or the morning after the night after Karie’s funeral, to be exact.

Harv picked her up in the kind of hug she’d always wished for from her father. She could see when she looked at him how proud he was. Karie’s murder had brought the two of them together with a common goal to find the person that had done it.

“I am unbelievably proud of you Melody,” Harv said, swinging her around. “I am assuming you didn’t change your position and invite your parents.”

“No… having you here is the best I could hope for, Harv,” she said before hugging Karl, which she found to be a little on the awkward side since he hadn’t even called after their night together.

“Let’s go get dinner… I have news,” Harv beamed at her. “Several different pieces of news.”

***

The three of them were huddled around a table in the French Quarter; the small restaurant being exclusive, expensive and notoriously difficult to get into. As the family style meal was served, Harv was beside himself. Karl was just as clueless as Melody about what he was going to say.

“Out with it, Dad, you’re killing us here,” he joked.

“We have a person of interest in Karie’s murder. And it is completely due to items you unearthed, Melody… and connected together. His name is John Constanti. Italian national, important family. Passport control has him entering the country a couple of weeks before each of the eight murders we have connected to him, and leaving the day after five of them, two days after the other three.”

“Are you going to pick him up?” Melody asked.

“That is where it gets sticky. With the depth of his family connections, if we let it slip that we are looking at him for something like this, he might just disappear. We have had his name for a week… and if he stays true to pattern, he should be back in the US in the next month or two.”

“I hope you get him, Harv… for Karie. She deserves the justice,” Melody said.

“Wow, I had no idea you guys had been working on this for the last four years. I hope you can nail that guy,” Karl said.

“Which brings me to the other piece of news… I want to offer you a job. With you completing the psych degree, I can get you into the profiling department. They already know who you are… do you want to do it?”

“Wow… I hadn’t even thought about that,” she said, leaning back in her chair.

“Think about it… it’s at Quantico. We have a basic class going through the academy in three weeks. I would love to have you in it… When you get done, you’ll have a spot on the team I’m putting together. It won’t be easy, but I know you can do it.”

two hours and fifteen minutes. That would be a nine minute per mile pace. It would be a personal record.

He tapped the button on the side of his watch and took off at a full run. He headed toward the Colonial Parkway, then turned and ran toward Jamestown. It was about a half mile to the parkway, then he would run seven miles up the road, turn and run back.

On an early Saturday in February, there wasn’t much traffic. There were a few bicycles out… he passed a family biking the parkway on his way back. He had a few others pass him. Jakob preferred the solitude of running alone. It used to leave him with his thoughts, but over the last few weeks he had picked up his pace to try to outrun his thoughts. More than anything else, he still wondered what had happened. The crushed remains of his heart still beat for Mali, but he couldn’t face her.

For a week after she left him standing alone in that restaurant, his proposal hanging in the air, he’d tried to call her. He’d stopped by her dorm, but he had never made it past Mackenzie. She had been as hard to get around as Cerberus. She intercepted every call and every attempt to catch her coming or going from the dorm.

He could see the hurt in Mac’s eyes, too. She wanted him and Mali to sit down and talk, to talk about what had happened. Mac was just as confused as he was. But she was loyal to her friend. Mali had told her that she couldn’t face him yet, and Mac stepped into the role of protector. She might plead with her every night to reconsider, but by day she would do as her friend asked.

Mac had often wished during that week that she could just sweep Jakob into her arms and kiss away his pain, but she knew she couldn’t. He still loved Mali, and more than that, Mac knew that Jakob wasn’t who she wanted… but she still liked him.

After the first week, his roommate finally convinced him to let it go. Jakob’s hurt had matured into anger over that week. He stopped calling her and trying to visit her. He put his head down and just went to class. Dorm, class, study… that was it.

A couple of weeks later he got his first message back from her. She wanted to talk. But he couldn’t face her. He didn’t want to face her. He didn’t know what he would say to her or what she could possibly say to him. He ducked her calls. After catching a glimpse of her waiting for him outside of his class building, he altered his route to and from classes so that she couldn’t catch him by surprise.

His roommate wasn’t as loyal as Mac, so he just stopped answering the phone, stopped leaving the dorm. Except to run.

But try though he might, he could never outrun his past. Sometimes she was behind him, and he was running from her, other times he ran toward her. But the more he thought about her, the harder he ran trying to forget and erase the pain.

Two hours and twelve minutes.

He stopped his watch and walked into the dorm. He went up to his room, alone for the weekend since his roommate was gone, and took a long hot shower, still trying to clear his mind. After a long leisurely shower, he sat down at his desk to study and complete his homework for the week. His phone rang a few times, but he ignored it.

