The passenger was no longer sparing any attention for Dryden. The guy was glancing up occasionally through the windshield, but mostly his focus was on something down near his own feet.
“It’s on,” the passenger said. “I can hear something. Static, I think.”
“Doesn’t matter. Don’t open it.”
The zip-tie broke with a snick—louder than Dryden had wanted. He tensed and watched the passenger for a reaction.
Nothing.
He separated his hands. Groped in the dark again, beneath the seat, and got hold of the two-by-four. It was at least two feet long; he could feel the far end of it resting against the back of his knee.
He glanced up at the passenger. The man was only staring forward now, chewing on his lower lip. Maybe he was stewing about being shut down by the driver. Maybe there was an ongoing dynamic between them, alpha and beta, aggressive and passive-aggressive. No doubt it was fascinating.
Dryden pulled the two-by-four tight against himself, then raised his hip upward just an inch or two, his body forming a long, shallow arch with his feet at one end and his shoulder at the other. He eased the two-by-four through the gap until it lay in front of him, then brought his hands around to his front side.
His head was still resting on the floor. He directed his gaze forward, at the space beneath the driver’s seat. The Explorer was fairly new, just two years old, but it was the base model for the most part. No special electronics under the seat cushions. No motorized adjustments, no warming coils. Nothing but steel supports set in glide tracks, and a release bar to let the driver scoot the seat forward or back.
And empty space. Four vertical inches of it. Enough to admit the two-by-four, along with his forearm. Dryden could see all the way through to the footwell in front of the driver. Could see the man’s foot on the gas, and the brake pedal beside it.
*
The man at the wheel was named Richard Conklin, at least as far as his current employer was concerned. It was not his real name, but he’d used it often enough that he sometimes slipped into thinking of it as a kind of alter ego. Under his real identity, he was twice divorced and paying out a great deal of money in child support for kids who hated him, and toward whom the feeling was very nearly mutual.
Richard Conklin, though. Richard Conklin was a killer.
He was a killer when the job called for it, anyway.
Other times, the job might be to break into a house and steal something—some piece of paperwork, say—or simply drive a vehicle from one location to another and not look in the trunk. Above all, Richard Conklin did precisely what he was paid to do, and never asked why. He never even knew who he was actually working for. There were always go-betweens. Double-blind connections. One-time-use phones and carefully couched language for instructions. Paranoia was everybody’s friend. That was how Richard Conklin had always done business.
Until last month. Until the meeting up in Silicon Valley, with the people he was working for now. The people who wanted what they called a rapid response team, a term that sounded like private army to Richard Conklin’s ears.
The work had begun right away, sometimes solo jobs, other times team efforts like tonight. It was steady work, which was nice, and the pay was excellent, which was even nicer.
Richard Conklin was thinking that very thing when something collided with the side of his foot—not painfully, more like a solid thump from a mallet. It smacked his foot sideways, right off the accelerator; he jerked his head down to see what was happening. He never got the chance.
In the next instant the vehicle’s brakes locked up as if he’d jammed his heel on them. The tires bit the road and shrieked, the whole chassis dipping at the nose as if its back end had lifted half a foot off the pavement. He and the passenger were slammed forward against their seat belts. He felt the air compress out of his lungs, and then the awful rubber screech finally halted and the world went still.
He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t get the air back into his chest. Couldn’t—
Movement, a blur of it, right between the front seats. The guy they’d tied up. Richard turned in time to see the stranger throw a hard punch into the passenger’s temple, about as savage a hit as he’d ever seen. The passenger’s head snapped sideways and cracked against the side window—unconscious, just like that. Richard forgot about getting his breath back; his focus jumped to the two Berettas he’d taken from the wrecked Land Rover. One of the handguns was tucked into his partner’s waistband, the other in his own. Richard’s hand darted for it even as the stranger turned to him.