Chapter 9

“Still think I was the one who shot you?”

* * * *

A year and a half or so before, I’d gone to a deserted warehouse on the Patapsco River to make a buy. Bruchner, the scientist who’d developed a renewable, nonpolluting form of energy, had been unaware the company he was working for fronted for the WBIS, and when he realized that, he panicked and contacted the Company in order to make a deal: the plans and prototype in exchange for protection, a good deal of cash, and a new identity.

In the midst of our exchange, I’d been shot. The scientist vanished, leaving behind not only his invention in the briefcase he’d brought with him, but the good-sized bundle of cash and new identities for himself, his wife, and his child, who were never located.

Mark Vincent, however, appeared out of the shadows.