by Gayle Lynds
The Catoctin Mountains, Maryland
Dense forests flowed dark and primeval down the ridged sides of the Maryland mountains to where a roadside stop had been built on a green basin of land off busy Highway 15. A cool breeze typical of the early hour at this time of year blew around the two-pump gas station and the parking lot and the café.
As unobtrusive as empty air, Jay Tice stood utterly still in shadows. His bloody clothes announced he should be considered dangerous, but there was something else about him that was perhaps even more sinister: It was in his aging face, where intelligence and violence warred just beneath the skin. His hair was short, the color of iron shavings. Two crevices curved down from either side of his nose to his mouth. His chin was as firm as ever, marked by the dramatic cleft.
He moved off through the trees. At the rear of the café, he dropped to his haunches. There were four windows on the back wall—one was opaque glass, two displayed customers eating, and the fourth, next to the doorway, showed a desk and file cabinets. That was the office, just where he remembered. The back door was open. From it drifted the greasy odors of fried sausage and bacon. Tice looked around, then sprinted to the doorway. He peered carefully inside.
“Two eggs easy!” A voice yelled from the end of the cluttered hall. “Half stack!”
Within seconds, he had slipped unnoticed inside and into the office. He locked the door and activated the computer and, while it booted up, opened the window. From somewhere inside the café, a newscast described a terrorist bombing in London by a new jihad group thought to be connected to al-Qaeda. He sat down at the computer and created a new Yahoo E-mail account from which he opened a blank E-mail, addressed it, and typed into the message window:
Dog’s run away. Call home. B.
As soon as he hit SEND, he deleted the copy of the E-mail saved to the computer and turned everything off. He slid out the window, stifling a groan as his hip grazed the lip, furious that he was not as agile as he once was. He closed the window and, seconds later, was in the forest again, loping away.
THE COIL
Copyright © 2004 by Gayle Hallenbeck Lynds.
Cover photo © L. Moss/Zefa
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2003058758
ISBN: 978-1-4299-0684-5
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
