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thoughts off someone else,” Greg said.
    Ben nodded. “I’ll definitely let you know when I find him.” He looked around his apartment. “I’ll straighten up here a bit, then head out.”
    “You leaving tonight?” Greg asked.
    “Yea. The first postcard came from Santa Clarita. It’s less than an hour’s drive north of here.”
    “Why the hell would he run and then stop once he was only an hour away?” Greg asked, frowning.
    “I figured they stopped at a gas station somewhere and decided to buy the card and mail it to me to let me know they were gone, then they probably hit the road again.”
    “Maybe,” Greg said, rubbing his chin the way he did when he was trying to think something through.
    “Where is the second postcard from?”
    “It was postmarked out of a town called Zounds. I had to look on Google Maps to find out where it was. It’s a good ten-hour drive north of here and on the ocean.”
    “How long ago did you get the second postcard?” Haley asked.
    “A month or so ago,” Ben told her, glancing from one of them to the other as he shifted his weight. Already he was anxious to get on the road and warn Micah.
    “Head on out then,” Greg said, and slapped Ben on the arm. “Be safe, and remember that cocky bastard aims and never misses. If they are hiding out in some small town up north, Micah will always be alert.”
    “Don’t worry,” Ben said, holding his hand up and smiling. He was looking forward to finding his old friend, no matter if he was a notorious assassin. “I know Micah. And although I’d love the challenge of sneaking up on him and pulling it off, I do like living.”
    Haley rolled her eyes, then gave him a big hug. “You call us and check in, young man. Do you hear me?”
    “Yes, Mom,” he muttered, rolled his eyes dramatically, then endured the punch she gave to his arm before hugging her again. He would really miss these two and knew in his heart he wouldn’t be seeing them again anytime soon.

 
    Chapter Four
    Wolf sat on the edge of his bed in his motel room in Santa Clarita. He was too wired to go to bed yet. He pondered over the two postcards he’d found in Ben Mercy’s apartment. The guy had done little to personalize his apartment, which meant he was never there. Wolf hadn’t found any mail lying around, which told him Mercy took care of his business the moment he had something to take care of. Yet there had been these two postcards. A girlfriend or family member or even a mild acquaintance would have written something on the postcard. Yet both of these postcards were blank.
    Ben and Micah, the Mulligan Stew assassin, had worked side by side for four months. Ben Mercy probably didn’t suspect a thing about his co-worker until the day the assassin made his very first mistake. It was the mistake that sent him running—and running fast. Micah probably pulled out of town that very same day.
    Wolf mused over why the assassin would have made this mistake. He had at least fifty kills under his belt that authorities thought they might be able to pin to him. He’d never made a single mistake, not once. Yet he shot a man who was trying to get out of going to court over bounced checks. And that had been the assassin’s fatal error. The guy the assassin shot was a nobody. He sure as hell didn’t fit the profile of absolutely every other man and woman the assassin had allegedly shot and killed.
    So why would the assassin, who had a perfect track record up to that point, make such a fatal mistake, shooting a man with the same gun he had used to kill the CIA agent?
    “Because of a girl,” Wolf muttered, and pulled up the picture of Maggie O’Malley that he’d printed off his computer. “They are the only poison that makes a man stupid.”
    He could certainly relate to that poison. Now wasn’t the time to dwell on Rebecca, though.
    “Pretty lady,” Wolf said to himself as he stared at Maggie O’Malley instead of thinking about Rebecca Cleary, the only woman