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was a cut on his chin the size of a dime.
    But all in all, he felt good. His life had been turned upside down, but it was a mercifully brief shake-up, and when he went home tomorrow morning, everything would be back to normal.
    He turned on the faucet. He washed his hands, bent over, splashed cool water onto his face.
    When he rose, face dripping, and was about to reach for a towel, a shadowy figure stood in the mirror watching him.
    He gave a startled yelp, stumbled backward, slipped, and fell to the floor on his butt. Pain fanned through his tailbone and rippled through his injured ribs.
    "Gabe?" Dana knocked on the door. "You okay?"
    Breathing hard, Gabriel looked around the restroom. It was barely larger than a shower stall. He was alone-of course.
    "I'm fine," he said thickly. "I slipped."
    "You need me?"
    "No, I'm okay."
    Heart knocking, Gabriel looked up at the mirror. He didn't get a full view of the glass from where he sat on the floor. He wasn't sure he wanted one.
    What the hell had he seen?
    He grasped the lip of the sink. Groaning, he pulled himself to his feet, checked in the mirror again.
    He saw only his damp face. No one else.
    It was his imagination, he reasoned. Post-traumatic stress disorder. He'd been through what could have been a fatal accident, and was badly shaken. It should come as no surprise that his brain was a little loopy.
    He reached for a towel. Then he stopped. He felt the cool tingling on his fingers again.
    This time the sensation faded after a few seconds.
    He mopped his face dry.
    Something was happening to him, and he was beginning to wonder whether the theory that he was experiencing normal aftereffects from the accident was adequate.
    It seemed stranger than that. Much stranger.

Chapter 4
    ight. Although the day's rains had passed, tatters of silvery clouds littered the sky, pieces scudding across the fat, pale moon.
    The smoke-gray, 1970 Chevy Chevelle SS with Illinois plates devoured 1-75 South, roaring out of Tennessee and across the Georgia state line. The custom-built V8 engine growled like a wild thing; the chrome, twenty-inch Letani wheels spun like circular saws. The Chevelle tore through the night at ninety-five miles an hour, far above the posted speed limit of seventy.
    Isaiah Battle didn't care about speed limits. Especially today.
    Today, June 6, was his birthday. He'd turned thirty.
    The Alpine stereo blasted a song called "Gangsta Gangsta," recorded by the seminal West Coast rap group, N.W.A. Ice Cube, a member of the act in his pre-Hollywood days, spat out savage, profanity-laden lyrics. The speakers, strategically positioned throughout the car, enveloped Isaiah in a cocoon of bone-rattling beats.
    Isaiah rapped along with Cube. He didn't consider him self a gangsta or a thug or a street soldier-though he had once fit the description of such a man. He'd grown up in the Robert Taylor Homes, which had used to be one of the roughest projects in Chicago. He'd lived his life in and out of the penal system. He'd committed heinous crimes-armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, even murder.
    But that was in another life.
    He was a different person, if not on the surface, then at least in spirit.
    Still, he had an abiding love for hip-hop and urban culture. Some things hadn't changed.
    His appearance hadn't changed, either, and that was a good thing. He was a lean, muscular six feet. Bald head. Cleanshaven. Handsome, sculpted, matinee idol features; women often said that he favored the actor Morris Chestnut. And he had those eyes. They were gray, and gleamed like shards of worn steel.
    His stomach rumbled. He hadn't eaten since he'd left Chicago that morning. He saw an exit for Dalton nearing, and he took it.
    He parked in front of a Waffle House. A few dusty pickup trucks and old cars sat in the parking lot. A couple of the trucks had Confederate flags plastered proudly to the rear bumpers.
    Welcome to the Deep South. Rednecks in effect.
    There was a bite in the evening