There was a knock at the door. Ty Connor, from down the hall stuck his head in, “Yo, Jake, there is some hot milf downstairs that’s here to see you. And she isn’t taking no for an answer. I tried to dissuade her, but she said she saw your car, and in ten minutes she said she was coming up. So… can you go deal with that?”

“What does she look like?”

“Blonde, petite, seriously hot. And she has a basket of cookies.”

“Tell her you don’t know where I am, Ty. I don’t want to talk to her.”

Ty closed the door behind him, and Jakob could hear him walking back down the hall. He flipped the book open again and started reading the next module for Calculus. He’d already finished all the assigned exercises, but he decided to do the others at the end of the last chapter. He still didn’t have a full grasp on a couple of the concepts.

The door flew open a minute after he started on the calculus and Nicole Richter strode in like she owned the building. There were a few catcalls from the hallway as she closed the door and crossed the room toward him.

“How did you get past the RA?”

“Two cookies and a cupcake. That was not tough at all.”

“Look, Nicole, I don’t want to talk to her right now. I don’t know what I would say, nor what she could possibly say to me,” Jakob said, turning to look at her.

“Jakob, I’m not here for Mali. She would probably kill me if she knew I was here. I’m here for you. It’s lunch time. Let me take you to lunch somewhere, and you and I can talk about you.”

“Really, Nicole? She didn’t put you up to this?”

“Jakob, I swear she did not. You are my friend. I really like you. For you… not as an adjunct to Mali. I certainly want the two of you to be together, because you are miserable apart, but that isn’t why I came here. You need to talk with someone… and I can be that someone for you.”

“Fine,” Jakob said, rising from his chair, pulling off his sweatshirt to put on something nicer.

“You been working out?” Nicole said, whistling. “Seriously, you are downright ripped.”

“I’ve been running. I did fifteen miles this morning. Two hours, thirteen. New personal best.”

“Well let’s go fatten you up a little bit… you need some replacement calories,” Nicole joked. She took his arm as they walked out the door. She had left the basket of cookies and cupcakes on his bed.

“Hey, Mrs. Richter, anytime you want to come by, feel free…” the RA said as they passed.

“Thank you, Charles. I’ll be sure to send some more of the cookies out to you sometime.”

“Yes, ma’am,” was the enthusiastic reply.

Colt swung around and lunged at the photographer that had crept up behind him. The man still grinning, knowing that he had captured the winning shot, Selena Sparrow’s ultimate wardrobe “malfunction.” Colt grabbed the lens of the camera and pushed it back into the face of the photographer. Then he pulled it back, dragging the middle-aged man with it by the neck strap.

“Hey, asshole, let go of my camera,” the man shouted as Colt punched under the camera, hitting the man squarely in the jaw.

He yanked the camera strap over his head and pulled the camera fully away from him. With one hand he popped the card slot door of the camera, pulling out the card. With the other, he slammed the camera on the ground.

“You, hey, don’t,” a cop shouted as the camera shattered on the sidewalk.

Colt took the card and ground it into the pavement. Selena hadn’t even had a chance to react, she was sitting in the car waiting for him to close the door. The cop grabbed his arm and spun him down into the pavement, subduing him. He didn’t resist.

“Hey, officer, it isn’t what it looks like,” Colt said.

“Shut up.”

“He busted my camera, Dude,” the paparazzi complained.

“Officer, can I talk to her for a minute before you take me away,” Colt said calmly.

The cop nodded and Selena quickly hopped out of the SUV. He whispered in her ear, and she blushed, then nodded. She took the keys from his pocket and walked around the other side of the truck and carefully climbed into the driver’s seat. She pulled away slowly as Colt was loaded into the back of a patrol car.

***

“Colt, you’re out of control,” Ellen Stewart said to him, facing him in the private jet. She ripped the glass of single-malt scotch out of his hand. “Like the raging bull on that Lamborghini badge. You don’t think. Now I have to fix it. That photographer wants to sue the crap out of us… and if he actually knew anything…” She shook her head in exasperation.

Ellen was the Dixon family “fixer”. Young, beautiful, both a legal degree and a degree in international business, but it seemed to her that she spent half of her time bailing out Colt… or fending off his advances. But this time might be the time he went too far.

“Selena told me what happened, but I know she didn’t tell me everything. Why don’t you.”

“Nothing to add. Just do your job, Ellen.”

They sat in silence for a while before Colt started back in on the family fixer.

“You know… you could take care of me,” he said. “Who knows… it might just save your job.” He smiled smugly at the young woman. He was barely eighteen, and she was twenty-five. He’d had a crush on her since the moment she’d been hired, but she rebuffed him at every opportunity.

