She saw the man again a few minutes later, walking along behind her as part of a crowd of other passengers. He didn’t have any luggage with him, which she thought was odd, though in and of itself it didn’t prove anything, for he could have easily checked it at the ticket counter. But he seemed to be doing everything he could not to look in her direction and that sent warning signs flashing through her brain.

Something just wasn’t right.

She’d seen a ladies’ room down a short side hallway a few minutes earlier and decided it was time to see if she was imagining things or not. Without looking at him, Annja slowed, pretended to change her mind and headed back in the direction that she had come. She kept her head down and angled to the side so that she could see him out of the corner of her eye as she moved away.

Just as she’d suspected, he waited a moment for her to move ahead and then quickly broke ranks with the other passengers and headed back in the same direction she was going.

Now convinced that she was being followed, she began to be curious just who it was and what he wanted.

Her decision to come to Savannah had been impulsive, as well. If someone had been expecting her to go through an airport, the logical choice would have been Atlanta. After all, that’s where she had been headed until she’d double-checked the times of the flights she’d needed.

There wasn’t any reason for Savannah to be on anyone’s radar.

She considered the possibility that he might be a fan of the show and was simply too shy to approach her directly, but dismissed the notion as soon as it occurred to her. A fan would be openly staring. Even a shy fan would be trying to get closer, rather than hanging back and attempting to blend into the peoplescape.

No, whoever he was, he was up to no good. She could feel it in her bones. And she fully intended to confront him and to teach him the error of his ways.

The bathroom she was headed toward was at the end of a corridor that made two quick dogleg turns. She passed the first and kept walking, her ears straining to pick up the sounds of his feet on the tile as he followed behind her.

For a minute she thought he’d decided against leaving the protection of the crowd, but then she caught the sound of the soles of his shoes catching on the freshly mopped tile floor and knew he was still with her.

When she got around the second dogleg she flattened herself against the wall and waited. She’d had enough playing the mouse; it was time to be the cat, and this cat, at least, had sharp claws.

She could hear him coming toward her and she set her feet firmly where she wanted them, prepping them for the test of balance that was about to come.

As he came around the corner she grabbed him by the front of the coat and shoved him into the door of the ladies’ room just beyond. It bounced open, sending him sprawling to the floor.

She followed him in and when he moved to get back to his feet she stuck the point of her sword against his throat and waited to see if he could take a hint.

He froze in place, his hands held out in a defensive posture.

“What do you want?” she demanded in a low voice, not wanting to attract undue attention by yelling, but needing to release the anger she felt building inside her.

“Easy now,” he said. “No need for trouble.”

“You got trouble the minute you decided to muck about in my business,” she told him, pushing the tip of her sword forward slightly to prove her point. A tiny drop of blood spilled out where her sword met the skin of his throat.

He swallowed hard and Annja could see the pulse in his neck start to beat harder.

“Who sent you?”

His reply was immediate. Clearly, he wanted to be seen as cooperating. “Mr. Michaels.”

No surprise, that.

“How did you know where to find me? Have you been following me since the river?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know what you are talking about. Mr. Michaels told me that you were on your way here and that I was to keep an eye on you.”

What? How did Michaels know where she was headed? She hadn’t called anyone, hadn’t told anyone what she was up to.

Her gaze fell on the cell phone sticking out of the man’s pocket and the pieces suddenly fell into place.

How could she have been so stupid?

“When you see Michaels, you tell him to stay the hell away from me until I get in touch. You got that?” He nodded.

She pulled the point away from his throat and took a step back.

A look of relief crossed his face.

Annja quickly knocked it off his face when she brought the hand holding the sword down sharply, hitting him on the head with the blunt end of the pommel.

Her would-be tracker fell over unconscious.

Releasing her sword to vanish back into the otherwhere, Annja quickly frisked him, removing his wallet and cell phone. She then grabbed him by the ankles and dragged him into a nearby stall, leaving him propped up next to the toilet with his back to the wall.

Annja stepped out of the bathroom and retraced her steps, headed back toward her gate.

Behind her, a woman began screaming and Annja knew the thug had just been discovered.

He was going to have a hard time explaining what he was doing in the ladies’ room and his lack of identification wasn’t going to make things easier.

Too bad, Annja thought as she tossed his wallet into a nearby trash can.

When she reached her gate, she took a seat away from the rest of the crowd and took out the cell phone she’d been given by Michaels. Accessing the call history, she wrote down the last number called, knowing she was going to need it later. Once she had done that, she carefully pried open the phone’s battery compartment.

She didn’t know all that much about how cell phones operated, but she was savvy enough to recognize that the small black chip that was taped to the front of the battery shouldn’t be there.

Michaels had been following her every move from the moment she left the Kelly May. He must have been afraid she’d just take the money and run when she found it, rather than going back for Garin.

Oh, ye of little faith.

Unwilling to let Michaels keep tabs on her every move, Annja was preparing to smash the phone beneath the heel of her hiking boots when another idea occurred to her. She replaced the top of the battery compartment and turned the phone back on. A nearby snack cart selling ice-cream cones had a small crowd standing in front of it so Annja headed in that direction. She got close to a woman carrying three bags while at the same time trying to deal with two squalling children under the age of five.

When the woman’s attention was elsewhere, Annja dropped the cell phone into the opening of her handbag.

With any luck, the woman would be headed for Argentina.

She checked the battery compartment of the phone she’d taken from her would-be pursuer, saw that it was clean and then programmed the number she’d memorized into that phone instead.

Fifteen minutes later, Annja boarded her own plane, content that she now held the upper hand.

33

Night had fallen by the time she deplaned in Washington, which meant the Antietam Battlefield Park would be closed. In one sense it was a blessing; Annja was exhausted. In the past twenty-four hours she’d faced off against a hungry alligator, gun-wielding psychopaths and overenthusiastic henchmen, never mind running from the police and expecting to be arrested for murder at any moment. It was too much for anyone, sword-bearer or not. She needed to get some sleep if she was going to be any use to herself or to Garin in the morning.

She decided against picking up her rental car and instead strode across the street from the terminal and walked to the hotel just beyond. She got a room for the night, arranged for an early wake-up call and was asleep within thirty seconds of her head hitting the pillow.