Jenny whispered, "Don't worry. She'll never find us."

At that moment, they heard a rustle terrifyingly close by and, turning, saw the outline of a figure looming over them.

A metallic glimmering brought to them the image of a gun, and a English-accented male voice said in a self-satisfied tone, "I wouldn't count on that."

"I knew it. I knew you'd run into trouble you couldn't handle."

"Kavanaugh!" Jenny said. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"What do you think?" the figure said. "Watching your sorry ass."

Bravo looked from the man to Jenny. "You know him?" he said to her.

"Braverman Shaw," she said by way of introduction, "meet Ronnie Kavanaugh."

"You poor bastard." Kavanaugh didn't offer his hand. "But all's well now that Uncle Ronnie's ridden to the rescue."

Reaching up and behind her, she undid the braid Bravo had made of her hair. "Kavanaugh is a Guardian, like me."

"Oh, not like you, princess," Kavanaugh said deadpan. "I know what I'm about."

"Is this the sonuvabitch who failed to protect my father?"

"I know you aren't referring to me." Kavanaugh had the cold, hard, domineering sneer down pat. "Surely you can't be that ignorant."

"He was never assigned to your father," Jenny said tightly. "Dexter Shaw would never put up with his attitude."

Bravo glanced upward through the rain to the top of the precipice. All was dark and still. Where had Donatella gone? He scrambled to his feet, held out his hand to help Jenny up. She ignored it, quickly stood beside him.

Kavanaugh gestured like a lord to guests newly arrived at his manor house. "Shall we?"

Under his guidance, they moved off into the thick, black underbrush. As they pushed back bullbriers and squelched through earth churned to mud, Jenny told him about Rossi and Donatella.

"I caught a glimpse of her," Kavanaugh said, "but where's Rossi?"

"Bravo killed him," Jenny said.

Kavanaugh raised his black eyebrows. "Did he now?"

"Drowned him in the cemetery lake."

"A novel manner of murder, to be sure. Well, that's one less bastard to deal with, but now his bitch is out for blood, isn't she." He was a handsome man and, despite the inherent cruelty of his smile, at once rugged and refined. Bravo could picture him in a made-to-measure Savile Row tuxedo, a single-malt Scotch in his hand, playing chemin de fer at a fashionable London casino.

"There's only one road down this way." Kavanaugh pointed toward the hazy globe of a streetlight. "I parked in the shadows just there to the right."

Perhaps a hundred yards from the car he stopped and handed the keys to Jenny. "Here's what you're going to do, princess. You and Shaw will get into the car and drive through the pool of light."

"Are you crazy?" Jenny said. "That's just what she'll be looking for."

Kavanaugh grinned. "Isn't that right. She's so maddened, she'll come after you without a second thought."

"You bet she will," Bravo said, as unhappy with Kavanaugh's plan as Jenny obviously was.

"And when she does," Kavanaugh said slowly, as if reciting the alphabet to a slightly dim child, "I will be waiting to gun her down."

Jenny shook her head. "You're using Bravo as bait. It's too dangerous."

"Strong emotion of any sort-most especially rage-makes one commit stupid acts. I'm using Donatella's rage against her," Kavanaugh said. "D'you have a better notion?"

In the ensuing silence, he drew his gun. "I thought not. Let's get to it."

The car-a large Lincoln-was precisely where Kavanaugh said it would be. Jenny circled the vehicle, her fingertips running lightly over the painted metal.

"Okay," she nodded, "get in."

"You gave in too easily," Bravo said as he strapped himself into the passenger's seat.

"What would you know about it?" she said tartly.

"So you really think this will work?"

Jenny inserted the key into the ignition. "It's a good plan, but I'll deny I said it if you ever tell him. I couldn't stand the smug look on his face."

Bravo regarded her a moment, weighing something in his mind. "You have a thing for him, don't you?"

She snorted. "What? Are you kidding?"

"Your cheeks are pink… princess."

She turned on him. "Don't be an ass."

Turning on the ignition, she put the Lincoln in gear, drove it onto the road, which ran in a more or less north-south direction. On their right was the rock face of the precipice, on their left was underbrush, glades and thick stands of leafy ash, beech and alder. They headed north, and the halo of illumination grew as they neared the closest streetlight.

"See anything?" Bravo said.

"More than you do," she snapped.

The rain had lessened, but a pearly mist had sprung up, blurring distant objects, dimming house lights to a soft, indistinct glow. They drove into the pool of illumination, which lay on the mist like a silver pond. The tarmac was altogether invisible.

They were just passing the streetlight when all at once they saw a large, blocky vehicle coming very fast toward them from out of the mist.

"It's a truck!" Bravo said. "Donatella's truck!"

"Kavanaugh, you bastard, where are you?" Jenny said as she turned the wheel hard to her right and simultaneously took her foot off the accelerator.

The truck came on at the same trajectory. Bravo, risking a look behind them, saw the tall broad-shouldered figure of Kavanaugh step out into the light from behind them. His feet were planted wide and his arms were held rigid as he began to fire into the driver's side of the truck's windshield. Calmly, with a kind of serene confidence, he squeezed off three-four-five shots. They all struck the windshield within six inches of one another.

It was at that moment, as Bravo was marveling at the man's marksmanship, that he heard Jenny say, "Dear God, there's no one behind the wheel!"

"She's dead," Bravo said. "Look at where he shot. She's already dead."

Jenny swerved again, and the truck passed by them, slammed into the streetlight. In a shower of sparks, the pole came down and with it, the utility junction box. When the box struck the tarmac, it smashed open and the line was pulled from its connectors, the live end sending sparks eerily through the low-lying mist.

Kavanaugh had turned to watch the final outcome of his neat handiwork when a bullet slammed into his chest. He spun around, his mouth open in shock, and a second bullet took off one side of his face.

"Someone's firing from that copse of ash across the road," Bravo said. "I saw the flashes."

"Oh, that evil bitch, she deadmanned the truck," Jenny said. "She taped down the accelerator and threw it in gear. That's why the truck never changed course even when I did."

Jamming on the brakes, she drove off the side of the road into dense blackness. Before Bravo had a chance to say a word, she had bolted out of the Lincoln and had vanished into the misty gloom.

Donatella, bent on one knee in the copse of ash trees, watched with an inexpressible bliss the second bullet she had sent flying take off the side of her enemy's head. The resulting spray cut through the mist, coloring it, and she let out a tiny sigh. But her work was hardly done, and she slung the 7.62 SVD Dragunov sniper's rifle across her back.

There was a certain poetic justice in how the situation had changed, she thought as she faded back deeper into the copse. And, yes, a form of beauty that perhaps only she and Ivo could understand. She moved swiftly and silently to her right. Ivo had warned her that the Order would not leave the safeguarding of Braverman Shaw to their lone female Guardian. This argument she had attributed to his inveterate chauvinism, but he had been right. The Order had assigned another Guardian as a backup. Not that it mattered to her now. She knew how to handle Guardians, male or female.