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not.
    Ted took me to the back of his truck and opened the doors. “Not much left, but I’ll triple check it if you want.”
    “Sure, if you have the time.” I lounged against the back of the truck, so that I could look around while seeming to be not paying attention. While Ted rummaged, I observed.
    It was hard to be sure if the man in the foliage was actually someone I knew and not just some random lurker. But considering one of the last times I’d seen Clarence had been when he was trying to lure the Gower girls into the trees by the Lincoln Memorial, I felt I was on the right track.
    “I don’t see anything else for you,” Ted announced.
    Turned to look inside the truck. It was in a decent state of disarray. “How do you find anything in here?”
    “Normally? No problem. Today I must have turned a corner too fast or driven over a bump I didn’t notice, because about midday I get to a stop and bam, all my packages are on the floor or on top of each other.”
    Our UPS man didn’t normally get involved in high speed car chases, and there was no way he could have gone over a bump big enough to toss everything on the floor without his knowing. Ted might be lying, but I doubted it. An A-C moving at hyperspeed would be invisible to the naked human eye, and I had a good bet an A-C had done this. A specific A-C, in fact. The one hiding at the Circle.
    Why was the big question. I didn’t have a good answer. Yet.
    Said good-bye to Ted and watched him drive off. No sign of anyone chasing him at hyperspeed. Of course, if this
was
Clarence, he was enhanced. Which might be how he’d survived.
    Turned to face the Circle. This time, whoever it was seemed aware I was looking at him. He disappeared.
    I didn’t stop to ponder—I took off running. At hyperspeed.
    Christopher had been working with me a lot on control, so I didn’t slam my face into a tree. I reached the edge of the Circle and stopped. Then I trotted around at human level. I was quite proud of myself. Pity no one was around to see and rate this performance.
    “What the hell are you doing, Missus Chief?”
    Okay, someone was around. Point of fact, it was Malcolm Buchanan, aka the P.T.C.U. operative assigned by my mother to be my permanent shadow. Couldn’t complain—Buchanan had saved my life more than once already. He was also a big, tall, good-looking, muscular guy with deep blue eyes and brown hair. I never complained about that, either.
    “Hey, Malcolm, I thought I saw—” Clarence, and I saw him again, about a block away. I wasn’t dressed for dinner, so I was in my usual jeans, today’s concert shirt featuring Van Halen, and my Converse. I was good to go.
    I could grab Buchanan and take him with me, but hyperspeed was hard as hell on humans and even though I felt Buchanan possessed Dr. Strange powers, he wasn’t going to be up to a lot of hyperspeeding.
    Took off and decided I’d beg forgiveness later.
    Clarence saw me coming and he ran off as well. I wasn’t too far away, and was able to keep the distance apart fairly close. This meant Clarence wasn’t moving at the super-fast speeds Jeff and particularly Christopher could now hit, but he was still going at a good clip for an A-C. Whether this meant he couldn’t run that fast any more or was leading me somewhere I didn’t know. But I’d been a sprinter in high school and college and I’d been working on my stamina for the past few months, so he could run around all he wanted—he wasn’t going to lose me.
    We went back and forth around the Embassy Row area. Clarence didn’t seem to have a destination in mind other than “away.” Could mean he was trying to tire me out or trap me, could mean he hadn’t expected to be seen, could mean something else.
    Clarence ran across the Parkway. We both weaved in between the cars like they were standing still. He jumped off and crossed Rock Creek—we were both running fast enough that we splashed across the top of the water but didn’t go in—and