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just
made
it difficult.”
    The driver, meanwhile, looked uneasy. He kept stealing glances through the rearview mirror. Worrying about the blue vinyl seats, no doubt. Guess people in the Northeast didn’t puke much.
    Oh hell. Jack felt his stomach wrench itself into a knot again. That was the stress talking. Christ, this was unbelievable. Was he actually going to invite a strange woman back to his hotel room? Tonight, of all nights? But he didn’t seem to have a choice.
    “Fine. The Sheraton on Rittenhouse Square.”
    Kelly eased back into the seat again and smirked. “Swank.”
    “That is on the way to the Northeast,” the driver said happily. Not that anyone was asking.
    The knot in Jack’s stomach tightened. Severely. He doubled over, as if his midsection were a giant hinge. He couldn’t help it. His head ended up near Kelly’s lap.
    Then she did something strange. She gently eased his head down into her lap and started gently stroking his scalp. “Relax, Jack.”
    Her fingers felt surprisingly good. They distracted him from the twisting knife in the middle of his lower intestines.
    The cab continued up 1-95, toward Center City.

11:25  p.m.
    Long-Term Parking, Section D, Aisle 22
     
    T he guy lived way out in the Northeast. In Somerton, which was near the edge of the county line. Beyond that, Bucks County, the affluent suburbs populated by Philadelphians, and by New Yorkers who
really
wanted to get away from the city without having to live in New Jersey. Kowalski couldn’t blame them. Much as he disliked Philadelphia, he simply loathed Jersey. Everything was industrial, suburban, or a faded shore town. What was the point of that?
    After watching the dumbstruck expression on his subject’s face for a few minutes—What the hell happened? Was I really dumped curbside?—Kowalski had followed him to a shuttle bus waiting area. Strange. The man had seemed to be ready to jump in a cab with Kelly White. Where was he headed now? Kowalski trailed him onto a shuttle bus and knew the answer: long-term parking.Guy had a car here after all. It was a new Subaru Tribeca—dusky gray exterior, black leather interior, with a built-in booster car seat meant for a child about sixty to ninety pounds. Magazines littered the floor of the backseat. Kowalski saw a
Mens Health
, an
Economist
. Kowalski knew this because he’d slipped inside of it when the man was distracted by a small rock he’d winged at the hood. Enough to chip paint, and cause the man to fuss over it for a minute or two, curse. But not enough to notice his new passenger.
    Sure, he could have stolen a long-term car, followed the man wherever he was going. But Kowalski always tried to keep things are simple as possible, with as few tools as possible. Steal a car, you have to dispose of a car. There’s a trail. Forensic evidence. And, of course, the subject to worry about. Why bother? Hiding in the back, Kowalski was able to sink himself into a slightly lower level of consciousness to recharge his batteries. He’d found that fifteen to twenty minutes of downtime left him feeling more refreshed than eight hours in a warm bed. Which was good. He had a feeling this was going to be a long night.
    The subject pulled the Tribeca into a two-car garage at the top of a steep hill. The guy stepped out, stretched, glanced at the hood, cursed, grabbed his overnight bag from the passenger seat, and walked through the door that connected to the house. He was immediately greeted by a dog—a golden retriever. Kowalski waited until the lights went out. He used a box cutter he found to jimmy open the connecting door; the set of house keys, predictably, was hooked on a plastic holder affixed by a magnet to the side of a refrigerator. No sign of the dog, which meant he must be upstairs asleep with his master. Still, he didn’t linger. He slipped back to the garage, turned the ignition key enough for the electrical systems to pop on. The Tribeca came with a built-in GPS