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dimples.
    She stepped onto the sidewalk and fell in behind the stroller, her vision tunneled on that beacon of a blond head. Her heart stuttered as chubby, denim-clad legs kicked in time to those hiccupping sobs.
    Chubby little legs, stocky little body. Round arms giving sticky hugs.
    In the distance a woman wept. Broken gasps of grief. Jillian blocked the sound and focused on the stroller.
    Don’t cry, baby. Don’t cry. Mommy’s here. Mommy’s coming.

    What the hell?
    Cosky watched the woman who’d been tailing him turn and head in the opposite direction. Maybe she hadn’t been following him after all. Coronado Ferry Landing was a popular shopping and eating area; maybe the whole thing had been a weird coincidence. But that many turns, for that long? An unlikely coincidence.
    It was more likely she’d thought he was someone else and hadn’t realized her mistake until she’d climbed out of her car and gotten a good look at him. Maybe she’d been too embarrassed to approach.
    He frowned and shook his head slightly. He could have sworn there’d been recognition on her face, a fixed, frozen expression, as though she knew him—or thought she did.
    Relaxing, he watched her head down the sidewalk. She never looked back. When his knee locked up and his thigh started to spasm, he climbed back in the truck and fired the engine.
    Before exiting the parking lot, he shot another glance toward his stalker. Some terrorist she’d turned out to be. The whole thing was weird though. And not just the tailing, but the coat she was wearing too. Wool was too heavy for Coronado in the summer. It was in the mid-eighties. She should have been sweltering. He shook the questions aside and headed back the way he’d come.

    Ten minutes earlier
    Robert Biesel pulled into Coronado Ferry Landing’s restaurant parking behind a rusted, sputtering sedan. The exhaust-riddled eye-ear-and-nose sore had been a lifeline since he’d been following Simcosky closer than normal. The weekend traffic was thick, the drivers aggressive and impatient, which upped the chances he’d lose his target. Sure he had a partner to tag team Simcosky with, which cut down on the threat of discovery; but he couldn’t tell Phillip where to intercept the SEAL unless he knew what street the bastard was headed down.
    And then that crazy-ass sedan had joined the fun. The car’s exhaust had shielded him from view and given him a beacon to follow once he realized the frizzy-haired woman behind the wheel was tailing the big bastard too.
    He circled the parking lot and found a space twenty feet from Simcosky. His vantage point gave him a clear view of both cars. Shoving his beige and boring Oldsmobile into park, he turned offthe engine and slumped down to limit exposure, wishing he could kick back and take a nap.
    “It’s a one-nighter,” Manheim had told him. “You’ll be back on surveillance in twenty-four hours, forty-eight tops.”
    Robert snorted in disgust. There was more work involved in grabbing eight scientists and faking their deaths than Manheim realized. Hell, making the explosion look like a laboratory accident had taken precision and timing. But had the bosses given them a couple of extra days? Hell no—they expected everyone to work around the clock.
    The sedan had grabbed a parking space along the sidewalk. Robert eyed the woman behind the wheel and twisted to look behind him. Simcosky was waiting next to his truck with his feet spread and arms crossed. A rendezvous was definitely in the works, but from the cold expression on Simcosky’s face and the intimidation in his stance, it didn’t look like a friendly one. Maybe he was having girlfriend troubles.
    As the woman climbed out of the sedan, he picked up the bottle of Coke from the console beside him. Twisting off the cap, he took a sip, and grimaced as warm fizz flooded his mouth. The woman headed in Simcosky’s direction. His gaze traveled up a thick, wooly overcoat—was she fucking insane? It