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As he had told Case already, Kincaid’s operator training, mastery of the “deadly arts,” and service record were nobody’s business. But Janson saw no reason to hide his admiration. “She is a perfectionist and hungry to learn—dance, saber, telemark skiing, swimming, boxing. She takes elocution lessons from an acting coach to learn how to mimic body language, she throws herself into foreign languages most people never heard of, and she’s close to getting certified to fly jets.”
    “Are we a smidgeon smitten by our protégée?”
    “Awed,” said Janson. “Is there anything else? I need to get going.”
    He headed for the door and had his hand on the knob when Case said, “I’ve worked with women. They’re smart. A hell of a lot smarter than we are.”
    “Based on all the evidence, I agree.”
    “But I never worked with a woman in the field. At least not under fire, never when the lead was flying. What’s it like?”
    Janson hesitated. Doug’s question—even if he was asking in general what it was like to work with a woman—caught him off-stride. That surprised him. He was a man who reviewed his life in small ways on a constant basis. But the survival habit of compartmentalizing his thoughts and emotions and desires ran deep. Was it possible that until this moment he had never fully considered, or allowed himself to consider, how central Jessica Kincaid had become to his life as protégée, business partner, and friend?
    “Do you have a dictionary in that computer?”
    Case rolled across the office, lowered his chair to desk height, opened a computer window, and poised his powerful hands over the keyboard.
    Janson smiled, suddenly clear in his mind. “What is it like? Look up ‘Comrade-in-arms.’”
    Doug Case typed in the old-fashioned warrior phrase, scrolled down the entry, then read aloud: “ ‘An associate in friendship, occupation, fortunes’?”
    “That nails it.”
    “But,” Case said, “the downside I see to working with a woman is that in the clutch, when the lead is flying, it’s only natural that you’d be distracted, worried about her getting hurt. Particularly if she’s your protégée. Devoted followers have a habit of getting killed in our line of work. I’ve lost them; so have you.”
    “Jessica is predator, not prey.”
    * * *
    DOUG CASE TOUCHED his telephone the instant the door closed behind Paul Janson.
    Bill Pounds, one of his ex-Ranger ASC field agents, was watching the lobby. “Yes, sir?”
    “They’re on their way. Report where they go. Don’t let them make you.”
    “No one makes the invisible man.”

THREE
    B ill Pounds walked quickly to his metallic-green Taurus parked in the No Parking zone. His partner, Rob, a hard-eyed moonlighting Houston Police Department detective, was at the wheel. They watched a red and white Fiesta Taxi pull up to the building’s entrance. The middle-aged businessman and the gal in the seersucker suit climbed into the cab.
    The Fiesta Taxi driver had been instructed to leave his cell phone on. Pounds and Rob heard the woman say, “Brown Convention Center.”
    Rob wheeled the Taurus onto the Sam Houston Tollway after them and followed at a distance. “The Brown’s got two conventions showing this week, National Association of Black Accountants and the Texas Towmen, and they don’t look like either.”
    “Pass ’em,” Pounds ordered. “I’ll wait for them in the lobby.”
    * * *
    JESSICA KINCAID LEANED close to whisper, “What did he say?”
    “Tell you later.”
    Janson sat back and watched the scenery, such as it was. Outside the taxi window Houston looked hot and dry, a flat, new land empty of people and full of cars. Janson looked through it, past it, to London with crowded sidewalks, ancient stonework, and lush green Regent Park the day that Cons Ops sent Jessica Kincaid to kill him.
    She had been good then, already, among the best of the younger operators, but lacking the instincts acquired in the course of the