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for that magic day when they turned fifty-five years of age and could retire. He was special. He had almost two million dollars in cash stuffed in a half-dozen safety-deposit boxes and when he reached fifty-five, he wasn’t going to Florida. Oh no! He was going to live.
    He had seven years to go before that happy birthday, so he didn’t really dwell on how it would be. The truth was he hadn’t really decided how he was going to spend the rest of his life. There was plenty of time.
    This evening Doyle was home alone—his wife was showing a house and the kids were at a high school football game. He was thirty minutes into a Dirty Harry movie on television when the telephone rang.
    â€œHello.”
    Richard Doyle listened for a moment, glanced at his watch, then said, “Okay,” and hung up the receiver.
    He used the remote to kill the television, put on his shoes, then stood and stretched.
    His wife wouldn’t be home for at least an hour and the kids were planning on catching a ride home with the neighbor down the street. He had plenty of time. He went to the kitchen and helped himself to a soft drink from the fridge. He took the can with him. Martha was driving her Lexus, so he took the vehicle he usually drove, a three-year-old maroon Dodge Caravan.

    He made sure he closed the garage door, then headed for the subdivision exit. In minutes he joined the traffic on the highway.
    Ten minutes later he rolled into the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant in Tyson’s Corner. He knew from past visits that the restaurant’s security cameras did not tape activities in the parking lot, yet he remained in his car.
    Two minutes later another vehicle, a sedan, drove into the restaurant’s lot and stopped with the engine running. Doyle glanced around, then got out of his car and walked over to the sedan. He opened the passenger door and seated himself.
    â€œGood evening.”
    â€œHi.” The other man put his car in gear and drove out of the parking lot.
    â€œI’ve got a document I want you to see, but I didn’t want to copy it. Too many pages.”
    â€œHot, huh?”
    â€œToo risky to use the copiers at the office. The ones we have now have a computer memory. I’ve got to get this thing back into the file tomorrow. You can read the summary and key passages, get the gist of it.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œOnce I have it back in the file, we’re safe and we’ve left no tracks.”
    â€œYou’re really worried about giving me a copy, aren’t you?”
    â€œHey, I haven’t gotten caught yet. If they bust you, they still got nothing on me.”
    â€œThey’re not going to bust me,” Richard Doyle said dismissively. “Shit, I’ve been doing this forever. Fucking FBI couldn’t catch a cold.”
    The driver pulled into the parking lot of a fast-food joint that had gone out of business. “Did you ever eat here?” Doyle asked, gesturing at the sign. “Terrible food.”
    The driver stopped the car behind the building, put the transmission in park, and turned off the ignition. He jabbed a button under the dash to release the trunk lid.
Then he got out of the car and walked back to the trunk. He took out a folder, then slammed it shut. He came up to the passenger side of the car and opened Doyle’s door.
    He handed Doyle the folder. “Here it is. Turn on the light over the mirror. It’s that button up there.”
    As Doyle was looking up, trying to find the light switch, the driver used a silenced pistol to shoot him once just behind the right ear. Richard Doyle slumped in his seat.
    The driver closed the passenger door, walked around the vehicle, got in, started the engine, and drove away.
    An hour later the sedan pulled up to a gate in a chain-link fence at an airport near Leesburg. The killer flashed his lights. Another car drove up and the driver used a pass card to open the gate. The two vehicles