“Stand by for confirmation.” The voice on the other end sounded frustrated, and Guo Kang understood the burden he had placed on the duty officer. It would be a challenge, but he knew it was possible. He had been a member of the team that was on call 24/7 to respond to urgent requests for support, and he knew they could reach Lake Hodges within fifteen minutes.

The Dodge drove underneath Interstate 5 and continued north on Escondido Freeway, but Guo Kang kept his distance while he waited for the operations center duty officer to return to the line with confirmation that the mobile team was en route. He could do it alone if he had to, but he knew that would likely result in the special agent’s death, and that greatly increased the risk of not getting the information he needed.

Then again, maybe eliminating her wasn’t such a bad thing.

“Confirmed,” the voice in his helmet said. “The team leader will contact you when in position.”

The line went dead before Guo Kang could say anything else. All that was left for him to do was sit back and avoid being spotted as he watched the Dodge Challenger drive north. Once the team was in place, he would cause a diversion that would harry the special agent and drive her right into his trap.

44

Rancho Bernardo, California

Twenty minutes after leaving the base, Punky felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, and she glanced in each of her mirrors, searching for whatever had triggered her innate sixth sense. Seeing nothing, she turned to look up at the hills covered in scrub brush stretching away on either side of her but saw nothing suspicious.

Then, in her side-view mirror, she spotted a red-and-black motorcycle four lengths behind her.

She stared intently into the rider’s dark-tinted visor and was unable to see his eyes, but she knew with certainty that he was staring back at her. She held his hidden gaze for a heartbeat before looking up to see that traffic ahead was slowing and being diverted to the exit on West Bernardo Drive. She shot a glance at the motorbike in her rearview mirror, then followed the cars up the off-ramp.

At the intersection, she saw a utility van blocking traffic trying to turn left across the overpass.

Where are the police?

Alarm bells started going off in her head, and she reached down to pull the hem of her jacket back around her holstered pistol. Something about this didn’t smell right, and when she saw the technician directing traffic, she knew.

She pressed the button on the steering wheel to place a call, then drew the SIG from its holster and held it low across her lap while she waited for the call to connect.

“Punky?”

“Something’s not right, Camron,” she said, glancing up into the rearview mirror to see the biker take his hand off the throttle long enough to unzip his jacket and unveil a compact submachine gun slung across his chest. “I need backup.”

“Keep the line open while I connect with the local sheriff…”

Before she could respond, movement through the windshield startled her, and she stomped on the gas pedal while cranking the wheel hard to the left. The Challenger’s tires spun before gaining traction, and she ignored the long blast of a car’s horn as she whipped out onto the overpass and narrowly missed the technician, who was sprinting for the van. Speeding west away from the interstate, she glanced into her rearview mirror and saw the motorcycle matching pace with her.

“Shit!”

If she’d had any lingering doubts about the biker, those vanished when he brought the submachine gun up and let loose a short burst that impacted the road to her left and kept her from entering the interstate in the opposite direction. She floored the accelerator and harnessed almost eight hundred ponies under the hood, launching the muscle car up the hill.

“What’s going on?” Camron asked. “Was that gunfire?”

Punky’s eyes never stopped moving, and she looked for an opportunity to disengage. But she was propelling a car that weighed over five thousand pounds compared to a motorcycle that weighed less than a tenth of that. Getting away from the biker was going to be a challenge.

“At least one armed individual on a motorcycle,” she said, giving Camron whatever information he needed to mount a response.

At the top of the hill, she turned right into the Rancho Bernardo Community Park and felt the Challenger’s rear let loose for the briefest of moments. It triggered a memory of fishtailing around corners in her father’s Corvette Stingray the previous summer with Colt Bancroft sitting next to her. She couldn’t believe it was happening again.

“Not this time,” she said, reminding herself that she still got a vote in how this turned out.

Pressing harder on the gas pedal, she flew past basketball courts and a recreation center, scanning beyond her hood for something she could use to turn the tide in her favor.

“What’s that?” Camron asked.