“Why do you insist on acting like a bag of rancid assholes?” she said to him before rising and walking to the front of the plane.

The next day, Colt found out that he would be losing the battle with Ellen. She got a paid vacation and a salary bump. He was going to have to get a job after graduation. A grunt job.

He flung the driver’s door open, hopping into the sumptuous interior. Leather, mahogany and carbon fiber greeted him. He watched as the gauges jumped to life when he fired up the 7.2-liter marine V12. Lamborghini installed the engine in a few of the LM002 sport-utility vehicles, but it had been designed for offshore powerboat racing, and the roar coming from the exhaust belied that. Even with the mild tune that he had applied, it belched out more than six-hundred horsepower. As he blipped the throttle, the tach needle jumped from its peg, wrapping much of the way around the gauge… another raging bull just below the needle’s pivot point.

He pulled out of the parking garage of the opulent hotel in Hollywood, the vehicle becoming a little less raucous out of the confines of the concrete parking deck, and headed to the home of his latest girlfriend, a young actress and singer that was attracted to his “bad-boy” status. Colt Dixon, mysterious young playboy. He had a surprise date for her that he was hoping would push her to her limits.

Because his mother had pounded into him the need to be a gentleman, he held her door and helped her up into the modified “Rambo Lambo”.

“This isn’t a Hummer, is it? My dad has a Hummer, and this looks… different,” Selena said, her brow furrowed.

“It’s a Lambo.”

“I’m not dumb, I know what a Lambo looks like, and this isn’t one. They are low and fast and stuff.”

“I assure you, Selena, this is a Lamborghini. Anyway… we need to go; I have fun stuff planned.”

He kissed her lightly and then closed her door. Rounding the LM002, he hopped in the driver’s side and put on his seat belt. A minute later they were sedately motoring along Hollywood Blvd. on their way to the desert. He wanted to know what his new toy was capable of doing.

***

Once past the confines of LA traffic, Colt cracked the throttles on the big V12. It let out a mighty roar as the heavy off-roader picked up speed like a muscle car. Soon, they were barreling down I-15 in the triple digits, both of them laughing as the Lambo floated over the uneven road. Colt thought it handled a lot like an offshore powerboat, dampening the undulations of the road, but leaving him feeling a bit disconnected.

Past Barstow, he turned off the interstate highway and into the desert. Sand roads, washes and paths were more like the terrain this beast was built to tame, and Colt intended to do just that. He knew a few routes that might be exciting.

“Have you ever driven a stick before?” he asked the girl sitting next to him.

“No… actually… I’ve never driven before,” she replied.

“Seriously?” He couldn’t imagine a sixteen-year-old not wanting the freedom of a driver’s license and their own car. He’d been waiting with his mother two years before on his birthday, a license being the most important thing he could get that day.

“I always have drivers and stuff… I guess I never thought about it.”

“We can fix that later, if you want.”

“Maybe,” she replied, her bottom lips curled nervously between her teeth.

Colt downshifted and slammed the throttle to the floor. He cut the wheel to turn into a sand wash, sand spraying up in the air from the tires digging it. He left a rooster tail of dry sand as he accelerated along the wash in the deep powder. The Lambo wallowed back and forth a bit as he sawed the steering wheel around the bends of the dry river.

The speedo pushed higher, the Lambo floating over the sand. Colt was barely in control, and he knew it. A wrong move, a mistake or an unexpected obstacle could send them flipping out of control. He craved the adrenaline. Selena Sparrow laughed loudly next to him. She loved knowing there was danger, but thought the risk was as well managed as a theme park ride.

Colt cut the wheel again, making for the road. As the Lamborghini approached the road running along the dry wash, it leapt into the air on a rise. The suspension noises abated, leaving only the roar of the revving engine. Everything was suspended in midair as the vehicle floated a few feet off the road, seeming to hover for a moment… until crashing down, the suspension absorbing the weight of the vehicle slamming into the rough road.

He didn’t lift, instead accelerating again, headed deeper into the Mojave Desert along the old road.

Ahead, the road turned slightly. Colt sawed the wheel, deftly flicking into the turn. As they slid sideways, the four-wheel-drive system struggled for traction and Colt battled to retain control. Below them, the rocks and gravel of the road rattled like machine gun fire on the bottom of the SUV.

A rear tire fell off the edge of the road causing Colt to lift slightly from the throttle, then he pegged it down again. A moment and an eternity later, the rear tires grabbed traction and threw the truck back onto the road, threatening to toss it the other way.

Again, he turned into the slide and brought it back under control. Selena had no idea how close to the edge of control they were… that Colt had never driven this vehicle this fast. She didn’t know that he thought they almost rolled when the tire dropped from the edge of the road. She just fully trusted that he had everything in hand.

