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  Sam could feel the keys for the car in one pocket, the mobile phone and the remaining cash in the other. It was enough. Well, not quite, she needed a fire exit at the end of this corridor. Please god, let there be an exit... There was and a moment later Sam burst out into bright morning sunlight. She swung left and sprinted for the car, the key already in her hand.

  She buzzed the doors open with the remote as she ran towards it and then threw herself inside. The engine purred into life at the first attempt — thank god for Japanese engineering — and she stamped on the accelerator, hauled on the wheel and looked around frantically for a way out as the car jumped forward. All she could see were hedges and borders. She'd arrived from the north, so she headed that way, and glanced at the door of the hotel as she zipped past. A black-haired man was standing at the doorway writing something down as she went by — probably the car registration plate. She would have to dump this thing quickly.

  She found an exit sign, swung the car out of the car park and caught a break in the traffic, turning right and heading for what appeared to be the 23. Acting on instinct she turned north, and soon picked up signs for Detroit on the 14. She took the exit, now heading east, and settled the car right on the speed limit. She checked the mirrors. No one appeared to have followed her.

  Sam pulled the mobile phone from her pocket and hit '1' on speed dial. It rang six times before he answered.

  "Hello?" said a groggy voice.

  She thought she heard movement, it sounded like he was in bed.

  "Pete?" she said.

  The silence was adequate reply.

  "Pete, look I know..." she started — what the hell was she thinking, she didn't even know where he was...

  More silence.

  "I'm in trouble" she said, involuntarily. She had been going to hang up. Really, she had.

  "I... er..." he said.

  More rustling.

  She listened hard for any evidence of another person, but heard nothing suspicious. A Porsche flew past in the outside lane, a flash of color in her peripheral vision that distracted her momentarily.

  Then, finally, he spoke. "Sam, look, I'm not that guy for you anymore. If you're in trouble, there are other people you should be looking to for help."

  She felt a sudden rush of panic. "No, Pete, it's not..."

  "It's not what?" he interrupted. "I've not heard a peep out of you for weeks, and now here you are asking for help. Well sorry, but that's someone else's job. I resigned. Or more accurately, I was fired."

  Sam could think of nothing to say. He was right. She held the phone away from her, and took a deep breath. It didn't help, she choked back a sob.

  "Are you ok, you sound a little weird?"

  She took her eyes off the road for a moment to try and find the mute button, glanced up and was half-way across the lane divider. She swore and started to swerve back. A horn howled as a huge 18-wheeler hammered past, rocking the little compact in its slipstream.

  "Shit, shit, shit!" swore Sam a second time.

  "Sam what the hell is going on?"

  She could hear Pete's more insistent voice through the tiny little speaker. She put the phone back to her ear. "They think I killed some guy, but I didn't... I didn't do it!" she cried.

  "Ok, ok, hold on; let's start from the beginning, what the hell is going on?"

  "Pete, I didn't do it, but they all think I did, and I've no idea how I'm going to prove it to them," she almost screamed it at him this time.

  "Sam, try to calm down a little, maybe just tell me where you are?"

  "I can't. They'll hear, they'll know, they hear everything, don't you know that?"

  "Ok..."

  "Please help me," she said.

  "What do you need?" he asked, more gently.

  "I need you in Detroit," she said.

  A moment's hesitation, then...

  "Ok, Detroit, I can get the first flight, I ought to be able to get there in 24 hours."

  "Good. Good. That's brilliant, god, that's brilliant. We need money, cash, and a couple of pay-as-you-go mobiles that they can't trace."

  "Burners," said Pete.

  "Burners, yeah," she replied, "Pay cash for them and pay cash for the ticket. You remember where we broke up in Goa? The last time I saw you?"

  "Of course, at the..."

  "Don't say it!! Don't you read the newspapers; all that stuff about Edward Snowden?"

  "Snowden, the CIA whistleblower? Sam, what the hell is going on?"

  "I'll tell you when you get here, just be here. Meet me there, the same place, but the one in Detroit at 8am tomorrow morning, that's the 16th, Friday. Can you do that?"

  "I guess..."

  "I need you Pete; you're the only one that can help."

  She heard him sigh.

  "I'll be there," he said.

  "OK, I gotta go, see you soon." Sam turned the phone off, pulled the battery out and then the SIM card. She tossed the card out of the window first, then a mile later, the rest of the phone. She had to assume that if the NSA were listening to everything, the Chinese were too. All she had was the jeans and shirt that she was dressed in, what was left of the $300 in her pocket and a hot car. She just had to survive 24 hours until Pete arrived. Should be a piece of cake.

  Chapter 3

  Sam's anxiety was pulsing through her leg muscles onto the speedo and it steadily crept upwards. Finally, she realized she was twenty miles an hour over the limit and backed off. The last thing she needed was to get pulled over. The car had cruise control and she played around with it until she had the vehicle settled on a steady speed, just below the limit on the inside lane. A sign went by; 'Detroit 29 miles'. It was August and it was still early, so there might not be too much traffic. Still, it could take her hours to get downtown. She'd drive till the traffic got bad and then dump the car and walk or get a bus.

