Brennan flung himself through the back door, dodging left and rolling on the ground. Another assassin was waiting for him, but Brennan went through the door too quickly for the killer to draw an accurate aim.

Brennan gritted his teeth against the pain lancing through his leg as he sprinted across his meticulously raked sand garden, ruining the serenity of the gravel-sculpted waves with footprints and bloodspatters. The assassin was too slow to track him, and a fusillade of shots ripped into the ground at Brennan's heels as he dove into the thick brush surrounding his isolated country home.

The cold night air frosted Brennan's breath as he stood naked on the frigid ground. His bare feet burned in the snow, and his thigh throbbed as it dripped blood, but he scarcely felt the pain as he crouched low in the snow-laden bushes. A second black-garbed figure joined the one who'd been lying in ambush in the backyard. They conversed in low unintelligible voices, and one of them gestured toward the forest in Brennan's general direction. Neither seemed eager to go into the darkness.

Brennan grimaced, forcing his mind into dispassionate rationality. His biggest problem was time. His assailants could afford to wait him out. He was crouched naked in a frigid winter night that was already sapping all the warmth from his bones. He had to get to the shed behind the greenhouse before he became an immobile hunk of frozen meat.

Just as Brennan convinced himself to move, the assassins were joined by a third figure, who thumbed on a powerful flashlight and aimed it into the woods just to Brennan*s left. Brennan's hopes sank even lower. Now it would be almost impossible to get away.