For much of Colt’s young life, he appeared to have everything in hand, but the reality was that he didn’t. He careened from party to party and school to home, barely in control. From the outside it looked smooth and seamless, like he knew what he was doing, but inside… that wasn’t the case. There were a thousand small adjustments he made as he drove. Some he thought about, others were just reaction. But much of the time, it was luck.

Colt assumed his luck would never run out.

***

He slammed on the brakes and the Lambo slid to a stop in the middle of a dry lakebed. Around them for miles was nothing but parched ground, mountains visible beyond.

“You ready?” he asked. Sand filtered down, their rooster tail catching up to them, coating the exterior with dust.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to hurt your car.”

“There is nothing for miles. I’ll teach you how to drive. It will be fine.”

“I don’t have a Learner’s Permit…”

“Seriously, Selena?” He looked at her for a minute. He could see in her eyes how nervous she was. If he pushed, she would either break down or rise up. He walked around to her side. “Come on. No time like the present. You’re almost seventeen… it’s a rite of passage.”

Her resolve gathered. The set of her jaw changed. The quiver disappeared and she unlatched her seatbelt. She spun around and wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. “I’m ready,” she cooed in his ear.

***

That evening, as they left dinner, again he held the door for her as she climbed up into the Lambo. She hiked her leg up to hop into the seat. Colt Dixon noticed two things at the same time. Glancing down, Selena Sparrow, Teen Sensation and “good girl” was not wearing anything under her skirt. Before he could really process that, he heard the sound of the paparazzi’s shutter firing.

He closed up his footlocker and rolled it over.  Grabbing his knife off the counter, he popped off the metal strapping around the bottom.  He tore off a piece of duct tape and stuck the card in the middle of it, then reassembled it.  He quickly undressed and slipped into his bunk.  His five o’clock call was only three hours away. 

***

The Afghani soldier that was driving the squad stopped the HMMWV outside the squat building southeast of downtown Kandahar.  They had a report of an insurgent cell trying to assemble improvised explosive devices, and he was bringing out a Special Forces team, along with a squad of Afghani Security Forces soldiers.  He was training the ASF soldiers. 

The Ranger team led the raid, breaching through the side of the building.  His squad was at the opposite end of the building to mop up on anything at their end. 

“Green, do a secondary breach and bring your squad in from the west end.  We’re in position to catch,” was the call over the radio. 

“Roger that, Sergeant,” Green replied to the change in tactics.  He turned to his ASF contact.  He translated and ordered his men through the breach, Green on their tail. 

A moment later he rounded a corner.  He heard the popping of an AK-47, the sound distinct from the M-4s the US and ASF soldiers were using.  He scrambled backwards as several rounds hit his plates, crab walking as fast as he could. 

“Mr. Green,” Rafi, the ASF translator said, looking at him with worry in his eyes.  “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah… I’m good.  Took it in the plates,” he replied. 

“No, Mr. Green.  You’re hit,” Rafi said.  He turned to a couple of the ASF soldiers.  Green heard him shouting in Pashto. 

The men he yelled to grabbed Green, dragging him further back.  He tried to protest, but everything started to fade.  He was getting confused.  Rafi took the radio from his belt and he heard him talking but couldn’t make out the words.  The world went black. 

***

Sharif Hussain was right behind Green as he rounded a corner into the main room of the commercial building.  As he cleared the corner, he saw the muzzle flashes.  Looking up, he was positive that the uniform of the soldier shooting was American.  Then he saw the soldier toss the gun at a downed insurgent. 

As they scrambled back, Sharif could see that Green was struggling.  When he was able to look at him, he saw that he’d been hit, blood oozing from his shoulder next to a plate.  The American was operating on adrenaline.

“Ahmed, Begum, take Green to the HMMWV.  We need to get him out,” he shouted to two of his men. 

“But the medic…”

“Do what I said.” 

The two ASF soldiers grabbed Green by his battle-rattle and pulled him out of the line of fire.  Two more men grabbed his legs and hauled him toward the back of their vehicle.  Rafi followed them out, the building exploding in their wake, blowing the armored transport onto its side, and throwing the ASF soldiers across the courtyard.

Sharif ignored everything as he ordered the downed soldier to an Afghan hospital only a few blocks away.  His men picked him up and ran out of the other side of the courtyard and down the street.  They carried him six blocks to the ER entrance, carrying him inside to meet the stretcher coming to get him.  One of the men cut the plate carrier and other protective gear off him as he was rushed to surgery.  From the time he was hit until he was in surgery was less than ten minutes.  His heart had stopped eight minutes in.