Dead Even by Mariah Stewart

same place he was working when Aidan and Mara found him.”
    “I hope so. He’s the closest thing we have to a potential victim,” Miranda reminded him.
    “So, what do we say when we find him?”
    “I’m still working on that. I’m hoping that, by the time we reach Telford, I’ll have that figured out. . . .”
    There was silence for several miles, until Miranda broke it. “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said, “did you specifically ask for this car, or was this all they had left at the rental-car place today?”
    “Few things happen by accident, Cahill.” He smiled. He was wondering when she’d say something about the truly ugly bottom-of-the-line sedan he’d leased.
    “Really? You really called the rental agency and asked for the slowest, oldest, butt-ugliest car they had?”
    “You know that budgetary restrictions determine what car we can get,” he said loftily, his eyes straight ahead on the road before them.
    “Most of us manage to do a little better than this. Think it will make it all the way to Telford?”
    “Guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”
    “Wake me up when we get there.” She closed her eyes.
    “You’re supposed to be thinking of an opening line for our approach to Unger.”
    “I’m sleeping on it, Fletcher.” Her eyes still closed, she reached her hand down next to the seat, searching for the controls. Finding it, she slid the seat back as far as it would go and stretched out her long legs. “I do some of my best work with my eyes closed.”
    Amen, he silently agreed. Amen . . .
             
    Archer Lowell stumbled along the perimeter of the field, then headed for the woods well beyond the trailer camp.
    “Don’t like this,” he muttered to himself. “Don’t want to do this . . .”
    The gun that he’d shoved into the waistband of his jeans was cold and heavy and foreign. Today would mark the third day in a row he’d spent at the shooting range, practicing putting a single hole in the middle of the bull’s-eye. Just like the stranger—Burt, he’d said his name was—had told him to do. Practice, practice, practice.
    “Yeah, well, I practiced,” he said aloud. “Today’s the last day I’m doing this. I know how to shoot the damned gun. Don’t know what he thinks I am, that I have to keep going back. I told him I done good enough with it the first day. But nooooo.”
    Archer kicked at a clump of dry earth in his path.
    “Just all craziness, anyway,” he mumbled as he walked along. “I hate him. Hate him. I should use this fucking gun on him, that’s what I should do.”
    He kicked another clump.
    “Making me do this thing I don’t want to do. Kill some man I don’t even know. Shit.”
    His hands started to shake just thinking about it. He was going to have to kill a man. Burt had given him until Friday to leave for Ohio, which was where this guy Unger lived. He already had his bus ticket. Burt had bought it for him and left it in his mailbox.
    Shit. He wiped at his nose with his sleeve as he walked along. At the very least, Burt coulda driven him. Who takes a Greyhound to make a hit?

CHAPTER
SEVEN
    At twenty-five minutes past midnight, in the empty movie theater, the frail, stooped man slid his broom under the front row of seats. Methodically, he swept the debris into a central pile.
    “Mr. Unger?” Will said. He and Miranda approached the old man slowly, so as not to alarm him.
    “I’m Al Unger.” The man stopped pushing the broom he held with both hands and leaned upon it, his expression guarded.
    “My name is Will Fletcher. This is Miranda Cahill. We’re with the FBI.”
    “Jesus, not again.” Unger looked from one agent to the other. “Curt come back from the dead and kill someone else?”
    “Not yet,” Miranda told him. “But we’re thinking he might do just that, in a manner of speaking.”
    “What the hell are you talking about? I know he’s dead. I was one of the few people at his funeral who actually knew