  Sam took a deep breath. And then what? Where the hell did she start? She remembered the letter; it was still in her back pocket. Sam wriggled on the seat until it came free and tore it open. It was only a couple of lines of typed script, and she read it between glances at the road:

  My Darling Madeline,

  I hope I will be home soon my love, but if not, I have explained everything for you - it's all where you'd expect it to be. Just know that I've loved you since that day, and always will.

  x

  Sam read it again, her mind reeling. Ravert knew that someone was after him. The possibilities were endless, and scary as all hell. And now it looked like he was trying to tell his wife — without scaring the bejeesus out of her — that he knew he might not make it home. He hadn't and the explanation was hidden somewhere that Madeline would know about... And she was now dead.

  But why? Why was she dead? If they had wanted something from her, she would still be alive - just disappeared for interrogation. But if it had been to silence her then it was a mistake, because if Roger's letter was anything to go by she didn't know anything.

  A horn blasted in her ear and her attention jumped back to the road. She had drifted half-way into the next lane, and quickly swerved back.

  Hell, Sam, that's not inconspicuous.

  She glanced down at the letter again and then put it back in her pocket. Maybe they had been searching for something in her room, but if she was right about someone trying to set her up, then they could just as easily have been planting something, something that would put Sam even more squarely in the frame for Madeline Ravert's murder.

  So what did she do now? If she went to the police in Detroit she would be locked up, and if these people had done their jobs well, then the evidence against her would be excellent. It would need a miracle for her to find someone who believed her, someone who would help in the city with the most broken, bankrupt police force in the country. A city where a dead body could lie frozen in a basement for weeks before anyone found it.

  The easiest thing in the world would be for them to charge and prosecute her for Madeline's murder... or hand her over to Ann Arb
or police and let them do it. She doubted that she would fare any better in the city where Madeline, Roger and their two orphaned children had lived.

  She glanced in the mirrors, then at her watch. It was still early. She'd rented the car with her credit card and driver's license, but she had no idea how long it would take the police to track that information to the number plate of the car that she was driving. The chances were that there was no one at the rental company to help them yet. She probably had a couple of hours before the car became a real liability. It was plenty of time to get into the centre of Detroit and dump the vehicle.

  She had reckoned without the traffic. It started to slow just before the intersection with the I94. She had a look at the map that she had found in the glove box and almost took the I96, but the exit ramp was solid. So she stayed on the 94, but it wasn't good, time was ticking away. At a quarter to 8 she began to wonder what time the rental company would open their administration offices and start answering police calls. The traffic crawled forward. She fiddled with the radio to see if she could find some traffic news. Not that it would really help, the map didn't have enough detail for her to get off the major routes.

  The stop-and-start driving was badly increasing the wear on her already frayed nerves. She felt as though everyone was staring at her. Sam jammed the air conditioning up to counter the increasingly hot temperature in the car. The sun was pouring through the windscreen. It was going to be a beautiful day. She thought about her sunscreen, lying in her wash bag back in the hotel. Maybe she should go to the police. They would take Ravert's letter seriously, wouldn't they? No, she thought, there was nothing to prove that it was Ravert's. He hadn't written it, and the only signature was the neat little cross for a kiss at the end.

  Sam glanced at her watch again, it was just after 8. She had barely moved in the last ten minutes, there must be some kind of crash up ahead. The car rental offices would be open. She could imagine the call going in, a detective standing there with the report from the credit card company, someone flicking through the computer records, Sure, she hired a...

  She snapped, flicked the wheel and tapped the accelerator to get onto the hard shoulder and short-cut the couple of hundred yards to the next exit ramp. She'd dump the car here and get a bus... but even as she was doing it she knew it was a huge mistake. Everyone turned to watch her as she overtook them on the shoulder. She stared fixedly ahead, thinking they won't mind so much when they see I just want to get to the exit. She breathed a massive sigh of relief as she started to ascend the ramp, hiding her from all the staring eyes.

  The traffic light at the junction was red, and she pulled up. She had no idea where to go. She glanced down the street to her right... holy crap. She'd not ascended an off-ramp in the suburbs of a major US city; she'd been picked up and dumped down in the middle of a war zone. An empty lot was piled with trash opposite; the next building looked like it had been burnt out. Right beside her a broken down gas station looked barely functional.

  Stretching away down the street to her right there were huge gaps in the row of buildings, like so many missing teeth. Those that had survived were burnt out or shuttered up. Overflowing dumpsters dotted the sidewalk, contents spilling into the broken paving stones. Now she realized why everyone had been watching her. No one would need to take this exit in a brand new car.

  A man separated himself from a group of four or five standing on the forecourt of the gas station. He started to walk towards her. She looked at him, and for a moment there was eye-contact. He accelerated and so did she, stamping on the pedal. The car leapt forward through the red light with a squeal of tires. She headed straight across the junction to the on-ramp on the other side, flashing past the man, who just stood, laughing.

