Contract to Kill
should’ve heard something unless Hahn had used a small-caliber subsonic round. Toby knew his way around handguns, and a subsonic round from a suppressed .22 wouldn’t be much louder than a dropped apple.
    Something big was happening, and Hahn and whoever else was with him didn’t want any witnesses. Hahn picked up the expended brass, opened the passenger door, and grabbed a large pair of bolt cutters.
    The sudden appearance of an approaching car made Toby’s skin tighten. He’d been so focused on the SUV he forgot to watch for other cars.
    In a split-second decision, Toby flattened himself on the ground and hoped the low hedge would screen him.
    Blinding light blanched the entire area.
    Shit, shit!
    Panicking could prove costly, and he wasn’t just worried about losing his job.
    He clenched his teeth as the dual beams bounced. What were the odds? It had to be thousands to one a second vehicle would enter this driveway at this exact moment.
    No way was this a coincidence.
    He wished he didn’t have such a vivid imagination. Here he was, lying on wet grass with a pair of field glasses around his neck, a night-vision scope in his pocket, and absolutely no explanation for any of it.
    His stress level eased a bit when the car kept going.
    Trembling from the adrenaline rush, he peered over the hedge and saw the intruder was a dark Lexus sedan and its headlights were now off. If he had any brains at all, he’d consider this close call a warning and leave.
    The SUV was gone.
    He watched the Lexus continue to the end of the aisle and turn right and then stop, but it didn’t look like there was anywhere to go out there. There had to be a gate in the fence. That’s why Hahn needed the bolt cutters. As if on cue, the bleed light from the Lexus’s brakes vanished and the sedan started moving again. Someone had gotten out to close the gate.
    Doing his best to stay in the shadows, Toby ran toward the wrecked camera. If he didn’t hurry, he’d lose sight of the sedan through the mist. Again, not an altogether bad thing to happen.
    He pressed the illumination button on his watch and checked the time. Had only five minutes passed since seeing the SUV? Could that be right? BSI was a ten-minute drive from here, so that left him thirty to forty minutes, depending on how far he ventured on foot.
    He slowed to a fast walk when he reached the northwest corner of the building. Like he’d thought, a dark expanse of baseball diamonds and soccer fields bordered this property. From his current position, he couldn’t see the Lexus, but he heard the hiss of its tires.
    Avoiding the broken pieces of glass and plastic, he angled across the parking lot and found the closed gate. It didn’t look like the official entrance to the ball fields—more like a fire-access point. On closer inspection, he saw where a lock had hung.
    Beyond the gate, there was only one set of fresh tire tracks on the decomposed granite surface. Check that, two sets, but the Lexus had driven on top of the SUV’s impressions. Not accidental, in all likelihood.
    Toby used his shirt to wipe the binocular lenses before scanning the area. If there were any sources of light out there, he didn’t see them. He switched to NV and immediately found the vehicles. They were creeping along the road toward the interior of the complex. He was about to follow the tire tracks when he realized he shouldn’t leave any footprints.
    He diverted to the post supporting the gate and used a weed-strewn area to mask his entry. At a safe distance from the gate, he crossed the dirt track, hopped a low center field fence, and sprinted toward home plate. Although he felt exposed out in the open, his footfalls on the grass were silent and the mist provided a good visual screen.
    My phone!
    He reached into his pocket and changed it to silent mode.
    At home plate he found himself trapped by a chain-link fence used for stopping foul balls. He should’ve anticipated this would be here. Beyond the

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