I veered right and headed into the barrel-vaulted chamber that led to the main entrance. The river of humanity flowing against me was hard to navigate, but I was glad for every person there. By shutting the station for three hours, the police had created an almost impos¬sible situation for themselves.

Between me and the entrance stood the circular restaurant I'd seen on the way in. Two stories high, the open-air cafe was like an island in the center of the floor. It had tables on its second level and a wrought-iron bal¬cony that allowed its patrons to watch the pageant below. It also provided a bird's-eye view for anyone wanting to surveil the huge hall. I started around it on the left side, keeping my face downcast.

"Dr. Tennant!" shouted a female voice.

I glanced up.

Geli Bauer was staring down at me from the cafe's sec¬ond level. Her scarred face and electric blue eyes were impossible to miss, and her presence here had the inevitability of fate. The three hours we'd hidden in the theater had given her time to fly here from North Car¬olina. The police had reopened the station, but Geli had waited in the hope of spotting us. As I whirled to see if Rachel saw the danger, I realized my mistake. Geli instantly spotted her and raised a walkie-talkie to her lips.

"Run!" I shouted to Rachel.

Geli dropped her radio, whipped up an automatic pis¬tol, and aimed down at me.

A woman beside her screamed. As others joined the panic, Geli darted onto a staircase that curved down to the main floor. I slid my hand behind me, toward the gun at the small of my back.

"Don't!" Geli shouted, moving quickly down the stairs. "I'm not going to fire! The order to kill you came from Godin! Godin's lost his mind!"

She stopped three-quarters of the way down the steps, holding her pistol in a two-handed combat stance.

"If that's true, put down your gun!"

She didn't.

Why hasn't she shot me? I wondered. Then I knew. Rachel was far enough away that if Geli shot me out of hand, she might escape with the terrified mob.

"Drop your gun, Doctor!" Geli yelled, continuing down the stairs. "Drop it now and lie prone on the floor! I won't fire!"

She couldn't miss from where she was. I dropped my gun on the gleaming floor. Her eyes flashed with satis¬faction.

The crowd reacted to this disturbance like an ant colony perceiving danger in its midst. Waves of panic radiated into preoccupied travelers farther from the cen¬ter, creating a cyclone of people rushing for the exits. Police stationed there would have to battle their way here foot by foot.

"Get over here, Dr. Weiss!" Geli shouted.

"David?" Rachel called tentatively.

Geli's automatic had a silencer on its barrel. "Run!" I screamed. "Get out of here!"

Geli shifted her aim toward Rachel. I lunged up the steps. My hands closed around her wrists as the gun spit a round past me. The fury in her face told me she'd missed.

Geli drove a knee into my stomach, knocking the wind from my lungs. I wrenched at her bones like a man trying to break green sticks. She threw herself backward and spun, flipping me onto the steps with her sitting on top of me. I fought to keep her gun pointed away from me, but she had the leverage on her side. The silencer inched steadily toward my face. Geli's scar went white as the strain of combat filled her cheeks with blood.

"Let go of the gun!" screamed a female voice. "Both of you! Let go and stand up!"

Ten feet away, Rachel stood with both hands clenched around my revolver, her eyes wide with terror.

"Put down that weapon!" Geli yelled. "You're inter¬fering with a federal officer in performance of her duty!"

"Shoot her!" I shouted, trying to rip the gun from Geli's grasp. "She killed Fielding! Shoot!"

Geli slammed the point of her elbow into my solar plexus, and the silencer jammed into my cheek. An explosion rang my eardrums like gongs, and something wet spattered my face. Geli's blazing eyes seemed to fill my vision, but then a river of blood flooded down her shirtfront.

I grabbed her gun and rolled her off me.

Rachel was still aiming the smoking revolver and shaking like an epileptic. The bullet had hit Geli in the neck, but she'd managed to stuff her fingers into the wound to stop the bleeding. Never had I seen such rage in human eyes. I grabbed Rachel's wrist and ran back toward the main hall. As we rounded the corner, Geli's voice echoed though the hundred-foot-high chamber: "You're dead, Tennant! You're fucking dead!"

I sprinted toward the B. Dalton store at the end of the mall. Cases of books were bulky and heavy. That meant a loading dock.

Customers scrambled out of our way as I hustled Rachel into the stockroom of the bookstore. The tile floor was piled with boxes, and sure enough, there was a loading bay with a motorized door to handle deliveries. I hit a red button on the wall, and the door began to rise.

Sunlight flooded into the room. I lowered Rachel to the cement of the loading bay, then jumped off myself. A delivery truck was parked at the entrance to the bay, and two men stood talking beside its cab. As we ran up the incline, I saw a white Toyota Corolla parked by the truck. Its driver's door was open, but no one was inside.

I aimed my revolver at the two men, then jerked it toward the Toyota. "I need that car!"

The truck driver held up his hands, but the other man looked at the Toyota. "That's my car."

"Give me the keys!"

The man looked blank.

"Give him your damn keys!" said the truck driver.

"They're in it."

I pulled Rachel around to the passenger door and put her inside, then scrambled into the driver's seat and started the engine. The owner of the car yelled some¬thing, but his words were lost in the roar as I sped away. Forward momentum slammed my door, and it took all my self-control to slow down. I'd have to drive at nor¬mal speed to get us clear of the station, then ditch the car to get clear of the city.

"Oh, God," Rachel said, her face white.

Wailing sirens were converging on Union Station.

I stood behind Rachel at the food court at JFK airport in New York, watching her for signs of a breakdown. She was wearing a blue dress, part of a new wardrobe she'd bought in New Jersey, but the dress did nothing to mask her pale skin and hollow eyes. Shooting Geli Bauer had rattled her badly, and though news reports had revealed that the "federal officer" shot at Union Station had sur¬vived, Rachel had remained shaky throughout the drive to New York.

I would never have got her out of Washington with¬out help. After ditching the Toyota five blocks from Union Station, I hailed a taxi and had it carry us back over the Potomac to Alexandria, Virginia, to an upscale shopping center. There I called the phone number that had led to the cafe rendezvous with Mary Venable. I told the woman who answered that Dr. Rachel Weiss was in mortal danger and desperately needed help. Forty-five minutes later, a woman in a blue Toyota Camry picked us up and took us back into Washington, to a private residence on the south side.

The house was a sanctuary run by the feminist group that provided new identities for battered women on the run with their children. We were installed in a bedroom at the back of the safe house, and after a brief wait, Mary Venable arrived. She questioned Rachel at length-she didn't seem to trust me-then made arrange¬ments for a car we could use to drive to New York the following day. She told us to leave it in the long-term lot at JFK, where it would be picked up by one of their New York "sisters."

There was a television in the bedroom, and the Union Station shooting was all over the news. The temporary closing of the station seemed to have caused as much of an uproar as the gunfire. Early reports speculated that a bomb threat had forced evacuation of the station, but by the late-news broadcast, the story had changed. D.C. police sources had leaked that a potential presidential assassin had been tracked to the station. My name wasn't given, but the anchor said that the woman who had done the shooting in the station, formerly believed to be my cap¬tive, was now believed to be my accomplice.