  She flew down the ramp, her heart pounding, and then realized that she was going way too fast for the almost stationary traffic and hit the brakes. She had just got the car back down to 10mph when she got to the freeway. She wondered if the traffic had moved forward far enough for any of these people to recognize her. Hopefully, they would think she was just trying to jump a few cars in the queue by using the junction.

  Sam slowed even more, put her indicator on and gently nudged her way back into the line of traffic. So that was Detroit's decline and decay. And now she was back where she had started. Stuck in traffic.

  Paul Jobert turned out of the gate at Detroit Metro, and shrugged his holdall onto his shoulder. He was already looking for the signs to the exit, or the baggage area. Car rental wouldn't be far from there. He kinked right to avoid a toddler backing into his path, then flipped his phone out of his pocket and dialed Wallace, who picked up immediately.

  "I'm on the ground, what ya got for me?" said Jobert.

  "Yeah, it's not good; Madeline Ravert was killed at her home last night."

  "What the fuck!"

  "And that's only part of it; the Chinese Embassy has gone public with the request for Sam Blackett's arrest and extradition. Both stories are on the news wires, and cable and terrestrial have picked them up for their morning shows. I guess it looks like some kinda love triangle gone horribly wrong."

  Jobert managed to keep walking, although his mind was reeling. "Love triangle? This really doesn't sound like her," he said, finally, twenty steps further into the airport, and level with the first coffee stand. The months of surveillance had given him a pretty good feel for Sam Blackett, and this didn't ring true. Not at all.

  Wallace was silent.

  "Do we know anything about it?" asked Jobert.

  "Nothing yet, I can see local TV pictures of PD outside the house. Coupla' black and whites."

  "No sign of Blackett?"

  "Not yet, but still running checks on her card. I got the Ravert's address though, if that's any help?"

  "Yeah, I guess I need to head there first, text it through. I'm on my way to the rental now; I'll get straight over there."

  Sam knew that she had to find a way out of this traffic to somewhere safe - but where the hell was safe? If she hadn't dumped the phone she could have checked the satellite maps on Google to see if there was some clue as to where the decay ended - the whole city couldn't be like that, could it? She glanced at her watch again, 8.30am. The radio had turned from Beyonce to the news, maybe there would be a traffic report next.

  The flashing blue light popped into view out of the back of the truck a dozen or so cars in front of her and she caught her breath. A moment later she realized that it was stopped on the inside lane and forcing traffic round an SUV and a Taurus that looked like they had been in a nose-to-tail. This was the problem... this was the problem! She was in the inside lane and would have to drive right past the cop!

  Sam gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles were white. Now she was going to find out how efficient the Detroit police were. In front of her the traffic was slowly merging with the outer lanes to get past the obstruction. If she tried to get across a couple of lanes and get away from the cops, it would only draw attention to her and could make things worse. She glanced around the inside of the car; she didn't even have a hat to hide her hair.

  The traffic queue inched her closer, dragging her towards her fate. She put on the indicator and glanced over her shoulder. The car behind hesitated, and she took the opportunity to swing out into the lane. She could see the cop car clearly now, sitting empty with the blue and red turning, turning... She could see the two cops talking to the driver of the SUV, its hood crumpled upwards. The driver of the Taurus was a few yards away on his phone. No one seemed interested in the traffic, never mind her.

  Please let it stay that way.

  Sam stared ahead of her, trying to channel the bored commuter deep within. She leaned forward and twiddled the radio dial again to get something other than R&B. She hit a news report.

  "... are anxious to interview suspect Samantha Blackett in the case of the double murder of Roger Ravert and his wife Madeline. Details of this extraordinary story are just starting to emerge, but sources are alread
y speculating about a love-triangle that turned deadly. Chinese authorities report that Ravert was seen with Blackett in Shanghai shortly before he was murdered yesterday, and the pair may have been romantically involved. Blackett returned to the United States and the Detroit area immediately after Ravert's death, and police are anxious to confirm her whereabouts when Madeline Ravert was brutally slain at her quiet, leafy home in Ann Arbor last night. The tragedy leaves the couple's two children as orphans.

  "Lions quarterback..."

  Sam clicked the radio off. Holy crap. A love triangle? And those children... oh god, everyone was going to hate her, they'd all be looking for her. She flicked her eyes across at the cops, who were still intent on the conversation with the SUV driver, now getting heated. Just as she did so, the closest of the pair glanced over his shoulder and looked straight at her. Sam flicked her eyes back to the road and froze. The car in front came to a halt and she just managed to get to the brakes in time, pulling up with a squeal a couple of inches off the fender.

  She could feel the cop's eyes boring into her. She took a slow deep breath and let it out, relaxing into the seat as she did so. If he walked across towards her she'd bail out and run. There was no way she was going to get caught. She was being set up, and set up good. The car in front eased forward and started to accelerate as the bottleneck sorted itself out and began to clear. She dabbed the pedal gently and pulled off after him, not wanting to breathe.

  She glanced in the mirror, the cop was still watching as she drove off, but he made no move towards her, or his car, never mind his gun. They obviously hadn't yet got out a description. She still had some time — but not much, that cop would remember her. The traffic started to free up in front of her and as her speed increased to ten and then twenty miles an hour she breathed more freely.