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the shore, praying the men chasing her would continue to follow the boat until she’d had time to disappear.
    The water shallowed to waist-deep. She risked surfacing and spotted the boats. GRID had taken the bait and continued the chase.
    Grateful for even a spare respite, she seized it. They wouldn’t be fooled long, but with luck, long enough for her to evade them.
    Kate ditched her fins and tank in the water and hurried ashore, scanning the terrain for somewhere to hide. She’d love to just run for the caves—openings dotted the hills—but experience warned her she was too short of time to make it and the consequences of not making it carried costs too high to pay.
    At the water’s edge, she snaked low to the ground, took cover in the clump of trees and then sank deeper into the brush. Still searching, she forced herself to pause and think. These trees were the logical dry-ground hiding place; they’d find her here. She had to find an illogical place to hide.
    She ran on and reached an oblong clearing about three hundred yards across. A single large boulder sat on the far edge of it. It had to be at least eight feet wide. On threesides of it, a person could see forever. And that’s where she’d hide—in plain sight.
    Well, almost.
    Near the base of the boulder, under a natural ledge, she dropped to her knees and scooped out a shallow grave, dumped in her diving mask and then crawled inside. She smoothed the sand over her lower body. It would be hotter than hell itself in the wet suit, but she didn’t dare risk removing it. She needed the added protection against scorpions and snakes, which happened to love the crevices of the rocks. Cool places to wait out the hot sun.
    Buried to her chest, she pulled the remaining half of the tubing from her pocket. Putting one end in her mouth, she clamped down with her teeth and put the other end into an open notch under the edge of the boulder. She could take air in, but the tube wouldn’t be easily spotted. Then she finished burying herself, punching outward from the inside, forcing the sand under the ledge to collapse over her hand.
    The sand wasn’t uncomfortably hot, but if she’d been dry, she’d already be sweating. She just wasn’t deep enough to get to a stable, lower temperature. The grit against her eyes and nose irritated her, urged her to scratch, but she stayed put, didn’t move, and willed herself to relax and breathe.
    A good forty-five minutes later, the sand around her vibrated.
    Footsteps.
    Her heart rate jackhammered into high gear, her nerves stood on end, hyperalert. She’d had to stay shallow to keep the weight of the sand light enough to allow her rib cage to expand, to drag breath. If the bastards had a handheld thermal detector, she was dead. The sand covering her wasn’t deep enough to block the signal.
    The vibrations grew stronger and muffled voices joined them. “No tracks through here, Mr. Kunz.”
    “She didn’t just disappear into thin air.” Kunz sounded more than a little annoyed.
    Shock ripped over Kate. She knew that voice too well to be fooled. She’d done an audio study from a S.A.S.S. intercept the CIA had verified to be Kunz. This man was not a Kunz double.
    He was Kunz.
    She couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it—or all it implied. Maybe her ears were playing tricks on her. The sand could be distorting more than expected. Maybe being hypersensitive, she was skewing things, manifesting her worst fears.
    She told herself all that and more, but the fact of the matter was, she didn’t believe any of it. He was Kunz. And that terrified her. Because if the real Thomas Kunz was here, then the Thomas Kunz in Leavenworth was a double.…
    The truth slithered over her, then seeped in. Damn it! He’d done it to them again. He’d passed off one of his doubles as himself.
    “You’re certain she wasn’t Amanda West?” a second man asked.
    “I’m sure. This was a tall, skinny blonde. Short, curly hair. Her face was