor whined with effort as he pushed it over ninety.
Far ahead Delaney spied a car on the shoulder of the road. An abandoned vehicle would be of no help. As he drew closer, he saw it wasn't abandoned after all. Someone stood on the highway side of it kicking a tire.
It would be a risk to stop.
It would be a risk to continue in a car they'd be looking for.
A woman in a black tank top and denim cut-offs turned to look at him as the Saturn shimmered through heat mirage into solidity. Delaney eyed the M 16 on the seat beside him. He shrugged out of his suit coat and arranged it over the rifle, then put on brakes and pulled to the shoulder behind the disabled vehicle.
It was a battered Ford station wagon. Hard to tell the color under the thick coating of dust. The left rear panel was dented and rusting. One tire appeared to be low on air. All in all, not much of a prize.
A lopsided grin stretched across the woman's face as she jogged over. Delaney judged her to be in her forties. He rolled down his window as she approached the car.
"Thanks for stopping, mister," she said, bending to peer in the window at him. She wore her hair tucked beneath a faded denim ball cap. Embroidered in blue thread across the front was the sage advice, "Drive It Like You Stole It."
"What's the problem?" he asked.
"Fuckin' outta gas. I told that jackass Rory there wasn't enough in the car for a beer run. Can you give me a lift?"
"This car's got a full tank," he said. "We could siphon over enough to get it going."
The woman's face brightened.
"There's an old garden hose in the back of the wagon, would that help?"
While Delaney lined up the Saturn with the Ford's gas tank, the woman located not only the garden hose but an axe. He hefted it in his hand for balance and chopped a length of green tubing. Wordlessly, he started fuel siphoning from one car to the other while the woman explained at length that if Rory had a problem with the destruction of his garden hose, Rory could shove it.
The smell of gasoline was strong in the heat. The woman turned and walked a few paces away, hands on her hips, still chattering about Rory. Delaney checked the flow of fuel and tried to gauge the rate. Perhaps a gallon a minute. He eyed the woman and the distance between them.
"So are you from the spook farm?"
Her question surprised him.
"Spook farm?"
"Yeah." She glanced over her shoulder at him. "I figured what with you being in a suit and all-"
"I'm not from around here," Delaney said.
"Well, I probably shouldn't call it that, anyway." She scuffed a dusty tennis shoe against the desert floor. "It's back down the road a ways. Probably wouldn't have noticed it if you hadn't been looking for it."
"Can't say as I did," said Delaney.
She shrugged and resumed her study of the desert.
"It's not real noticeable from the hard top. We see all kinds of things going in and out of there, though. Trucks, military helicopters-"
Images of deadly dragonflies filled his mind.
"Nobody gets near without getting run off," she was saying. "Even little kids on dirt-bikes have been sandblasted by those guys."
If they could put choppers in the air-
In three steps he had his arm around her neck. The woman kicked and screamed and clawed like a wildcat as his muscles tightened around her throat. He lifted her from the ground, strangling her screams. With his free hand he forced her head forward over the crook of his elbow. As the pressure around her throat cut off the blood supply to her brain, the kicking and clawing slowed, then stopped. Finally she hung limp against him.
Delaney swung her up in his arms. The ball cap tumbled from her head, releasing her hair. The sun caught and held burnished highlights. He hurried to the Saturn and propped her in the driver's seat. Her head fell forward, hair obscuring her features. The whup-whup-whup of helicopters echoed in his mind like a nightmare.
He snatched the siphoning tube out from between the two tanks and flung it away into a nest of creosote. The axe lay on the back of the wagon where he'd left it. He grabbed it, shut the tailgate, and returned to the Saturn. He retrieved the M16 and his jacket, then wedged the axe between the driver's seat and the accelerator.
Sunlight glinted off the woman's hair in copper-colored waves as familiar to him as...as familiar as...
A scream of despair built in Delaney's chest until it burned out of his throat in an animal cry for help. He dropped to his knees, the butt of the M16 striking the dirt as he struggled to contain the unexpected flow of emotion. Questions shot through his mind. Who am I? What's wrong with me? What in God's name have they done to me?
Whup-whup-whup.
The imaginary sound of helicopters intruded into his panicked thoughts. Delaney forced himself back from the brink. It wasn't currently important what, if anything, had been done to him. What was important right this minute, this very second, was what they'd do to him if they found him.
Purgatory. The ultimate identity theft.
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