Labyrinth - Catherine Coulter

1

* * *

WASHINGTON, D.C.

LATE AUGUST

TUESDAY, LATE AFTERNOON

Sherlock had the next hour planned out to the minute. A quick stop at Clyde’s Market for mozzarella cheese for Dillon’s lasagna and some Cheerios for Sean’s breakfast tomorrow, then thirty minutes at the gym: fifteen minutes on the treadmill and some quick upper-body work, that is if she managed to avoid Tim Maynard, a newly divorced firefighter who kept putting the moves on her. She was bummed she couldn’t be with Dillon at the gym as usual, sweating her eyebrows off, but she’d been tied up in a meeting about the Mason Springs, Ohio, middle school murders. She thought of Agent Lucy McKnight, who’d been in the meeting with her until she had to run out to throw up. Lucy was four months pregnant now, nearly over the heaves, she had announced when she’d returned to the meeting, and everyone had applauded. Sherlock, Shirley, the CAU secretary and commandant, and Agent Ruth Noble were giving Lucy a just-beyond first-trimester party this Friday evening at Shirley’s condo. Not a baby shower, too early for that. Their gift to her would be two pairs of pants with elastic waists. Sherlock flashed back to her own pregnancy with Sean, how happy and terrified she’d been. Lucy had a good man in Agent Coop McKnight. What a wild ride the two of them had had before they’d hooked up.

Sherlock had only enough time to jerk the wheel left, fast and hard, before the black SUV struck her passenger side. The impact hurled her Volvo into a parked sedan, and then spun her into the oncoming traffic. The world sped up, blurred into insanity. As if from a great distance, she heard horns honking, screaming metal, yells. Her Volvo struck the front fender of a truck, glanced off, hit a sedan trying to swerve out of her way, ricocheted off yet another swerving car. Her head slammed against the steering wheel an instant before the airbag exploded in her face. She heard a sharp thunk and saw only a flash of what looked like a body flying across the hood of the Volvo, and bouncing off her wildly spinning car. Her brain registered splattered blood on the windshield—she’d hit someone. He’d come out of nowhere. She looked at all the blood, so much blood. Hers? The person’s she’d hit? The world turned round and round, a whirling kaleidoscope of colors and shapes, until they ended when the Volvo’s rear end slammed into a fire hydrant. Her head was thrown violently forward into the bag and she was out.

2

* * *

Justice Cummings ran hard out of the alley between two brick buildings and into the street, looking back over his shoulder at the man and woman who were chasing him. He was a geek, not a runner, and he was surprised they weren’t closer. It had been a fluke he’d gotten away from them. They’d been slowed down by a homeless man who’d shuffled between them, his head down, mumbling. Justice didn’t know who they were, but they had to know he was CIA. There was no doubt in his mind they were out to take him, or worse. But why him? Why now? His brain squirreled around. All he could think of was the bizarre chatter he’d been picking up on the Russian dark web, some new kind of covert surveillance technology they were interested in, chatter his bosses hadn’t thought worth pursuing. But why attack him? Besides, how could anyone outside the campus have found out about anything he did? He never spoke about his work when he left Langley, he knew the rules.

He was vaguely aware of shouts and screams as he ran all-out into the street to get away from those people. He never saw the wildly spinning Volvo until it struck him, sent him airborne. His face smashed against the windshield, and he kept flying, the force of the impact bouncing him over the hood. He landed on his side, not a foot from a car sitting sideways in the street, the driver yelling out the window toward the still-spinning car. Adrenaline rushed through him. He couldn’t lie there, even though blood was spewing from his face and pain seemed to be everywhere. They’d catch him. He managed to jump up and run hobbling through the gauntlet of screeching and stopped cars to the other side of the street, pushed through the gathering crowd, all staring, not at him but at the growing mayhem. He

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